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Cost of Capital for Indian Renewable Energy Projects: A Review of Methodologies, Risk Drivers, and Policy Evolution
India’s renewable energy sector faces financing challenges that could undermine its 2030 targets, prompting this review of cost of capital dynamics across utility-scale solar and wind projects to address gaps in understanding how financing costs evolve with market maturation and policy intervention. We synthesize evidence from six estimation methodologies, analyse risk drivers through four comprehensive […]
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Strengthening India’s carbon market: The case for a stability mechanism in India’s CCTS
India’s upcoming Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) is designed to reward facilities that beat emissions intensity targets while allowing emissions to grow alongside the economy, but this flexibility also creates a risk of early oversupply of credits and weak carbon prices. Past experience from India’s Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme and international markets such […]
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Financing Climate Action: India in a Global Context
Chapter: Blended Capital Market Mechanisms for Critical Decarbonisation Projects in India This chapter addresses two critical decarbonization challenges in India: repurposing coal-fired power plants that dominate electricity generation and enabling MSMEs to adopt low-carbon technologies. The authors propose innovative blended finance mechanisms that leverage public capital to mobilize private investment from sustainable debt capital markets. […]
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Do Firms Benefit from Carbon Risk Management? Evidence from the Credit Default Swaps Market
This paper contributes to existing climate finance literature by examining how firms’ proactive management of carbon risks affects market assessment of their credit risk. Using two quasiexogenous events involving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the staggered implementation of U.S. state climate adaptation plans, we find that stronger carbon risk management is associated with significantly […]
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From incentives to adoption: A decadal review of India’s EV subsidy effectiveness
India has committed to reducing its GDP emissions intensity by 45% by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2070, with the transportation sector being critical for decarbonization as it accounts for approximately 14% of the country’s energy sector carbon dioxide emissions. To drive this transformation, India has implemented comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) policies including purchase […]
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ChatReport
ChatReport is an AI tool designed to enhance the analysis of corporate sustainability reports by benchmarking them against the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations. Built on Large Language Models (LLMs) and enriched with expert knowledge, ChatReport addresses the challenge of analyzing vast amounts of sustainability data, a task that is often resource-intensive […]
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MALENA
MALENA is an Artificial Intelligence analyst that extracts meaningful insights from unstructured environmental, social and governance (ESG) data at scale, enabling rapid analysis, increasing productivity, and enhancing investor confidence. MALENA is the only AI-powered solution tailored to emerging markets. MALENA is available as a free public good. Creator: International Finance Corporation (IFC)
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ChatClimate
ChatClimate is an AI-driven tool designed to make climate risk understandable and climate information more accessible to diverse communities. Grounded in the latest IPCC Report, it leverages ClimateBert, a specialized large language model (LLM) and an ensemble of task-specific models, to analyze and interpret complex climate data. By integrating state-of-the-art AI with the latest climate […]
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Climate Change and Sustainability Database
This database was created as a way for the Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab at HBS to support other researchers looking to do more work with climate-related data. The primary structure of the database is where each row (asset) is a dataset, and each column (feature) of the database gives additional information about the dataset, […]
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Catalysing public capital for India’s critical minerals sector
India’s National Critical Mineral Mission commits $4 billion to secure critical minerals essential for clean energy transition, though this is modest compared to global needs. The article outlines innovative financing approaches to overcome the sector’s high risks—including volatile prices and lengthy project timelines—that have limited India to using less than 10% of its mineral potential. […]