Dr. Ben Caldecott is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme at the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Ben is also Senior Advisor to the Chair and CEO of the UK Green Finance Institute.

Caldecott specializes in environment, energy, and sustainability issues and works at the intersection between finance, public policy, and academe, having held senior roles in each domain. He has authored and edited a substantial number of publications related to sustainability and is an experienced media commentator and public speaker. He is also a regular peer reviewer and has a number of board and advisory panel appointments, including with the University of Oxford Socially Responsible Investment Review Committee, The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project, ATLAS Infrastructure Partners Ltd, Impact Lens Ltd, the British Standards Institution, and the Green Alliance.

He has conceived and initiated a number of initiatives related to sustainable finance. Caldecott founded and co-chairs the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI), an alliance of global research universities promoting rigorous and impactful academic research on sustainable finance. He established and leads the Sustainable Finance Theme at The Alan Turing Institute and initiated the Spatial Finance Initiative, which aims to mainstream geospatial capabilities enabled by space technology and data science into financial decision-making globally. He co-founded the Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI), which is examining the legal basis for directors and trustees to consider, manage, and report on climate change-related risk, and the circumstances in which they may be liable for failing to do so. He also established and led as chair Bright Blue’s research program on energy and the environment.

He currently serves on the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee. In his capacity as a Member of the UK Green Finance Taskforce, he chaired its Workstream on Task Force on Climate-related Disclosures (TCFD) Implementation.

Prior to joining the University of Oxford, he was a Vice President at investment bank Climate Change Capital, one of the early leading asset management and advisory firms focused on the net-zero carbon transition, where he ran the firm’s research center and advised clients and funds on the development of policy-driven markets. He has previously worked as Research Director for Environment and Energy at the think tank Policy Exchange, as Head of Government Advisory at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, as a Director in the Strategy Directorate of the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as a Deputy Director in the Strategy Directorate of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, as an Advisor to The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit, and as Sherpa to the UK Green Investment Bank Commission.

Caldecott holds a doctorate in economic geography from the University of Oxford. He initially read economics and specialized in development and China at the University of Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has been an Academic Visitor at the Bank of England, a Visiting Scholar at Peking University, and held Visiting Fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of Sydney, and the University of Melbourne. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment. Caldecott is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Payne Institute for Earth Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and Royal Geographical Society, and a Member of the Senior Common Room at Oriel College, Oxford.

Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Strategy, Corporate Governance, Environment, Sustainability, Environmental Policy, Environmentalist, Business, Finance, Corporate Finance, Green, Economy