Sustainable Investing

Policy has shifted to prioritize energy security and industrial competitiveness over climate leadership. This will steer investment to the most economical energy sources, driving continued growth in renewables and fossil fuels—but slower decarbonization.

The unprecedented pace of government action on climate looks unlikely to continue, as voters and policy makers grapple with the economic trade-offs.

The vast majority of publicly traded companies have announced plans to reduce carbon emissions, but many commitments are not sufficiently ambitious or credible—particularly in high-emitting sectors. As a result, investors may be unknowingly exposed to transition risk without a rigorous process to assess these plans.

Head of Sustainability Research Daniel Hochman, Dartmouth Class of 2011, joins Dartmouth’s Tuck Energy Currents podcast to discuss Bridgewater’s research on the primary factors driving the transition to a low carbon economy and to offer advice for young professionals looking to enter the sustainability space. See important disclosures and other information here.

Bridgewater co-CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour joined a panel discussion at a Global Energy Summit hosted in New York City. Karen shared her and Bridgewater’s insights on how the changing economic landscape affects funding for the green energy transition, how policy makers can support that transition, and how U.S. competition with China is driving the Western transition.

Head of Sustainability Research Daniel Hochman and Senior Researcher Jeremy Ng explore how achieving the world’s ambitious climate goals will require rapidly scaling economically viable technologies, while also innovating, incentivizing, and investing in less mature technologies that are not yet cost-competitive.

Former Co-CIO for Sustainable Investing Carsten Stendevad discussed key considerations for investors aiming to achieve both financial and sustainability objectives, including a potential investment's path to net-zero, during a panel at the 2024 FIS Singapore Conference. Please see here for important disclosures and other information.

Head of Sustainability Research Daniel Hochman joins the “Sustainability Shapers” podcast to discuss the intersection of sustainability, markets, and economies, highlighting the important role investors play in shaping a low-carbon economy. The conversation also covers Daniel’s own Bridgewater journey and the importance of creative thinking to understand the world’s most challenging complexities today. Please see here for important disclosures and other information.

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio shares his reflections from COP28 and his perspective on climate finance.

How the net zero transition plays out—and the speed at which it occurs—will have major implications for corporate capex, commodities, and economies and markets more broadly. One lens into how this transition is unfolding is the state of bank-to-corporate green financing, which is not happening at a rate consistent with global net zero goals.

Former Co-CIO for Sustainability Carsten Stendevad is joined by PGGM’s Chief Fiduciary Manager Arjen Pasma on a recent panel hosted by Top1000Funds. They discuss a recent partnership designed to integrate risk, return, and impact into portfolio engineering, and other ways Bridgewater is helping incorporate sustainability objectives.

The world is still a long way from hitting its emissions targets, but the process of decarbonization is underway, and climate policies in major economies have a large and growing impact on spending, capital flows, and portfolios.

At an event hosted by the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) at the Brookings Institution, Carsten Stendevad, former co-CIO for Sustainable Investing, shares how institutional investors can build systematic portfolios aligned with their net zero commitments.

As part of the Milken Institute’s “Power of Ideas” series, co-CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour explains the important role investors play in emission-intensive sectors.

Former Co-CIO for Sustainable Investing Carsten Stendevad joins the “Summa & Friends” podcast to discuss how investors with sustainability goals, such as net zero, can rethink their investment processes — from security selection to portfolio construction — to build aligned portfolios at scale. See important disclosures and other information.

The publicly traded firms in a handful of emissions-intensive sectors are responsible for about 60% of all global emissions. By allocating capital to climate solutions and carbon improvers in these sectors, investors can make progress toward their net zero goals, even if that leads to higher spot portfolio emissions than if they were to cut these emissions-intensive sectors altogether.

Greenhouse gas emissions are highly concentrated in a few key sectors in investor portfolios; the publicly traded firms in these sectors alone are responsible for about 60% of all global emissions. Investors thinking through climate risks, climate opportunities, and net zero alignment should focus on these sectors.

Top1000Funds highlights Former Co-CIO for Sustainable Investing Carsten Stendevad’s recent conversation in a sustainability forum at Harvard University as he examines the role of investors in financing the transition to a low carbon economy and measurements involved in assessing and understanding the credibility of a company’s transition plans.

Europe’s energy supply shock is creating a painful stagflation, and policy makers face a difficult set of choices. Looking forward, structurally higher energy prices will be a long-term competitiveness challenge for Europe.

On an episode of Reuters’ “The Exchange” podcast, Co-CIOs for Sustainability Karen Karniol-Tambour and Carsten Stendevad share their perspectives on the current ESG debate. While agreeing with a number of the common criticisms, they lay out their case for the merits of pursing sustainable investing in a fundamental and systematic way.

In a piece published by Project Syndicate, Co-CIO Karen-Karniol-Tambour describes the economic, political, and social consequences of today’s energy shortages. These were not created overnight — after years of underinvestment in production capacity, even a small reduction in global supply can send prices skyward, and now policymakers and investors face a full array of difficult choices.

During a wide-ranging conversation with "The Money Maze Podcast," Co-CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour describes how Bridgewater’s fundamental and systematic approach to sustainable investing, including engineering sustainable portfolios by systematically assessing and selecting assets for sustainability criteria.

At the Top1000Funds “Sustainability in Practice” forum, Former Co-CIO for Sustainable Investing Carsten Stendevad joined Amanda White for discussion on today’s hot inflationary environment, the multi-faceted nature of the transition to a low-carbon economy, and how investors are seeking to build “sustainable” portfolios at scale to support their net zero commitments.

With rising energy prices and inflation the highest we've seen in decades, political appetite for curbing climate change by further raising energy prices will continue to decline. Co-CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour describes how we must shift to using tools that target reducing the cost of "green" energy: green fiscal spending and R&D supporting tech advancements.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin joins Co-CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour and our investment team for a conversation on the green energy transition, the key dynamics driving energy markets, and how the politics of energy are impacting international relations.

The transition to green energy will be an increasingly important driver of economies and markets. In this research, we stress test the impact on investor portfolios of four broad mechanisms that could accelerate the climate transition.