Frankfurt am Main, 21 January 2021
SUFI members Oliver Schenker and Ulf Moslener (together with Karol Kempa) have published their new paper in Nature Energy titled “The cost of debt of renewable and non-renewable energy firms”. The paper shows how financing costs of renewable energy firms decreased over time below those of non-renewable energy firms.
To read the paper, please go to the publication session https://www.sufi-project.de/publications/
Frankfurt am Main, 12 August 2020
Sustainable finance is an important topic for regulators in China. In her blog on China’s regulatory plan to review banks’ green finance performance, Menglu Zhuang looks at the state of the discussion, the history of the green finance policies in China and the potential consequences for lending practices of Chinese banks.
To read the blog, please visit https://blog.frankfurt-school.de/regulatory-authorities-in-china-will-review-banks-green-finance-performance/
Marburg, 25 March 2020
In late February 2020 a team of young economists from the University of Marburg and Lund University headed to Pakistan to conduct research for the SUFI project, marking the project’s second visit to the South-Asian country. After a year of preparations and organization, the team’s objective was to initiate and monitor SUFI Work Package 2’s main data collection project to gain detailed insight on the impact of solar electrification programs in rural areas of developing countries. The SUFI delegation consisted of the two research assistants Adrian Pourviseh (Lund University) and Ambria Fareed and was led by Marco Nilgen (both University of Marburg).
After arriving in Karachi, the team spend the first week performing preparatory work. This included talking to stakeholders within the market for rural solar electrification, conducting field visits to run pre-tests on the team’s survey instruments and adjusting these instruments based on the team’s findings in the field. All of this was again perfectly organized by the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) – SUFI’s trusted partner in administering and conducting the project’s field research project in Pakistan. During the second and third week of the trip, the team left Karachi to stay closer to the research region in Thatta, with the focus now shifting to running intensive enumerator training sessions in NRSP’s office in Sujawal (see photo).
Unfortunately, in the third week of March the research project was put to a sudden halt in wake of the global coronavirus outbreak, just when the enumerators were ready and eager to conduct the first household interviews in Sindh’s coastal communities. With the SUFI team being back in Germany and all research efforts in Pakistan being put on hold, the researchers hope to resume the project as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic allows them to. The SUFI team would like to give special thanks to NRSP’s Pervaiz Ahmed and Muhammad Tahir Waqar for their tireless support, and to the local enumerators for their great work and dedication.
Frankfurt am Main, 23 October 2019
On 18 October 2019, Menglu Zhuang, research associate in the SUFI project held the third Brown Bag Seminar with the title Sustainable Finance – Barriers, Regulations and the Future within the Global Climate Change Week at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. She shared her research insights in the investment imperfections within sustainable climate finance. She has based the contents on her research in the SUFI project, which is a project supported by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
In the Brown Bag Seminar, Ms. Zhuang described the complexity of the sustainable climate finance landscape and the use of policy instruments in this field. She explained to the audience that there could be investment imperfections, namely the barriers and limitations in political economy, principal-agent setting and human behaviors that hinder the optimal investments for reaching the climate goals. More research that helps to understand the imperfections and quantitative tools that facilitate deriving policy implications are needed. These are the focus areas of research for the Frankfurt School team in the SUFI project.
To watch the video record of the lecture, please visit https://www.frankfurt-school.de/en/home/about/sustainability
Marburg, June 11, 2019
In March 2019, three members of SUFI project Prof. Dr. Björn Vollan, Prof. Dr. Andreas Landmann and Marco Nilgen had the opportunity to visit Pakistan for a total of two weeks to meet project partners, relevant stakeholders and conduct field visits, thereby gathering valuable insight for SUFI’s future research. The field trip is part of Work Package 2 (WP2) in the SUFI project.
During the first week of the trip, the delegation visited Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city by population, as well as the surrounding rural communities. In Karachi, the delegation was able to meet company representatives active in Pakistan’s growing market for solar-based energy solutions, granting the delegation interesting insight into the manifold topics concerning the market’s supply side. In order to get a more complete picture of Pakistan’s solar energy market and to get a good impression of the projected research area in WP2, the group left the megacity to visit the rural communities in Sindh’s coastal region. During a village meeting and via additional talks to local small-scale vendors of solar energy devices, the delegation gained valuable information on rural livelihoods, solar panel usage behavior, issues of solar energy consumers, as well as possible future market trends and challenges.
On March 19th, the delegation left Karachi for Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad. There they were given the opportunity to experience the working processes within the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) – SUFI’s main partner in organizing our research in Pakistan. Operating from NRSP’s head offices in Islamabad’s center, the team also continued to visit and meet additional solar energy companies and local vendors, as well as representatives of agencies concerned with supporting Pakistan’s socioeconomic development.
Thanks to the hospitality of NRSPs Muhammad Tahir Waqar, the SUFI team was not only able to perform their work smoothly and meet many interesting stakeholders concerned with rural electrification, but also to experience the manifold cultural and culinary offerings of two of Pakistan’s most interesting and vibrant cities. The SUFI team would like to express their deepest gratitude not only to Waqar, but all members of NRSP and the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN).
