Bank of America and Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment have announced a collaboration to tackle climate change and transform sustainability in financial services.

The collaboration will support three years of research focused on two key areas and will also support a Director’s Research fund that will enable the school to seize sustainable research opportunities. The two research areas are i) the integration of nature-related factors and the use of climate and environmental data into financial decision-making ii) identifying greenhouse gas removal solutions working with the Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub (CO₂RE).

As part of the partnership Bank of America has pledged £1.2m to the University of Oxford to support greenhouse gas removal and sustainable finance research at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

One team of researchers will be based at the Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub (CO₂RE), focussing on taking greenhouse gases back out of the air in ways that are economically, socially, and environmentally scalable. This research hub is an Oxford-led consortium directed by Dr Stephen Smith.

The other research team will be based at both the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group at the Smith School and the UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment (CGFI). They will focus on spatial finance and the integration of nature-related factors into financial decision-making. The Group and CGFI are both led by Dr Ben Caldecott.