20231204

Profit-Hungry Climate Investors Descend on Dubai

The larger-than-usual group of investors and bankers in attendance at COP28 in Dubai are not there primarily (if at all) for altruistic reasons. They’ve traveled to the United Arab Emirates for the same reason they’d go to an airshow or a heavy industry convention.

The possibility of making a lot of money.

For Nikita Singhal, co-head of sustainable investment & ESG at Lazard Asset Management, the climate crisis is too often portrayed as a risk to investors’ portfolios, while the opportunities to profit handsomely from the economic changes required to slow global warming are regularly overlooked.

Singhal cited a recent trip to India where she said that she witnessed several major corporations preparing tens of billions of dollars for green capital expenditure. The trip served to remind her “how something that is largely perceived as a risk can end up being an amazing financial opportunity.”

This unabashed pursuit of profit makes a lot of traditional climate activists uncomfortable, but others argue that bringing in banks is the only way to mobilize the trillions of dollars needed to finance the energy transition and climate adaptation.

EK: ESG is unignorable any longer.