Is there a financial bubble in renewable assets?

Global funds linked to environmental, social and governance principles (ESG) took in nearly $350bn last year, compared with $165bn in 2019. As countries commit to cut their emissions, it is expected that green investments will keep increasing, although there are fears that sustainability-linked stocks are overheating. Clean energy companies have seen their valuations soar in the past year, often more than 25 times earnings, well ahead of market-wide indexes. In addition, recent evidence suggests that the current design of power markets penalizes new investments in renewables under market conditions. With more and more capital being allocated to a limited number of green companies, can this be growth be sustained or are we witnessing a bubble in renewable investment?

Speakers:

Ingrid Holmes, Executive Director, Green Finance Institute

Ingrid has over 15 years of experience working on environmental policy and sustainable finance.  She was a Member of the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and ran the Secretariat for the Green Finance Taskforce, which led to the establishment of the Green Finance Institute.  Ingrid has a background working in financial services (Federated Hermes and Climate Change Capital), NGOs (E3G), Government (DEFRA) and the UK Parliament. Her abiding passion is her focus on scaling investment into climate change solutions to address the climate crisis. Ingrid has a BSc in Biological Sciences (Hons Zoology) from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London.

Bruce Jenkyn-Jones, Impax Asset Management

Bruce is an Executive Director and Co-Head of Listed Equities responsible for the development of the investment process, research and team. Bruce has an active role in the day to day management of all Impax listed equity portfolios and is on the portfolio construction team for all strategies. Bruce joined Impax in 1999 where he worked initially on venture capital investments before developing the listed equity business. Before joining Impax, Bruce worked as a utilities analyst at Bankers Trust and as an environmental consultant for Environmental Resources Management (ERM). Bruce has an MBA from IESE (Barcelona), an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College and a degree in Chemistry from Oxford.

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