1,720,967 research outputs found
Suitable business legal structures for sustainable transport. The benefit corporation
No full textThe transport sector is crucial in today’s economy and society and has a big impact in particular on employment and growth, making “a decisive contribution to social and territorial cohesion, industrialization and economic development”. At the same time, however, it is also the largest contributor of greenhouse-gas emissions at global level (28% of total emissions in the EU). For accelerating the transition process toward a sustainable economy a worldwide approach to transport decarbonization is therefore needed. Policy makers and institutions at global level are indeed expressing growing concerns about the need for a substantial intervention in this field and are proposing several legislative measures to buffer especially the climate emergency. The European Union is aiming to make Europe the first climate neutral continent by 2050 and, with the European Green Deal 5 and the Fit for 55% Package presented in July 2021, has already adopted several initiatives, with the purpose, on the one hand, to impose the reduction of CO2 emissions in road,air and sea transport, and, on the other hand, to encourage forms of mobility considered more eco-friendly, such as railways. But the focus on the problem is high worldwide. Recently (on August 16, 2022) the Inflation Reduction Act has been issued in the US, which is considered the largest piece of United States federal legislation ever to address climate change. Aim of the bill is to curb inflation by reducing the deficit, lower prescription drug prices and invest into domestic energy production while promoting clean energy. To this end, it plans to invest $391 billion in provisions relating (not only to energy security, but also) to climate change. Furthermore, the very recent Report intitled “Integrity Matters: Net Zero Commitments by Businesses, Financial Institutions, Cities and Regions” released on 8 November 2022 at COP27 by the United Nations’ Expert Working Group 13 highlights the extremely critical situation and makes very clear that measures have to be urgently taken at different level and in different directions, stressing in particular the role played not only by governments – that have of course “to take the lead in reducing emissions” – but also by “non-state actors”, whose actions are critical in achieving global net zero
Enhancing Sustainable Transport. Interdisciplinary Issues - ISBN: 9788892146013. In COLLANA DEL DIPARTIMENTO DI GIURISPRUDENZA DELL'UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA. NUOVA SERIE. ATTI DI CONVEGNO
No full textAttractiveness of sustainable business and investments: an ethical, legal or financial issue?
No full textThe sustainability flag flies over almost every economic sector: from the financial sphere to the production area, the current attractiveness of sustainability issues is undeniable.But what pushes towards this new concept of making business and investments? Is taking care of the environmental, social and governance issues only due to a change in the ethical perception of investors, compa-nies and consumers? Or is this approach also driven by legal constraints? Can financial and economic factors play a role? And what is the interplay between financial reasons and legal pressure towards sustainable growth?
These are certainly not easy questions to answer. They have been addressed at length by sociologists, lawyers and economists. However, these scholars often focus separately on only one part of the problem. A combined approach, instead, seems to be more effective and capable to lead to a better understanding of what is behind the new wave of sustainability, allowing us to address the issue in its complexity. This belief explains the interdisciplinary perspective of this contribution, having the purpose of highlighting some of the legal and financial explanations behind the success of (more or less self-declared) sustainable businesses and investments.
To this end, we first focus on the relevance that the sustainability issue is increasingly gaining both from the corporate law and from the financial law perspective, in order to assess to what extent the modern legal systems are moving towards the adoption of higher sustainability standards (Sect. 5.2).
Then, we will investigate whether compliance with these standards would just expose businesses to higher costs, or if they can result in more attractive choices also from an economic point of view (Sect. 5.3). We conclude that sustainability starts from a project perspective and make concrete proposals for a differentiated profit and risk assessment
The European Blue Economy Framework and Blue Bonds as new instruments of Blue Finance
No full textIn this chapter the author wants to investigate the growing relevance of the Blue Economy, considering in particular its European dimension, showing trends and drivers in creating a new Blue Economy Framework, necessary for pursuing the Goal n. 14 “Life below water” of the 17 SDGs of UN 2030 Agenda.
The Blue Economy includes not only those activities regarding the sustainable use of oceans, seas and coasts, but also all ones that make possible to exploit ocean resources more efficiently and sustainably.
In particular, the author, pointing out the necessity of the development of innovative financial instruments of Blue Finance, considers Blue Bonds as new instruments of Impact Investing able to reach this aim for re-orienting investments towards blue sustainable projects, underlining the necessary efforts for reaching a regulation of Blue Bond, actually absent, also following the Green Bond example as the most diffused Sustainable Bond.
