Net Zero Investment Portfolios
Climate risk is the biggest challenge humanity has to face in the 21st century, affecting both the biosphere and the economic paradigm that currently underpins it. Since the COP 26 and the UN campaign “Race to Zero”, net zero alliances flourish everywhere in order to decarbonize the financial sector. However, the concept of net zero investing is not always well-defined. Indeed, we notice that asset owners and managers mainly focus on portfolio decarbonization when they speak about net zero. However, net zero investing implies a second dimension, which is even more important: the transition dimension. This talk will show how to combine the two dimensions from an asset allocation viewpoint. First, we will show how to transform net zero scenarios into intensity-based reduction pathways. We will also discuss the construction of net zero carbon metrics and greenness intensity measures. Moreover, we will present two practical approaches to deal with the current issue of negative correlation between the decarbonization and transition dimensions. The first one is an integrated approach based on (multi-period) portfolio optimization, whereas the second one implements a core-satellite approach.