About
The Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab advances research at the intersection of technology, climate, and sustainability, and how companies can decarbonize.
We are guided by the core research question: What are the best practices and supporting conditions that allow a company to achieve meaningful reductions in its lifecycle emissions or commercialize scalable climate solutions?
Team
Principal Investigators
George Serafeim
George Serafeim
is Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration. He holds a DBA from Harvard University.
Michael W. Toffel
Mike Toffel
is Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management. He holds a PhD from the University of California Berkeley.
Peter Tufano
Peter Tufano
is Baker Foundation Professor. He holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Faculty
Shirley Lu is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Christian Kaps is Assistant Professor Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Simon Xu. Simon’s research interests are sustainable finance and corporate social responsibility, with links to financial intermediation, corporate finance, and banking.
Franziska Hittmair. Franziska’s research is in the area of corporate sustainability, with a focus on topics related to corporate environmental pollution and environmental disclosure practices.
Matthias Roesti. Matthias aims to employ innovative data-driven approaches to deepen the understanding of current barriers to achieving a green society, and to develop effective solutions to tackle these roadblocks.
Staff
Kelly Fitzpatrick
Kelly Fitzpatrick
is Senior Lab Manager at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard and Lab Manager of the Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab.
Sanjana Sharma
Private: Sanjana Sharma
is Research Data Scientist at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard contributing to the Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab.
Project Highlights
Climate Solutions
Climate change is often viewed as a risk, but it is also a driver of innovation. This project adopts a business opportunity perspective by exploring Climate Solutions—products and services that foster the transition to a low-carbon economy. Examples include solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, battery storage, heat pumps, energy efficient equipment and buildings, and plant-based food products.
We utilize Large Language Models to analyze financial filings, identifying how firms and industries advance climate solutions. This measure of climate solutions allows us to address several crucial questions: What are the risks and financial implications for firms engaging in climate solutions? How do firms that transition their product portfolio towards climate solutions attract and develop the human capital needed to lead a product portfolio transition? What role do different capital providers play in incentivizing or disincentivizing such transitions?
Electric Vehicle Charging Service Reliability
This research aims to understand and improve the operational reliability of public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. The primary research question seeks to identify the factors that influence how reliably these public charging stations operate, examining various elements such as network membership, community attributes, and organizational characteristics of the stations, assessing how these factors contribute to the efficiency and reliability of the services provided to their users.
This study will help policymakers and stakeholders make informed decisions about funding allocations and operational improvements to enhance the effectiveness of the EV charging infrastructure across the U.S and is a collaboration with Omar I. Asensio, Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Article: The state of EV charging in America: Harvard research shows chargers 78% reliable and pricing like the ‘Wild West’, Institute for Business in Global Society, Harvard Business School.
Data Commons
The Data Commons shares and describes datasets about climate and sustainability to support researchers creating scholarship with data. In this database, each dataset is labeled with information on coverage, resolution, usage, and variables, and may be browsed by categories including Emissions and Air Pollution, Company Disclosures, and more.
You may share a dataset for us to include in the resource.
Net Zero Systems Solutions Roundtable: Fleet Electrification
This workshop hosted by Harvard Business School and the Environmental Defense Fund in May 2024 joined representatives of shippers and carriers to surface challenges and best practices to accelerate the decarbonization of cargo trucking.
The Circular Revolution D^3 Catalyst
The Circular Revolution D^3 Catalyst in April 2023 was hosted to highlight the impacts and opportunities of circular economy. The event was attended by 100+ participants, experts, and industry leaders, and resulted in Harvard Business School article titled How AI Will Accelerate the Circular Economy, a white paper titled Circular Products and Business Models: Opportunities for Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Investors, and two HBS teaching cases Apple’s iPhone Revolution: Pioneering the Circular Economy and Seeds of Innovation: GALY’s Quest to Cultivate the Future of Agriculture in the Lab.
Working Conditions in Supply Chains
This micro website produced by Mike Toffel and the HBS Baker Library provides 45+ actionable summaries of academic research focused on improving working conditions in supply chains conducted by scholars from 20+ universities.
We aim for this resource to provide actionable insights for managers, practitioners, and organizations to assess and improve working conditions in supply chains.
Publications
Articles:
Climate Alliances
To Earn Trust, Climate Alliances Need to Improve Transparency by Peter Tufano, Chris Thomas, Knut Haanaes, Matteo Gasparini, Robert Eyres, and Chris Chapman, Harvard Business Review, November 2023.
Transparent Climate Alliances: Principles for Greater Effectiveness and Legitimacy by Peter Tufano, Chris Thomas, Knut Haanaes, Matteo Gasparini, Robert Eyres, and Chris Chapman, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), July 2023.
Circular Economy
How AI Will Accelerate the Circular Economy by Shirley Lu and George Serafeim, Harvard Business Review, June 2023.
Circular Products and Business Models: Opportunities for Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Investors by Shirley Lu and George Serafeim, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), May 2023.
Climate Finance
The Evolving Academic Field of Climate Finance by Matteo Gasparini and Peter Tufano, Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-057, January 2023.
Cases:
Circular Economy
(Teaching Note) Apple’s iPhone Revolution: Pioneering the Circular Economy by George Serafeim, Teaching Note, Harvard Business School Case 123-089, September 2023.
Apple’s iPhone Revolution: Pioneering the Circular Economy by George Serafeim, Harvard Business School Case 123-089, April 2023.
Climate Finance
Aviva plc: Examining Net Zero by Peter Tufano, Brian Trelstad, Matteo Gasparini, Harvard Business School Case 324-008, November 2023.
Forecasting Climate Risks: Aviva’s Climate Calculus by Mark Egan and Peter Tufano, Harvard Business School Case 224-025, September 2023.
Business Models
Seeds of Innovation: GALY’s Quest to Cultivate the Future of Agriculture in the Lab by George Serafeim and Michael Norris, Harvard Business School Case 124-017, September 2023 (Revised November 2023).
Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service by George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Lena Duchene, and Daniela Beyersdorfer, Harvard Business School Case 124-007, July 2023.
Contact Us
You can reach us by contacting Senior Lab Manager, Kelly Fitzpatrick.