Tracking Sustainability Performance: From Data to Strategy

This course provides a thorough introduction to analytical methods for evaluating corporate sustainability strategies and for guiding capital allocation decisions. Students explore what defines a sustainable company by engaging with a variety of real-world data sources, including voluntary disclosure data, mandated reporting, financial statements, independent datasets, and asset location information. With an emphasis on teamwork, critical thinking, and hands-on analysis, the course helps students develop strong data analysis skills for assessing and presenting corporate sustainability performance. Throughout the course, students learn to interpret and manipulate internal and external performance metrics and their links to scientific evidence. Additionally, students gain a deeper understanding of the broader sustainability information ecosystem and learn about the roles of key players such as corporate entities, auditors, regulators, information intermediaries, and investors. The course is structured into three interactive modules culminating in an independent final project. The first focuses on understanding corporate sustainability data and learning how to detect greenwashing by identifying instances of misleading or false disclosures and claims. Then, we cover identifying and mitigating sustainability risks by anticipating and managing risks, including extreme weather, regulatory changes, and shifting market expectations. Finally, we explore modeling trade-offs by conducting modeling exercises to understand the trade-offs involved in sustainability decisions. The final independent project synthesizes course learnings, offering students the opportunity to analyze a corporate sustainability strategy based upon examples explored in class.