Climate Finance Workshop

Please note: this event has passed

About the event

This workshop is being jointly organised by the Qatar Centre for Global Banking and Finance at King’s Business School, and the Department of Mathematics, and the Department of Informatics in the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences.

It will bring together leading researchers and practitioners to discuss prominent issues in the field of climate finance, including energy and carbon market dynamics, the scope for using big data to underpin and robustify ESG scoring, and the role of financial regulation in the transition to net zero, including climate stress testing, disclosure requirements and how policymakers should respond to uncertainty.

The workshop will be held in-person at the Science Gallery London and is open to all. Lunch will be served at 12.00 and the workshop will commence at 12.40.

Programme

12:00 Lunch and Registration

12:40 Introduction

Professor Barbara Shollock, Head of Engineering and the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences Net Zero Centre Lead at King's College London

12:45 -1:15 Session I: Climate change and asset prices

Luca Taschini (University of Edinburgh Business School)

1:15 -2:15 Session II: Energy Markets

Karlygash Kuralbayeva (King’s College London)
Omer Ahmad (Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC)

2:15 – 2:45 Coffee break

2:45 – 4:00 Session III: ESG

Marc Lepere (King's College London)
Richard Weighell (BDO)
Hannah Cool (PwC)

4:00 – 5:00 Session IV: Financial regulation and the transition to net zero

Misa Tanaka (Bank of England)
Michel De Lara (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech)

About the Speakers

Professor Barbara Shollock is a member of the EPSRC Engineering Strategic Advisory Team. Professor Shollock's work focuses on the physico-chemical aspects relating to steel and advanced alloy manufacture and usage. Applications include the development of more sustainable and efficient manufacturing processes for new high performance materials, particularly for the automotive sector and for land-based and aero gas turbines. Professor Shollock has extensive links with industry, including with Rolls-Royce plc, GE, NASA, Tata Steel, Cummins and Jaguar Land Rover.

Luca Taschini is Reader at the University of Edinburgh Business School and an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics where he is a member of the Sustainable Finance and the Policy Design and Evaluation research programmes. He holds a PhD in Finance from the University of Zurich.

Luca has published research on a wide range of issues and works with international organizations, governments and businesses on topics of shared interest, such as carbon pricing, sustainable finance and investments.

Luca is a CESifo Research Network Fellow and he was previously a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, U.S.A. and Visiting Scholar at the Research Center for Sustainability Science at Ritsumeikan University, Japan.

Dr Karlygash Kuralbayeva is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. Previously she was a teaching fellow at London School of Economics, a research officer at Grantham Research Institute at LSE and a research fellow at the University of Oxford.

Her research interests include macroeconomics, development, climate change economics and environmental economics. Karlygash holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oxford.

Omer Ahmad is Policy and Commercial Development Manager at Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC). Omer’s role at the LCCC is to support powering net zero which involves working closely with policy teams within the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Ofgem on supporting the UK Government's 2050 net zero and decarbonisation strategy and deliver the UK’s goals for secure, affordable and sustainable energy. His current work includes leading on policy engagement with the Government and external stakeholders for the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA).

Prior to joining LCCC, Omer worked for EDF Energy’s Strategy and Corporate Affairs team, where he advised on policy, regulatory and commercial aspects of the electricity industry including climate change policy to EDF Energy’s generation, customer and renewables joint venture business units.

12:40 Introduction

Professor Barbara Shollock, Head of Engineering and the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences Net Zero Centre Lead at King's College London

12:45 -1:15 Session I: Climate change and asset prices

Luca Taschini (University of Edinburgh Business School)

1:15 -2:15 Session II: Energy Markets

Karlygash Kuralbayeva (King’s College London)
Omer Ahmad (Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC)

2:45 – 4:00 Session III: ESG

Marc Lepere (King's College London)
Richard Weighell (BDO)
Hannah Cool (PwC)

Climate Finance - Marc, Richard and Hannah

4:00 – 5:00 Session IV: Financial regulation and the transition to net zero

Misa Tanaka (Bank of England)
Michel De Lara (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech)

Marc Lepere is a PhD student in Political Economy. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and serves as a visiting lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an Economics graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and holds a MSc from King’s.

Marc has published in leading journals including Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Financial Times and Discovering Truth (series 1) which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Professionally, Marc has been an employee, entrepreneur and social entrepreneur. In 2021, he founded ESGgen which builds on his doctoral research.

Marc has served as Chief Marketing Officer for Havas Worldwide; Executive Vice President for McCann Erickson WorldGroup and Deputy Chairman of Dentsu in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Richard Weighell is a specialist in risk, control, assurance and compliance with more than 30 years’ experience working as an adviser and assurance provider. During his career he has worked with a wide range of organisations before specialising in financial services where he works primarily with banks, asset managers, brokers and payments firms. He holds a number of head of internal audit roles and leads assurance and advisory assignments.

As well as his risk and control work, Richard also leads the financial services ESG team, providing support and assurance to firms in developing their strategies and control frameworks and in measuring their climate impact.

Misa Tanaka is the Head of Research at the Bank of England. Misa joined the Bank in 2002 after completing a D.Phil in Economics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She has held a number of positions across Monetary Analysis, Financial Stability, and Prudential Policy Areas of the Bank.

Misa has previously published articles on international policy spillovers, bonus regulations, and sovereign debt finance in Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, and Economic Journal, amongst others. Misa's current research interests include prudential policies and the impact of climate change on the financial system.

Michel De Lara is an applied mathematician, trained in stochastic processes and in control theory, after graduating as an engineer at Ecole Polytechnique and at Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées, where he is presently working. He started his career in the environment research center, while working part time at the French ministry of the Environment. He is now in position at the mathematics research center,
CERMICS.

Regarding theory, Michel De Lara's interest fields fall into control theory, stochastic optimization, convex analysis and game theory. As to applications, he specializes in developing mathematical methods for the sustainable management of natural resources, with particular focus on renewable energy and biodiversity. Michel publishes papers in biology, economics and mathematics journals.