Financing the Green Transition in Developing Countries
PhD Studentship Opportunity
Jointly with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) we have secured funding for a PhD in Economics based at Royal Holloway, who will be working with us on a project called “Financing the Green Transition in Developing Countries”, looking into climate change mitigation and the move to a low-carbon economy in developing countries.
Project background
The 2015 Paris Climate Conference has put finance at the heart of the debate on climate change. Leaders of the G20 have stated their ambition to substantially scale up initiatives to fund low-carbon technologies and other measures to mitigate climate change. The mounting interest in green finance has also laid bare our limited understanding of the relation between finance and the environment. Are deeper financial systems detrimental to the environment as they fuel economic growth and the emission of pollutants? Or can finance help to steer firms, and economies as a whole, towards more sustainable growth paths?
The purpose of the research project “Financing the Green Transition in Developing Countries” is to better understand the role of the financial sector in facilitating the transition of firms into green technologies across countries in Emerging Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. The project will be a close collaboration between academics in the Department of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) and research economists in the Office of the Chief Economist at the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Project aims and objectives
The aim of the project is to advance our understanding of how finance can facilitate the adoption of low-carbon and other green technologies by firms in the developing world. The project will investigate the drivers of commercial banks’ green lending strategies and firms’ decision to invest in green technologies or not. Special attention will be paid to how access to credit can facilitate the green transition. Additionally, the project will analyse how local environmental conditions in terms of pollution and extreme weather, as well as the regulatory environment, shape the decisions of lenders and borrowers to finance and adopt green technologies, respectively.
The project aims to deliver high-quality research output that sheds new light on the extent to which credit-market policies can support the transition to a net-zero carbon economy and on the underlying mechanisms. The research should inform and influence decision-makers in the financial industry, in government (in particular in low- and middle-income countries), as well as within development banks like the EBRD.
Supervisors: Dr Juan Pablo Rud and Prof Manolis Galeniaos (Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London) and Dr Ralph De Haas (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
Full details regarding the studentship can be found here
