Catalyzing private capital in clean energy
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Today, the world is faced with a projected $53 trillion financing shortage to combat climate change and sustain its development path. The critical question, then, is how to source this massive capital. Because this funding gap far exceeds any single government's budgetary capacity, it is crucial to address the financing gap with broader funding sources and scaled capital. Nonetheless, private investors and business leaders continue to resist deploying their capital into clean energy. This dissertation, therefore, identifies investment barriers to transition to a low-carbon global economy and discusses how to catalyze capital to combat climate change. Chapter 2 and 3 posit why investors continue to be uncertain about environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and explore why the way investors perceive the risk-return relationship remains inaccurate. Chapter 4 then proposes a new investment structure that can help to resolve uncertainty in clean energy investment. Chapter 2 begins with the question of why a majority of investors assume that incorporating environmental factors into their core business will yield sub-optimal financial outcomes. This embedded assumption makes the market dysfunctional by inhibiting investment in clean energy. Yet, this assumption is based on a lack of nuanced studies that characterize the relationship between environmental efforts and financial outcomes using reliable data. To address this, I empirically investigate the risk-return relationship of low-carbon investment and characteristics of carbon-efficient firms. Based on 74,486 observations of 736 US firms from January 2005 to December 2015, I construct a carbon efficient-minus-inefficient (EMI) portfolio by carbon efficiency, defined as revenue-adjusted greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at firm-level. My EMI portfolio generates positive abnormal returns since 2010, indicating that an investment strategy of "long carbon-efficient firms and short carbon-inefficient firms" would earn abnormal returns of 3.5-5.4% per year. The only exception is found in small firms. I find that these carbon-efficient firms tend to be "good firms'' in terms of financial characteristics and corporate governance. My findings are not driven by a small set of industries, variations in oil price, or changing preferences of bond investors caused by the low-interest-rate regime, starting with the 2008 financial crisis. Chapter 3 illustrates that investors do not have reliable and non-manipulated information that enables them to confidently consider environmental factors in their decision-making. This chapter proposes a new empirical framework to identify the varieties of corporate environmental communication, and investigates the determinants of firms' strategic choices. I define communication discrepancy by comparing firms' levels of environmental communication and performance, based on which I build three types of corporate environmental communication: "neutral, " "vocal, " and "silent" groups. I then define two focus groups, "greenwashing" and "silently green, " which are the subsets of vocal and silent groups that have relatively high degree of discrepancy in each group. Using a sample consisting of 529 publicly traded US firms from 2005 to 2013, I investigate what types of firms are more likely to be vocal or silent about their environmental commitments. I find that a firm tends to over-promote EP when it performs badly to the environment. Moreover, as the higher public attention is directed toward a firm, the firm is more likely to be environmentally vocal. I find silent firms with higher levels of discrepancy exhibit lower price to earnings ratios and earnings per share. On the other hand, vocal firms tend to exhibit higher Tobin's q as their environmental communication discrepancy increases. These results suggest that there are significant market incentives on the firms when they oversell environmental sustainability. Chapter 4 focuses on the most challenging phase of green finance: early-stage investment to support clean energy technology development. While consistent and long-term sources of investment capital are needed to catalyze the clean energy ecosystem, current financial intermediaries have failed to effectively channel sources of funding to entrepreneurs. This chapter provides a theoretical framework of new roles and functions of intermediation in fostering the transition to a low-carbon economy. I find that investment opportunities (and risks) are not effectively assigned to the appropriate investors due to the fragmented nature of investor networks and the large information asymmetries among different investor categories and companies. Yet, there are no (or very few) investment vehicles today that take these barriers into consideration. Thus, I develop three functions that are critical to effectively intermediate a broad range of investors and facilitate an intelligent information flow over the entire clean energy development cycle: (1) an anchor that offers nominal amounts of priming capital that can, in some cases, take a first-loss position; (2) a balanced barbell that enables to raise capital, at-scale, from various funding sources and provides equity and debt capital to companies maturing commercially; and (3) a boundary spanner that provides reliable and objective information about clean energy companies or projects in a highly transparent and trustworthy manner. This chapter concludes by proposing a new coordinating platform design, a multi-strategy vehicle that simultaneously coordinates the three new intermediary functions. By integrating engineering, economics, policy and related social science, this work contributes to the transition to a low-carbon global economy by addressing long-standing institutional barriers.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | In, Soh Young |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Levitt, Raymond E |
| Thesis advisor | Levitt, Raymond E |
| Thesis advisor | Monk, Ashby H. B. (Ashby Henry Benning), 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Weyant, John P. (John Peter) |
| Degree committee member | Monk, Ashby H. B. (Ashby Henry Benning), 1976- |
| Degree committee member | Weyant, John P. (John Peter) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Soh Young In. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Soh Young In
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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