The climate researcher Anders Levermann and PrismaLife CEO Holger Beitz will come together at the Finance Forum Liechtenstein in Vaduz on 1 September. They will discuss the extent to which sustainable capital investment plays a role in climate protection.
The PrismaLife AG workshop on the topic of “Sustainable capital investment” at the Finance Forum Liechtenstein in Vaduz on 1 September will focus on how questions of economics and climate goals can be effectively reconciled. They will also discuss whether the 2-degree climate-stabilizing goal can be efficiently achieved. At the Forum, the Potsdam climate scientist Professor Anders Levermann and PrismaLife’s CEO Holger Beitz will engage in a public discussion.
Ahead of the event, the two men have already talked about the topic, as documented by PrismaLife in a press release. Beitz mentioned a study by Levermann which showed that “from an economic perspective, limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius offers the best balance between climate protection costs and harm through climate change”. Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, explained that a simulation developed for this study examined how the costs of climate protection on the one hand and climate-related damage on the other affect economic growth both directly and indirectly. Levermann: “In trying to achieve a balance between damage minimization and growth maximization, we find that a temperature rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius allows for relative stability.” The study “Paris Climate Agreement passes the cost-benefit test” was published in “Nature communications” 11/2020.
Both speakers agreed that while the onus is also on individuals to try and keep their carbon footprint as low as possible, it is essential that business and policy are prepared to work together towards that goal. For his company, CEO Beitz assured “that sustainable practices are the right strategy in the long term, and is also driving forward our business model. As insurers, we verify precisely where the decisive levers are for reconciling economics and the environment. In the financial sector, capital investment is precisely such a lever.” Beitz: “By changing our investment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, we reduce the carbon impact by around 2.5 tons per €100,000 investment versus the existing investment portfolio.”
PrismaLife also focuses on sustainability in its day-to-day business operations, from business travel to paper consumption and office soap.
