Green Enterprise Talks™

Welcome to a brand new content series, funded, produced, and hosted by GEI! Green Enterprise Talks™ are a new approach to the discussion about entrepreneurial sustainability in the 21st century. Adopting a webinar format, we will be bringing world-class speakers, thinkers, and doers into shared spaces to interact with our community on specified topics. Two-way interaction is used to promote our personal philosophy of ‘give and take’ and to instill a sense of collaborative conversation.

The talks will be held on a quarterly basis on themes which are central to the sustainable enterprise discussion. Pre-registration will be required to attend the live event and interact with GEI panelists.

All Green Enterprise Talks™ programs will be recorded and archived.

Sustainable Finance in a Carbon-Neutral World?
August 26th 2021 - #1

With Eric Usher, Head of UNEP FI, and Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bond Initiative

THURSDAY, August 26th, 13:30-14:30 BST time, join us for the first online conversation in the Green Enterprise Talks™ series, hosted by GEI: “How Finance Can Empower Businesses to Accelerate Climate Mitigation and Adaptation”, a free webinar featuring Sean Kidney, Eric Usher, and Leonard Alf, discussing how private and public finance can be leveraged to help enterprises address the climate crisis and reconfigure the economy equitably and sustainably.

Even those unfamiliar with terms like “climate bond”, “PSI” (Principles for Sustainable Insurance), “ESG”, and “sustainability taxonomy” will be aware of the international implications of the Paris agreement and the huge influx of public funding towards the construction of climate-resilent infrastructure, promotion of habitat conservation, and innovation for economic decarbonisation.

This webinar will explore the rise of the fossil fuel divestment movement, the Climate Bond market, and upcoming advances in sustainable financial instruments such as transition bonds. At core, it will attempt to further develop the discussion about how financial tools can help market systems internalise negative externalities – including carbon emissions. It will also address how these tools can set the stage for a more just, and more resilient, economic system.

Particularly at this historic moment, with public expenditure constrained by COVID-19 related vaccination, abatement, and recovery, the need to inject new technologies, new procedures, and new thinking into climate finance is more urgent than ever. The pressures felt by businesses to adapt and survive in a post-covid economy can additionally be viewed as an opportunity for rapid and dynamic financial evolution, given the right incentives and technologies.

Putting the right systems in place for finance to assist businesses and incentivise consumers to decarbonise the economy may not be simple. Significant barriers still stand, including incomplete information, sustainability-related scepticism, and high upfront costs. But overcoming these barriers and reconfiguring our financial systems is necessary. To discuss the solutions underway, and to envision new ones, we welcome two experts in the field: Eric Usher, Head of the UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative.

Presented by the Green Enterprise Institute, GEI Green Enterprise Talks™ is a new quarterly webinar series that engages the public in conversations about a variety of climate mitigation and adaptation topics.

This event was live-streamed on August 26th, 13:30-14:30 BST time (8:30-9:30 EST/14:30-15:30 CEST), to our YouTube channel. An HD recording will be uploaded soon.

Eric Usher

Eric Usher is the Head of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, UNEP FI, a global partnership bringing together the UN with a global group of banks, insurers and investors working to develop the sustainable finance and responsible investment agendas. Mr. Usher sits on several industry bodies including the Board of the Principles for Responsible Investment, the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative, the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Investor Agenda, and the impact fund REPP Africa. Prior to UNEP FI, Mr. Usher has over twenty years of low carbon sectors experience, spanning technology commercialisation in Canada, solar rural electrification in Morocco and financial sector development across emerging markets. Mr. Usher worked on the establishment of the Green Climate Fund and led efforts to create its Private Sector Facility. He has also been an editor of the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report published annually with Bloomberg and was lead author for finance of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources.

Sean Kidney

Sean Kidney is CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO working to mobilize global capital for climate action. Projects include a green bond definitions and certification scheme with $34 trillion of assets represented on its Board; working with the Chinese central bank on how to grow green bonds in China; market development programs in Brazil, Mexico, ASEAN and Africa; and market tracking services for the green bonds industry. He is a member of the European Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance, and was a member of its predecessors, the 2017 EU High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. He is also a member of green finance committees in China, India, Mexico and Kazakhstan. Sean has been a consultant on green bonds to the United Nations Secretary General and is also a Professor in Practice at SOAS University of London.