This textbook provides an introduction to environmental finance and investments. The current situation raises fundamental questions that this book aims to address. Under which conditions could carbon pricing schemes contribute to a significant decrease in emissions? What are the new investment strategies that the Kyoto Protocol and the emerging carbon pricing schemes around the world should promote? In the context of carbon regulation through emission trading schemes, what is the trade-off between production, technological changes, and pollution? What is the nature of the relation between economic growth and the environment?

This book intends to provide students and practitioners with the knowledge and the theoretical tools necessary to answer these and other related questions in the context of the so-called environmental finance theory. This is a new research strand that investigates the economic, financial, and managerial impacts of carbon pricing policies.

Autorentext

Marc Chesney holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Geneva and obtained his habilitation from the Sorbonne University. He is currently Professor of Finance and Vice-Director of the Department of Banking and Finance of the University of Zurich where he created the Environmental Finance course. He is an expert in quantitative finance (real options) and environmental economics. He was previously Professor and Associate Dean at HEC Paris.

Jonathan Gheyssens holds a PhD in Economics from the NADEL Center for Development and Cooperation at ETH Zurich and is in charge of economic research activities for the REDD+ Finance and Sustainable Land Use division of UNEP's Finance Initiative based in Geneva, Switzerland. His research is focused on real options, environmental and climate economics, and REDD schemes.

Anca Claudia Pana is a young researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She completed her Bachelor studies in Banking and Finance at the University of Bucharest, Romania. In 2010, she graduated from the MSc in Financial Engineering and Risk Management at HEC Lausanne, Switzerland. Since then she is enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Marc Chesney. Her research interests are environmental and resource economics, market failures, real options, and development economics.

Luca Taschini is an expert in environmental economics, industrial organisation, energy economics, finance and the application of economics to public policy issues. He is a Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics where he leads the Carbon Trading and Finance research programme. His current research investigates how market-based environmental regulations are working in theory and in practice. More specifically, he is studying the functioning of cost containment mechanisms, market participation restrictions, and the linkage of environmental markets. He has led consulting work on market-based instruments including work on designing emission trading systems and the design of the EU Market Stability Reserve and other supply control mechanisms. He holds an Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Zurich, and an M.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Bergamo. He was also a visiting scholar at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (MIT) and at the Research Center for Sustainability Science (Ritsumeikan University - Japan).

Inhalt

Introduction.- The issue of climate change.- The rise of emission markets.- The economics of mitigation.- Economic growth and the environment.- The finance of environmental investments.- Emission price dynamics.