ESG Data Collection and economic activity classification

Purpose and goal:

The project addresses questions related to one of the most important and challenging missions of our time, namely the transition toward environmentally and socially sustainable societies. The aim of this project is to study the relation between economic activities and their environmental and social impact.

Expected results and effects:

The project will shed light on and stimulate research in the specific areas of sustainable finance where further analysis is indeed required. Moreover, the project will contribute to increased knowledge of and improved methodology for assessing how economic activities align to the SDGs in Agenda 2030; paramount to channel private capital into sustainable investments.

Approach and implementation:

We will collect information about firms´ products, services, operating expenditures and investments. We will then map this information to the SDGs in Agenda 2030 using novel techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Finally, we will use our approach to compare sustainability assessments from existing ESG databases which enable us to gauge where assessment uncertainty is greatest.