Also the rising Blue Bond Market will be analysed, in its recent issuances of Blue Bonds at a global and European level, and considering also some issuances of Green Bonds having blue elements, pointing out how the Blue Bond Market is just moving its first steps showing some critical issues, which yet need to be solved
The Language of the European Union About SRI: A Diachronic Linguistic Analysis (2002–2022)
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SRI: an insight on the evolution of its definition and a focus on the European ESG Regulation
No full textIn recent years the Sustainable Responsible Investment (SRI) has become an important part of the International Asset Management Capital Market by incorporating ESG factors into its investment selection and management processes and in its investment decisions too.
This chapter wants to analyse, through a literature review, the evolution in the definition of SRI - from “Ethical Finance” to “Socially” and “Sustainable Responsible Investment” – pointing out the principle characters of this approach to financial investment in which the research, analysis and selection of investments takes place not only on the basis of traditional economic-financial considerations, but also on the basis of environmental, social and corporate governance criteria, known also as ESG criteria.
Then the author studies how this concept has been drafted in the recent European ESG Regulatory Framework, considering the definition of “sustainable investments” indicated in recent EU regulations, such as the EU Taxonomy (Reg. 852/2020) - which realizes the Action N.1 of the EC Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth, issued in March 2018 - and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR)(Reg. 2088/2019), having both the aim to increase the disclosure and the to the EU Green Deal and the Next Generation EU are changing the existing financial contest into a more sustainable one.
The analysis will show also the necessity of some adjusting measures to a complete alignment between the various definitions given in relation to the concept of “sustainable investment” in the EU regulations considered, to help MPIs in tackling greenwashing.
Some final consideration will conclude the work, indicating also some elements for further research
Sustainable business legal structure for susteinable transport. The social enterprise
No full textThe Social Enterprise is a business model that must be placed in a context
different from the traditional market. It is in fact a subject that belongs
to the so-called Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). Over the past two decades, the EU, the OECD and the UN has recognised the importance of
SSE as an alternative model of economic development to the liberal-capitalist one, and promoted many initiatives aimed at the development, the launch as well as the macroeconomic and legal acknowledgement of social economy as an integral part of the European social market . in this contribution we want to demonstrate that social enterprise could represent a conveninet legal structure in the field of sustainable transpor
Green Bond as Instrument of Impact Investing for Financing Sustainable Transports
No full textThe chapter wants to describe Green Bond as an important sustainable financial instrument, that can be considered an instrument of Impact Investing, one of the investment strategies adopted by the Sustainable and Responsible Investors. After a first definitory approach, the author underlines characters and topics of Green Bond, considering also the existing critical issues. The recent European Institutions' Initiatives for the growth od Sustainable Finance are analyzed, with a focus on the realisation of the EU Green Bond Standard, according to the EU Taxonomy on Sustainable Activities. Then, the author considers how Green Bond can be used for financing Sustainable Transports. For reaching this goal, it can be useful to consider the Green Bond Market in its recent evolution. Then, some recent issuances of Green Bond having as eligible projects the Sustainability in transports are described, showing the examples of some international corporate issuances - Mercedes-Benz (2021) and Scania (2020) - and the example of the first Italian Sovereign Green Bond, the BTP Green (March 2021).
In fact, some categories, such as Transport or Adaptation, appear particularly suitable for sovereign funding. On the other side, respondents of a survey highlighted their preference for more Sovereign Green Bond, that can be used by governments to direct resources towards the under-funded sector categories. In fact, it is possible to point out that there are differences between how public and private issuers use the funds raised withGreen Bond. The law-carbon transportation segment is a good example of this. Governments and government-related entities are investing heavily
in infrastructure to electrify and modernize public transportation systems. Considering NN Investment Partners’ funds, it is possible to notice that, as a result, low-carbon transportation accounted for 34% of their Sovereign Green Bond fund portfolio at the end of 2021, while the allocation to this segment in their Corporate Green Bond fund was just over 7%, reflecting the fact that private-sector car manufacturers are still in the early stages of developing and mass producing low-carbon-emission vehicles. Yet, the examples of corporate green bond issuances seen in the present work (Mercedes-Benz and Scania) can show clearly the growing interest of car manufacturers in this way of funding resources
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