Business & Environment
Business & Environment
The vital connection between the natural environment and the business world has long been a central focus of our research at HBS – from Richard Vietor’s study of business-government relations in U.S. energy policy in the 1980’s to Michael Porter’s new concept of the relationship between the environment and competition in the 1990’s. Today, our faculty members focus on corporate environmental strategy, operations and reporting; sustainable cities and infrastructure; the role of government and environmental policy; clean energy generation and demand-side energy efficiency; and the effective management of natural resources essential to human prosperity.
Initiatives & Projects
The Business & Environment Initiative and the Social Enterprise Initiative deepen business leaders’ understanding of today’s environmental challenges and assist them in developing effective solutions.
Business & Environment Social EnterpriseRecent Publications
E-ledgers Carbon Accounting
- 2025 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
Boards Can Continue to Lead the Way on Climate Governance
- August 18, 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
A Concise Business Guide to Climate Change: What Managers, Executives, and Students Need to Know
- 2025 |
- Book |
- Faculty Research
Climate has changed the game for businesses around the world. With climate-related disasters costing billions in damages and public pressure rising, over a hundred nations joined the 2015 Paris Agreement, setting 2050 as the target for net-zero carbon emissions. Thousands of companies have registered with the Carbon Disclosure Project. In a recent survey of large, global firms, one-third reported that climate change was already affecting their operations.
Business leaders need help navigating this complex, fast-changing environment. Amid a flood of new policies and information, how can you tell what news matters and what impact it will have? Which arguments and reports are grounded in sound science and economics and which are not?
This indispensable guidebook by Harvard Business School professor and policy expert Gunnar Trumbull answers this need. As managers around the world confront the reality of climate change and educate themselves about how it is affecting their businesses, A Concise Business Guide to Climate Change provides a single, short, and accessible account of the information crucial to understanding and addressing these challenges. What causes climate change? How do countries and companies measure their own impact on global climate? What is the role of carbon markets? How are governments responding? What kind of corporate emissions targets make sense, and how can they be achieved? In crisp, reader-friendly, and data-rich chapters, Trumbull presents the basic scientific, economic, policy, and accounting frameworks that managers need in order to answer these questions.
Effective as an overview or as a reference on specific challenges, this book is your go-to business guide for dealing with climate change.
Transforming a Titan (A)
- June 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Power Struggles: Hydro-Quebec’s Energy Dilemma
- June 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Vail Resorts: Responding to Activist Pressure (A)
- June 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Are ESG Improvements Recognized? Perspectives from the Public Sentiments
- Summer 2025 |
- Article |
- Journal of Impact and ESG Investing
An Empirical Examination of Business Climate Alliances: Effective and/or Harmful?
- 2025 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation
- May 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Sustainability as a Business-Model Transformation
- May–June 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review