Innovations in Sustainable Finance

In this episode of Innovations in Sustainable Finance, I speak with Matthias Egger, ocean scientist and co-founder of Empaqtify, about scaling impactful ideas. Matthias spent eight years at The Ocean Cleanup, sailed twice to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and came away with a conclusion that has little to do with engineering: the cleanup systems do their job, and what decides whether they reach scale is whether anyone can be persuaded to pay for them. So that is where innovation is needed.
My three key takeaways were:
Most plastic pollution is on land, not in the ocean. Less than one percent of the plastic produced each year reaches the sea, and the rest stays on land. As Matthias puts it, one percent of a lot is still a lot. In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area three times the size of France, that works out at roughly one piece of plastic per square metre, and it is mostly fishing gear, toothbrushes and shampoo bottles rather than the floating bags people picture. Plastic also breaks down instead of disappearing, so the microplastics turn up in food, in the air and in human tissue.
The bottleneck is no longer the technology, it is the capital. So-called interceptors already catch more than 90 percent of the floating plastic in a river. From an impact perspective, pushing that to 99 percent matters far less than putting the technology into a thousand dirty rivers. The first decade ran on philanthropy, but the global build-out runs to hundreds of millions. Philanthropy’s real job, Matthias says, is to fund the learning and take the first loss so other capital can follow.
Reframing the same machine unlocks a different pool of capital. This is what Matthias calls impact architecture. A river interceptor is not a cleanup system, it is critical infrastructure for a city: take the plastic out of a river in Jakarta and you reduce the risk of flooding during the monsoon, which makes the same asset interesting also to an insurer and a city council, not just development finance. The mission stays fixed while the narrative changes with the audience, so the work is to find out what each stakeholder actually cares about, which is rarely the plastic itself.

What stayed with me is Matthias’s point that the solutions already exist, and so does the capital. What is missing is a common language between the two, and that is a more tractable problem than fixing the ocean.
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In this episode of Innovations in Sustainable Finance, I speak with Glen Jordan, co-founder of Empowa, about a question that sounds simple and turns out not to be: why can most families in Africa not borrow to buy a home? We talk about how an informal income can be made bankable, why Empowa builds homes that can be moved, and what it would take for investors to treat African housing as a real asset class.
My three key takeaways were:
The problem is product fit, not poverty. Around 85% of income in emerging markets is informal, meaning variable, intermittent and mostly unrecorded. Think of a taxi driver: the money comes in daily and largely in cash, so it never becomes a record anyone will lend against. A mortgage asks for formal proof of income and twenty years of consistent payments, so the only housing finance product on offer excludes almost everyone. Glen makes it concrete: when Empowa started in Mozambique there were 600 mortgages in a country of 31 million people. Even in Kenya it is about 31,000 for 50 million, with mortgage debt at 1 to 3% of GDP against roughly 80% in developed markets.
Making informal income legible is what unlocks the capital. Empowa turns the mobile money payments people already make into a verifiable track record, and structures the deal as rent-to-own, so every payment builds equity instead of disappearing into rent. The homes are modular, which means they can be relocated if a land title turns out to be disputed. The results so far are striking: an effective rate of 12% a year in Mozambique against a market mortgage rate of 29%, and 100% portfolio performance, because a family building an asset they could not otherwise reach will work hard to keep it.
This has to come from outside the banking system. Glen argues the binding constraint is understanding rather than capital. The people making the decisions, as he puts it, sit in air-conditioned offices, drink cappuccino and work on MacBooks, while banks ask for data the informal sector cannot yet produce. His analogy is unsecured lending, which did not emerge from within banking either and only became mainstream later.

