Investors

There are glass-half-empty and glass-half-full ways to view renewable energy and climate finance in Africa, the second largest and most populous continent. The somber take: Africa and its countries are not even close to being on track to achieve the Paris Agreement or their own climate goals — their contributions to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 Fahrenheit — before 2030. The Climate Policy Initiative estimated the continent will require $277 billion of renewable energy investments each year from 2020 to 2030 to meet its goals and that isn’t happening. There is currently only $29.5 billion invested, a shortfall that will ultimately hamper the collective effort to avoid profound environmental problems and keep the earth livable. “It is unlikely that global climate change mitigation efforts can be successful without taking Africa into consideration,” Pieter Scholtz, the ESG Africa partner lead at KPMG, said i...

About 10 years ago, a very thick book written by a French economist became a surprising bestseller. It was called “Capital in the 21st Century.” In it, Thomas Piketty traces the history of income and wealth inequality over the past couple of hundred years. The book’s insights struck a chord with people who felt a growing sense of economic inequality but didn’t have the data to back it up. I was one of them. It made me wonder, how much carbon pollution is being generated to create wealth for a small group of extremely rich households? Two kids, 10 years and a Ph.D. later, I finally have some answers. In a new study, colleagues and I investigated U.S. households’ personal responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2019. We previously studied emissions tied to consumption – the stuff people buy. This time, we looked at emissions used in generating people’s incomes, including investment income. If you’ve ever thought abo...