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- December 2024
- Article
Coordinating the Energy Transition: Electrifying Transportation in California and Germany
By: Nicholas Goedeking and Jonas Meckling
California and Germany share ambitious emission reduction targets. Yet California is ahead of Germany in electrifying transportation by several metrics, including the number of public charging stations. We show that variation in the politics of coordination in... View Details
- April 2024 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
New Belgium Brewing and Climate Change
By: Michael W. Toffel, Kenneth P. Pucker and Michael Norris
In 2023, Colorado-based craft brewery New Belgium Brewing was considering how best to meet its emissions reduction targets. After decades of growth, the beermaker had grown to become one of the largest craft brewers in the U.S., and was purchased in 2019 by Japanese... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
CPP Investments—The Road to Zero
By: Vikram Gandhi and Radhika Kak
In February 2022, Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) Investments, the investment management organization that managed funds for the CPP, one of the biggest pension plans in the world, announced a net-zero commitment for its portfolio by 2050. Under its CEO, John Graham, it... View Details
- 2024
- Report
The Eco-Digital EraTM: The Dual Transition to a Sustainable and Digital Economy
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Andy Feinstein, Amol Khadikar, Jiani Zhang, Noémie Lauer, Hiral Shah, Sally Epstein, Jerome Buvat and Vaishnavee Ananth
Since the proliferation of smartphones and social media in the late 2000s, digital has captured an increasingly large portion of the economy. In this Capgemini Research Institute report, The Eco-Digital EraTM: The dual transition to a sustainable and... View Details
- December 2023
- Case
Raízen: Helping to Decarbonize the World?
By: Gunnar Trumbull, Pedro Levindo, Daniel Tong and Rafaella Mazza
Raízen, the world’s largest sugar and ethanol producer, strived to find ways to expand the second-generation ethanol (E2G) market, which it pioneered. The company planned to invest R$24 billion (around $4.6 billion) in 20 production plants, with a total capacity to... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Accountability of Corporate Emissions Reduction Targets
By: Xiaoyan Jiang, Shawn Kim and Shirley Lu
Firms are increasingly announcing targets to reduce their carbon emissions, but it is unclear whether firms are held accountable for these targets. In this paper, we examine emissions targets that ended in 2020 to investigate the prevalence of missed targets, how firms... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised July 2024)
- Background Note
Corporate Climate Targets
By: Willy C. Shih, Michael W. Toffel and Kelsey Carter
Companies that are addressing climate change by mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions often set reduction targets. This note describes several types of widely used carbon reduction targets, including carbon neutral, science based, net zero, real zero, and carbon... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Prime Coalition: Estimating Climate Impact
A case on CRANE, a tool to help investors and green technology companies estimate the future climate impact of new technologies and products, called emissions reduction potential (ERP). The case includes material on CRANE’s methodology for estimating future carbon... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Recycle & Re-Match: The Future of Soccer Turfs
By: George Serafeim, Lena Duchene and Carlota Moniz
By August 2023, Re-Match, an artificial turf waste-to-value company, had operations in Denmark and the Netherlands and had recycled over 160,000 tons of waste and plastic fiber. With recent capital injection from the VC firm Verdane and a dual revenue business model,... View Details
Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Carbon Abatement; Sustainability; Recycling; Waste Management; Technology; Entrepreneurial Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Decisions; Energy Conservation; Investment Return; Profit; Technological Innovation; Patents; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Wastes and Waste Processing; Business Strategy; Competition; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Sports; Environmental Sustainability; Entrepreneurship; Green Technology Industry; Service Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Rubber Industry; Sports Industry; Denmark; Netherlands; France; United States; Pennsylvania; Europe
- May 2023
- Article
Decarbonizing Health Care: Engaging Leaders in Change
By: Vivian S. Lee, Kathy Gerwig, Emily Hough, Kedar Mate, Robert Biggio and Robert S. Kaplan
Health care leaders are often surprised to learn that their operations contribute
significantly to a warming climate. In addition to their roles as responders to and victims
of extreme weather events, health care organizations have an obligation to reduce... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Accounting for Carbon Offsets – Establishing the Foundation for Carbon-Trading Markets
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston
Tackling climate change requires reductions in current and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as the removal of existing GHG from the atmosphere. Carbon-offset producers purport to provide such removals. But poor measurement practices and inadequate controls... View Details
- August 2023
- Article
Taking Stock of the Implementation Gap in Climate Policy
By: Taryn Fransen, Jonas Meckling, Anna Stunzi, Tobias Schmidt, Florian Egli, Nicolas Schmid and Christopher Beaton
A gap persists between the emissions reductions pledged by countries under the Paris Agreement and those resulting from their domestic policies. We argue that this gap in fact contains two parts: one in the policies that countries adopt, and the other in the outcomes... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
South Africa – a 'Just Energy Transition'
By: Richard Vietor
South Africa, like most other countries, is in the process of reducing its carbon emissions to comply with COP26 and, hopefully, reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, because South Africa relies almost wholly on coal (93%) for electricity, and on coal for... View Details
- June 2022
- Case
Business Implications from Regulating Carbon Emissions in the EU
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
In the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (the EU) had led the global fight against climate change with a wide array of policy measures. The EU’s primary approach to climate policy had been taxation via the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU... View Details
- March 2022
- Background Note
Climate Challenges for Cities: Introduction to Issues and Actions in the United States
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Catarina Mia Martinez
This background Note introduces the implications of climate change (global warming) for American cities. In the U.S., partisan political divides and unaddressed economic and racial disparities in climate vulnerabilities can inhibit action. The two main fronts for... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Cities; Emission Reduction; Change; Change Leadership; Electric Power Generation; Transportation; Recycling; Green Business; Green Building; Ecosystem; Construction; Systems Change; Cross-sector Collaboration; Adaptation; Geographic Location; Resource Allocation; Infrastructure; Government and Politics; Social Issues; Urban Development; United States
- 2021
- Article
Nudging the Commute: Using Behaviorally-Informed Interventions to Promote Sustainable Transportation
By: Ashley Whillans, Joseph Sherlock, Jessica Roberts, Shibeal O'Flaherty, Lyndsay Gavin, Holly Dykstra and Michael Daly
Dramatic reductions in carbon emissions must take place immediately. A human-centric method of reducing environmental impacts is to “nudge” employees away from single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) toward more sustainable commuting options. While an abundance of research... View Details
- September 2016
- Article
The Effect of Target Difficulty on Target Completion: The Case of Reducing Carbon Emissions
By: Ioannis Ioannou, Shelley Xin Li and George Serafeim
Targets are an integral component of management control systems and play a significant role in achieving desirable performance outcomes. We focus on a key environmental performance objective—reduction of carbon emissions—as a setting in which to examine how target... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised March 2019)
- Case
Suncor and the Future of Oil Sands
Suncor, Canada's largest producer of "oil sands," faces a host of issues involving prices, costs, and the environment. The Government of Canada recently put an explicit limit on carbon emissions from oil sands and a price on carbon. Suncor, which produces more than... View Details
- September 2012
- Background Note
Carbon Credits
By: Forest Reinhardt, Jost Hamschmidt and Mikell Hyman
- November 2009
- Article
Responding to Public and Private Politics: Corporate Disclosure of Climate Change Strategies
By: Erin Marie Reid and Michael W. Toffel
The challenges associated with climate change will require governments, citizens, and firms to work collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a task that requires information on companies' emissions levels, risks, and reduction opportunities. This paper... View Details