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To what extent is the shift towards perceiving carbon accounting as a driver of value happening now, and what companies are leading the way?
Ryan Miller
VP & GM of Private Markets at Persefoni
When you look at the last few years from a macro perspective, there's been incredible growth in the amount of sustainable debt issuance generally. One of the largest trends in the financial sector is the increase in sustainable debt. When you look at those sustainable debt terms, the most common metric that they are tied to is carbon emissions because among ESG areas, that is generally the most easily quantifiable. It also tends to be one of the most impactful. That’s still a tiny sliver of the overall debt market, but it's growing for sure.
What you'll also see, as that grows in importance, is the premium—the reduction in the interest rate that you'll be able to get from having a low-carbon business will grow as well. Today, it's tiny, but it’ll grow.
When you look at the corporate space, there are a lot of companies over the past five years that have grown significantly on the value proposition that they are a lower-carbon alternative to a more traditional product or service. Allbirds is a great example. They went through what they dubbed the sustainable public offering, or SPO. They were a leader in tagging their footwear, at the product level, in terms of the carbon footprint of each individual shoe. You hadn't really seen that much before, and it’s a core part of their value proposition.
Impossible Foods is another one—another great example of a product that a lot of people enjoy that also gained prominence in part because it was an alternative to a much more carbon-intensive product, which is regular beef.