Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation

CHAPTER SIX

Green Investing: Betting on Sustainability Data

EIGHTY-SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS, BY ANYONE’S STANDARDS, is a lot of money. It’s slightly more than the GDP of all the world’s countries combined. It’s just over five times the size of the U.S. national debt. It’s the amount of money you would spend in a year if you spent $2.76 million per second. And it’s the numerical expression of the investment community’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions worldwide.

For the last several years, the Carbon Disclosure Project, based in London and New York, has collected data about different companies’ carbon emissions and has provided that data to institutional investors who now represent $87 trillion in assets. The participating companies, which ...