School in Green and Sustainable Finance

Lake Como School of Advanced Studies
at Fondazione Alessandro Volta, Villa del Grumello, Como, Italy
31^st March -2^nd April 2025

Call for particip

The School

The creation of functioning markets for green and sustainable finance has become a priority for the European Union (EU), as evidenced by the actions included in the Horizon 2020 and COSME programmes, as well as for many governments across Europe. The landscape of green and sustainable finance has been constantly changing in recent years, with many new players entering the scene with different investment objectives and approaches. In addition to venture capitalists (VCs) and business angels (BAs), the development of online platforms has created new opportunities for entrepreneurs to raise seed capital and for non-professional investors to disintermediate their sustainable investments. The choice of appropriate financial instruments has become crucial for companies aiming to achieve the goals of decarbonization, energy efficiency, the promotion of the circular economy and the development of cheaper and healthier forms of private and public transport. Although several new green financing solutions have been established in different countries (e.g. green bonds, green banks, green credit guarantees, carbon taxation, community trust funds), alternative ways of financing companies that engage in transformative climate and innovation actions are needed to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis in this decade.

The aim of the Green and Sustainable Finance school is to spread the knowledge on green and sustainable finance and promote cutting-edge international research on the topic, attracting PhD students across Europe and outside Europe from different economic fields (economics, finance, management of innovation, entrepreneurship, management, management engineering). It will provide students with insights into the complexities characterizing the various sources of financing for new ventures and innovative firms, with a focus on sustainability, environmental risks and green finance policy.

The school will help to stimulate the debate among young scholars on the patterns and recent trends of green and sustainable finance, on methodological issues, on the unresolved questions, problems ahead and future perspectives. It will also help PhD students to set up new research directions and to identify key challenges for the future.

The School will adopt a multidisciplinary approach with innovative teaching methods and will involve teachers and officials from European institutions of different nationalities and backgrounds.

The school includes lectures and seminars on emerging research areas from green and sustainable finance scholars and paper development sessions, in which participants will discuss their research advancements in an interdisciplinary, international and stimulating setting. Ample informal mentoring and networking opportunities will be provided as well.

Green and sustainable finance as fields of study require the combination of skills and know-how coming from different fields (i.e. finance, management, economics, management of innovation, policies evaluation). A combination of these competences is well reflected in the background of the scholars and officials from European institutions involved in the school. Scholars involved are experts that have a long-established scientific experience in the academic studies on green and sustainable finance. The strong technical and scientific preparation of the scholars and the broad set of methods that they master, as well as their capacity to understand the legal and policy framework at a deep level of comprehension, allows great flexibility in the management of teaching. Moreover, two of the organizers are founders of the Bureau of Entrepreneurial Finance (https://bef-research.com/) that gathers a team of scholars from Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino with the aim to advance and disseminate world-class scientific research on venture financing. BEF conducts cutting- edge, interdisciplinary, rigorous and critical research on all aspects of entrepreneurial finance. BEF aims to have high impact not only on academic thought, but also on policy decision-making and business practice.

The teaching activities will be strengthened by involving external experts with direct experience on the specific topics to be discussed. This mix will ensure an appropriate balance among sound theoretical and scientific foundations and capacity to focus on core policy issues. A significant effort will be devoted to involve practitioners (e.g. entrepreneurs searching for seed financing; managers of CF platforms and angel networks, VC senior partners etc..) and officials from European institutions, in order to diffuse knowledge and raise awareness of green and sustainable finance issues in a wide variety of contexts and business environments. The organizers of the School have direct connections with the academics, practitioners and officials from European institutions proposed: they are currently involved in joint projects, academic works or dissemination activities with the organizers of the School.

The school will be hosted by the Lake Como School of Advanced Studies, from the 31th March to the 2nd of April, 2025 at Villa del Grumello, in lovely Como, Italy.

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