The lifetime cost of wind energy is comprised of a number of components including the investment cost, operation and maintenance costs, financing costs, and annual energy production. Accurate representation of these cost streams is critical in estimating a wind plant’s cost of energy. Some of these cost streams will vary over the life of a given project.

The third issue of the Chief Liquidity Series focuses on a number of sub-sectors within the broader extractive sector. The first part of the briefing displays how water risks may manifest themselves in different types of extractive sub-sectors and how this in turn could affect the finance sector. Within the realm of this publication we focused on the following sub-sectors: coal, seam gas, precious metals, oil sands and base metals.

This UNEP FI report outlines how current obstacles to the scaling-up of sustainable energy solutions in Africa - namely cost, infrastructure, and risk - can be tackled with the involvement of private finance.

The financial crisis of 2008–09 raises questions about the assumptions that underpin corporate governance. Shareholder value and private ordering may not in fact be the best means of promoting efficiency and corporate responsibility and the mechanisms used to ensure management accountability may not be effective.

This report by UNEP FI and FELABAN is the result of a pan-regional survey conducted among 85 financial institutions in 19 countries on how the Latin American financial sector has integrated sustainability in its activities.

In this report, the financial sector voices suggestions to international climate change negotiators on how an effective regime for forest-based climate change mitigation should be designed to mobilise private finance engagement and investment.

This publication - the first of a two-part report - is designed to identify and tackle barriers to investment in forest-related projects, such as the UN-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) scheme.

This study argues that environmental property metrics users and suppliers must bridge the gap that separates them to successfully measure the environmental performance of property portfolios and related improvement activities.

The application of ESG issues to the design and implementation of property investment strategies is complex given the ever-changing kaleidoscope of interests and stakeholders involved at different stages of the life of a real estate asset.

The CEO Briefing “Demystifying Materiality: Hardwiring biodiversity and ecosystem services into finance” is underpinned by the belief that biodiversity and ecosystems are crucial for understanding how natural capital can affect financial institutions, both in a positive and negative way.

A new report by the NATF sheds some light on the progress of North American UNEP FI members in promoting environmental engagement among their institutions. The report was launched by a Scotiabank-hosted Expert Workshop in Toronto, Canada, on March 31, 2011.

Overview of employee engagement activities undertaken by UNEP FI members across the world