The Sustainable Finance Podcast

Today’s guest on the Sustainable Finance Podcast believes that we are in the early stages of a persistent, global investment mega trend driven by a massive, disruptive event - Climate Change! Dr. Julie Anderson is Program Director for the Masters of Science in Sustainability Mgmt. at American University’s Kogod School of Business. She previously held senior leadership roles at top investment firms, including serving as Director and Head of iShares US Sustainable ETFs at BlackRock, where she managed $58 billion in assets and led strategic initiatives across the business. She believes this global megatrend is an opportunity to change the way we think about and choose sustainable investments. Investors should engage with and support companies that produce products in a responsible way that also creates healthy environments. We should focus on creating companies that are more sustainable, more profitable and more competitive because they are managing their Climate risks and opportunities better.

According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), sustainable food and plant-based innovations will grow in market share from $39B today to $290B by 2035! My guest today is a global player in helping transform the food system. Elysabeth Alfano, the CEO of VegTech, consults with public sector companies up and down the industry supply chain. Today, Alfano is talking about her role as advisor to EATV, an ETF which invests in the founders, disruptors and trend-makers with the vision and technology to create a food secure future.

My guest in today’s replay of SFP Episode 272 is Marie Clara Buellingen, Head of Sustainable Finance Americas for Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking, one of the largest foreign banking organizations in North America. She is charged with solving the challenges of making public and private capital work together to scale clean energy solutions in the required timelines. The Societe Generale sustainable finance team develops ESG strategies and programs that meet with key stakeholder expectations and best practices such as TCFD, SASB, GRI, UNPRI and the CDP. We talk about approaches to clean energy technology solutions that she has seen work across multiple sectors of the global economy.

How should energy transition investors and policymakers think about the role of technologies like green hydrogen and energy storage systems, and what policy frameworks are needed to de-risk investment in them that will accelerate the transition? This is especially true of supply chain risks when financing critical minerals projects and nature-based solutions like Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM). Tokollo Matsabu and Patlong Advisory LLC, work with companies to globally deploy the company’s revolutionary electrolyser technology and make clean, green hydrogen economically viable in international markets. Today, SFP followers will also learn about Patlong’s Advisory role to the Lesotho Foreign Ministry on energy and sustainable finance policy initiatives.

Insurance carriers are the second largest money management group and one of the most impactful regulatory industries on earth. How is Premiums for the Planet, a membership-based collective action movement, motivating this industry to incorporate more sustainable investment strategies? Join Founder and CEO Brad Stevenson as we discuss how the collective’s companies are challenging the investment practices of their insurance carriers to support the climate adaptation efforts of the collective.