How can finance enable a faster, fairer and more resilient transition?
My research examines how financial systems shape the pace, direction and geographical distribution of the low-carbon transition. A central question is why some countries, technologies and sectors attract investment while others remain underserved, and how financial and policy interventions can change these patterns. Combining economic and financial analysis with complexity-based approaches, I study capital allocation as a process shaped by interactions between investors, institutions and the wider investment environment. Particular attention is given to emerging markets and developing economies, and the conditions that enable them to participate more fully in the global transition.
Cost of capital and unequal transition pathways
The cost and structure of finance influence low-carbon investment, technology competitiveness and the development pathways available to countries. My research on the climate investment trap shows how high financing costs can suppress low-carbon investment in developing economies, slow technological learning and reinforce carbon-intensive development – creating a self-perpetuating cycle of high perceived risk and low investment. Building on these findings, current work examines the factors driving financing costs and the interventions that could help break this cycle. The overarching question is how access to affordable capital can change not only individual investment decisions, but also the feasibility and direction of countries’ transitions.
Investor behaviour, financial networks and capital allocation
Investors’ relationships, experience and institutional practices play an important role in determining where capital flows. My research examines how different types of investors interact and how financial market structures develop across renewable energy technologies and countries. This work shows that investment is strongly path-dependent: established markets attract further capital, while unfamiliar countries and technologies can remain excluded despite their underlying potential. Moving beyond explanations based on project-level risk and return, it reveals how familiarity, investment histories and network effects shape the expansion of low-carbon finance and can perpetuate inequalities in access to capital.
Investment risks, assessment and risk mitigation
Understanding the risks that constrain low-carbon investment requires examining both underlying conditions and the practices through which investors and public institutions assess, price and manage them. A central concern is how investment risks are interpreted, and what these assessments mean for financing costs and access to capital, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies. Increasingly, this work focuses on how risks interact, rather than examining them in isolation. Different conditions can amplify or compensate for one another, meaning that the effectiveness of a financial intervention depends on the wider investment environment. By analysing these relationships, this work investigates when targeted measures can unlock investment and when coordinated interventions are needed to address several constraints together.
Financial policy, market design and tipping points
Financial policy and market design are central to my research on how capital can be redirected towards low-carbon investment. Work on the limits of disclosure-led approaches shows why better information alone may be insufficient when investor incentives, mandates and institutional structures remain unchanged. Related research explores more direct interventions, including an investment emissions-intensity tax designed to redirect institutional capital towards low-carbon assets. Positive financial tipping points provide a complementary perspective: changes in financial conditions that can generate disproportionate and self-reinforcing shifts in investment. Through the study of feedbacks between finance, technology deployment, learning and cost reductions, I examine how interventions can accelerate investment growth and why financing constraints may prevent developing economies from benefiting equally from these dynamics.
Adaptation, resilience and nature finance
A growing area of my research focuses on the financing of adaptation, resilience and biodiversity. Current work examines how adaptation finance flows through global trade and supply-chain networks, and how firms assess and finance responses to physical climate risks. These studies investigate how resilience benefits are measured and monetised, how adaptation value is distributed across firms and supply chains, and why investments with substantial wider benefits may remain difficult to finance.
The differences and connections between mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity investments form a developing focus. Across these domains, revenues, avoided losses, resilience benefits and ecological value enter investment assessments in different ways. Understanding these distinctions – and the challenges they share- provides a basis for exploring financing approaches that better reflect the value and characteristics of climate and nature assets.