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Bregje van Veelen

Associate senior lecturer

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Decarbonizing capital : Investment, divestment and the qualification of carbon assets

Author

  • Paul Langley
  • Gavin Bridge
  • Harriet Bulkeley
  • Bregje van Veelen

Summary, in English

Private investment capital is now widely regarded as strategically significant to the governance of climate change. A dedicated and dynamic carbon finance sector has emerged that features techniques and practices for decarbonizing capital, facilitating investment in low-carbon projects and enterprises or enabling divestment from high-carbon firms and sectors. We bring together and develop the concepts of ‘qualification’ and ‘assetization’ to analyse how decarbonizing capital is proceeding. With specific reference to green bonds and the equities of fossil fuel corporations, we show how investment and divestment entail the qualification of things as assets with more-or-less specific carbon properties. But the qualification of assets as ‘low-’ or ‘high-carbon’ is also shown to be contingent, contested and compromised, featuring contrasting modalities of qualification that are decarbonizing capital in uncertain and incomplete ways.

Publishing year

2021

Language

English

Pages

494-516

Publication/Series

Economy and Society

Volume

50

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Routledge

Topic

  • Human Geography

Keywords

  • assetization
  • decarbonization
  • divestment
  • investment
  • qualification

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0308-5147