Library | ESG issues
Access & Affordability
Ensuring access to essential products and services, particularly for underserved markets and populations. This includes addressing universal needs such as healthcare, financial services, utilities, education, and telecommunications. Companies involved in basic services, infrastructure, and affordable lending must manage related risks and opportunities, which can impact financial performance, regulatory exposure, and long-term resilience. Addressing access and affordability can also drive innovation, social impact, and inclusive economic growth, presenting investment opportunities.
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Global report on food crises series
The Global Report on Food Crises is an annual benchmark series tracking acute food insecurity, malnutrition and forced displacement in countries facing food crises. Produced by FAO, WFP and the Global Network Against Food Crises, it delivers consensus-based, multi-agency analysis to guide humanitarian and development decision-making globally.
AI data centers and electricity demand: Taming the energy guzzlers
This paper examines AI data centre electricity demand and its costs for ratepayers and the environment. It finds that Big Tech market capitalisations have risen far above predicted levels since ChatGPT's 2022 launch, while data centres drive up electricity prices and fossil fuel use. Regulatory reforms and innovations are recommended.
From climate crisis to insurance crisis: Designing solidarity-based natural disaster insurance
This report examines rising climate-related insurance losses and Germany's lack of comprehensive natural disaster coverage, with only 57% of residential buildings insured against such risks. It analyses international public-private insurance models — particularly France's CatNat system — and recommends a solidarity-based approach alongside measures to hold the fossil fuel industry financially accountable.
Widening the lens: Scaling climate adaptation and resilience through sustainable finance
This report examines climate adaptation and resilience in sustainable finance, highlighting a significant financing gap in emerging markets and limited formal allocation in labelled debt markets. It argues for a broader lens that recognises resilience outcomes already embedded in policy-driven investments, using Ecuador's sovereign housing framework as a case study.
Interest rate caps, competition, and strategic borrowing: Evidence from Kenya
This paper examines Kenya's 2016 interest rate regulation, which capped bank lending rates but exempted the digital platform M-Shwari. Using borrower-level administrative data and a structural model, the authors find that the M-Shwari carve-out preserved credit access for high-risk borrowers, while a uniform cap would have eliminated it entirely.
Unlocking climate risk insurance: The role of public development banks
This report examines how public development banks (PDBs) can expand climate risk insurance in emerging markets and developing economies. It identifies five key barriers to insurance uptake, analyses distinct roles for national, regional, and multilateral development banks, and provides recommendations to scale insurance solutions that build climate resilience.
Data centers and local economies in the age of AI: A shift-share approach
This NBER working paper examines the local economic effects of data centre expansion across U.S. counties from 1995 to 2020. Using shift-share instruments, the authors find positive effects on employment, establishments, income, and house prices, alongside higher electricity prices, presenting a mixed policy outcome for counties hosting data centres.
Sheltering from oil shocks: Measures to reduce impacts on households and businesses
This International Energy Agency report outlines measures to reduce the impact of oil supply disruptions on households and businesses. It details short-term and structural strategies across road and air transport, industry, and cooking fuels to lower demand and shield vulnerable consumers from rising energy costs.
Assessing the resilience of global grain supplies to compound climatic and non-climatic shocks
This research evaluates the resilience of global grain supplies to compounding climatic and non-climatic shocks. Using a bilateral trade model for 177 countries, it demonstrates that energy price spikes and extreme weather severely disrupt food systems, highlighting the need for strategic stockpiling and diversified trade agreements to ensure food security.
Energy security through freight electrification: A rapid response briefing note on policy options for responding to the global fuel crisis
This briefing note outlines policy options to enhance Australia's fuel security through freight electrification. It recommends a phased, five-year, $3 billion programme to deploy up to 50,000 battery electric trucks, displacing one billion litres of diesel annually while leveraging private capital and implementing structural reforms.
A Lens on the transition: Trends shaping the future economy: Sector in focus: Healthcare
Impax Asset Management reviews sustainability-driven trends shaping healthcare, highlighting AI-enabled productivity gains, regulatory pressures, and supply chain localisation. The report examines opportunities in healthcare equipment, life sciences and managed care, alongside risks from regulation, product liability, affordability concerns and geopolitical tensions.
Mind the gap: An insurance climate vulnerability assessment
APRA assesses Australia’s home insurance protection gap under climate scenarios, finding affordability pressures may increase uninsured households from one in seven to one in four by 2050. Rising weather risks and economic factors drive premiums, widening financial system risks, particularly in regional areas, with implications for households, insurers and banks.
Sustainable Finance Roundup March 2026: Markets, Climate Risk, and the Transition in Practice
This month’s sustainability roundup captures a shift from framework development to real-world application, where climate and nature risks are increasingly embedded across financial systems, legal accountability, and decision-making. It highlights how intensifying physical climate signals, evolving disclosures, and maturing litigation are converging with insights on sovereign risk, energy systems, and corporate strategy. Together, these developments show how sustainability is moving beyond principle—being tested, priced, and enforced across markets, regulation, and the real economy.
Sustainable Finance Roundup February 2026: Disclosure, Carbon Trade, and Transition Economics
This month’s sustainability roundup traces a rapidly evolving landscape in climate governance and industrial transition, highlighting the convergence of ISSB-aligned disclosure standards and emerging carbon trade measures alongside shifting cost curves in transport and critical minerals. It underscores how tighter emissions accounting and border policies are embedding carbon competitiveness into capital allocation, while advances in electrification, AI-driven power demand and expanding legal accountability are integrating climate and nature risk into mainstream financial decision-making.
Energy and AI
The IEA’s Energy and AI report examines AI’s rising electricity demand and its capacity to improve energy efficiency, security and innovation. It assesses data centres, grids and end-uses, highlighting skills, infrastructure and policy needs to manage costs, emissions and resilience globally.
Net zero: A practical guide for cooling businesses
This guideline provides practical guidance for cooling manufacturers to achieve Net Zero by 2050, outlining emissions hotspots, regulatory drivers and decarbonisation levers across Scopes 1–3, with emphasis on efficiency, low-GWP refrigerants, value-chain collaboration and science-based targets.