What stayed with me is Glen's insistence that none of this is fixed. These systems, as he says, were not ordained by God; they are man-made, and they can be changed. With a listing planned to open the structure to pension funds, the test now is whether capital markets will treat affordable African housing as an asset class rather than a cause.
For anyone who wants to dig deeper, Empowa's platform and housing projects are documented here: https://empowa.io
Spotify: Innovations in Sustainable Finance
Apple Podcasts: Innovations in Sustainable Finance
Website: Podcast Innovations in Sustainable Finance | unisg.ch

In this episode of Innovations in Sustainable Finance, I welcome back Tom Gosling to discuss the question: what can investors actually do about climate change? The conversation centers on Tom's new report, which explores how the investor role is changing as the climate conversation moves from ambition and headlines to realism, constraints, and policy.
My three key takeaways
The environment has changed, and investors are now caught between doing too much and doing too little Tom explains that the surrounding climate context has become more constrained. Climate is now competing with other major priorities, and investors face criticism from both sides: some say they are overreaching, while others say they are not doing enough.
Investors must recognize that they cannot do it alone A central argument in the report is that investors cannot drive decarbonization by themselves. Policy and technology are the main forces shaping the transition, which means investors need to be more modest about what they can promise. That also means backing away from overly rigid temperature targets and instead using more directional, credible goals that reflect their real influence and fiduciary duties.
Limitations-aware engagement and policy engagement are promising tools The episode makes a strong case for limitations-aware engagement: investors should focus on actions that boards can reasonably take and that are aligned with commercial realities. Tom also argues that policy engagement deserves more attention, especially where investors have a legitimate stake in real-economy transition policy. Together, these tools offer a more practical way for investors to support climate progress without overclaiming their impact.

Final thought I close by asking Tom which climate leadership quality matters most from his list: courage, honesty, curiosity, or commitment. Tom chooses commitment, and that feels like the thread running through the whole episode. In a world of shifting attention and shorter cycles, climate action may matter less as a grand gesture and more as a discipline of showing up consistently over time.

Spotify: Innovations in Sustainable Finance
Apple Podcasts: Innovations in Sustainable Finance
Website: Podcast Innovations in Sustainable Finance | unisg.ch

In this episode, I talk about the EU’s omnibus package with Copenhagen Business School Professor Andreas Rasche. The omnibus is a legislative package that aims to simplify several European sustainability directives all at once and has far-reaching implications for the European economy. It is a chance to adjust regulation that has rightly been criticized for being too complex and confusing, but there is a risk that the proposed fixes create more confusion without solving some of the underlying problems.

My favourite insights from this conversation were:
It’s the right time to engage with your Member of European Parliament and make sure your views and needs with regard to adjusting the CSRD, the CSDDD, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the EU taxonomy are heard.
According to a survey that Andreas has contributed to, European businesses would prefer targeted improvements over a fundamental overhaul of the CSRD, given that they have already invested in compliance. It would be a shame if the omnibus ends up as political posturing without delivering on simplification.
A huge underlying problem is a lack of comprehensive cost-benefit estimates of the existing regulations and the proposed adjustments.
It seems that European leaders have overly focused on details and failed to consider the bigger picture of what their rules are supposed to achieve. Improving this can hopefully start with frank conversations such as this one.

I can highly recommend following Andreas for updates on this important topic. Here is a link to the mentioned survey: CSRD Survey

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Website: https://unisg.link/Innovations-In-Sustainable-Finance

In this episode, I return to the topic of blended finance with Nadia Nikolova, a managing director at Allianz Global Investors. She explains how blended finance projects get off the ground and shares her own journey into the field. Along the way, she provides many fascinating anecdotes and insights, especially for those considering a career in blended finance. My favourite insights were:
The three essential ingredients for succeeding in blended finance are: leadership, flexibility, and trust.
Blended finance projects are a balancing act, because there are very different parties involved, with different incentives and different constraints. Nadia likens it to a Jenga tower, where all parties need to cooperate to keep it in balance.
Blended finance is simply a financial technique that can be applied to many problems. When done well, it yields happy investors and social benefits. But flexible capital – the magic ingredient - is scarce. Therefore, blended finance is only suitable for ventures and projects that would otherwise not receive funding.

I hope you enjoy the conversation and get inspired by Nadia’s passion for the subject.

Spotify: https://unisg.link/Innovations-In-Sustainable-Finance-Spotify
Apple Podcasts: https://unisg.link/Innovations-In-Sustainable-Finance-Apple
Website: https://unisg.link/Innovations-In-Sustainable-Finance