On February 23 and 24, the kick-off conference for the accompanying project SFCP of the BMBF funding measure “Climate Protection and Finance” took place in Berlin with about 120 participants. The conference offered the participating research projects the opportunity to get to know each other, to exchange ideas, to discuss research challenges and to network with relevant stakeholders.
The event, which was moderated by Prof. Dr. Alexander Bassen (UHH), began with a welcoming address by Dr. Karsten Hess, Head of Division “Global Change; Climate Research” at the BMBF, at which all of the funded research projects presented themselves on February 23. The research interests of the projects ranged from sustainability reporting in SMEs to scenario analyses and their benefits at the company level to the interrelationships of effects of sustainable investments.
The event continued with a panel discussion on the different expectations of important stakeholder groups with regard to the BMBF’s KlimFi funding measure. Here, members of the SFCP Advisory Board discussed with the moderator Prof. Dr. Timo Busch (University of Hamburg/Moderation): Georg Lanfermann (DRSC – German Accounting Standards Committee), Dr. Klaus Krummrich (German Savings Banks Association), Silke Stremlau (Chairwoman of the Sustainable Finance Advisory Board), Prof. Dr. Thomas Dietz (Deutsche Bundesbank) and Matthias Kopp (WWF Germany). The following expectations crystallized here:
To drive the transformation to sustainability in the financial markets.
To price climate risks into financial products
To continue to make it possible to generate attractive returns despite the transformation to sustainability.
Enabling financial market players to evaluate sustainable business models on the basis of sound climate knowledge.
Finally, Prof. Dr. Elmar Kriegler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) gave an overview of “global climate change scenarios, investment needs and implications for governments and financial markets” in his key note presentation, highlighting the importance of the individual KlimFi research projects from a scientific and global perspective.
