On the 13th August we held an online event to launch Project Cygnus – a €1M EIT Climate-KIC funded programme focused on how to enable a net-zero economic recovery from Covid-19 with:
- Gavin Starks, CEO and Founder, Icebreaker One;
- Damien McGarrigle, Financial Services & Fintech Team Lead, Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence at University of Edinburgh;
- Andreas Hoepner, Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance, University College Dublin;
- Julie Calkins, Head of Risk Information for Climate Adaptation, EIT Climate-KIC.
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We introduced the background to the project, and highlighted that with significant amounts of ‘tomorrow’s money’ being deployed as part of pandemic stimulus funds, right across the EU, this a pivotal moment to encourage greener investment.
Among other things, we discussed:
- Some of our key research questions include ‘what data infrastructure and modelling tools should policy-makers, investors and companies employ to assess the courses of action to drive a sustainable economic recovery?’;
- The need to strengthen resilience to climate shocks and how we do this via smarter data access;
- The importance of analysing and understanding the economic impact of Covid-19 and climate change in tandem, and initial thoughts about how to increase financing for green activities while ‘de-browning’ the economy;
- How to strengthen capability around data acquisition and reduce friction in sharing data at a national level and ensure there are effective legal and governance frameworks in place.