Real Returns highlights the biggest opportunities in sustainable investing, identifying the most profitable and exciting sectors that provide both financial returns and sustainable outcomes. It's a must-read for professional investors, finance professionals, chief investment officers, and business leaders navigating capital decisions.
What if the biggest financial returns of our time come from solving the world’s greatest challenges?
Real Returns highlights the biggest opportunities in sustainable investing. It goes beyond applying ESG criteria to your investment portfolio to identify the biggest, most profitable and exciting sectors that provide both financial returns and sustainable outcomes. With strategies for your portfolio, evolving standards and frameworks and their limitations, it's a must-read for professional investors, finance professionals, chief investment officers, and business leaders navigating capital decisions.
As the climate crisis and capital markets converge, this book could not be more urgent or more empowering.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Why I Wrote This Book Backwards
Introduction
PART I The Biggest Investment Opportunities
Chapter 1: The Next Billion-Dollar Industries are Built Around Sustainability
The industries of tomorrow, renewables, electric vehicles & battery solutions
are being built today.
Chapter 2: The Future of Investing is Digital, Transparent & Data-Driven:
Climate Tech & AI
Chapter 3: Real Estate: From Concrete to Conscious Capital
Chapter 4: Natures Comeback: The New Frontier of Sustainable Investment
Chapter 5: Profit or Purpose? Why Society Is Your Ultimate Shareholder
PART II - Essential Terms, Portfolio Strategies & Frameworks
Chapter 6: Not All ESG Funds Are Created Equal
Chapter 7: Returns with Responsibility: Rethinking Private Equity
Chapter 8: Mastering the Basics: Sustainability Standards for Smarter
Portfolios
Chapter 9: From Capital Allocation to Catalyst: Rethinking the Investors
Role
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bibliography
Wincel Kaufmann is a leader in sustainable investing, a former BlackRock executive and the founder of blueColab, a company focused on sustainable investing and capital advisory.
At BlackRock she served as Global Sustainable Investing Lead for the Private Markets, leading sustainability strategies across real estate, infrastructure, private equity and credit, shaping sustainable investment strategies for over $300 billion in assets. Her work supports the advancement of the low-carbon transition, mobilizing private capital for renewable energy and driving innovation in nature-based solutions.
She has authored white papers such as Strategic Opportunities in Sustainable Real Estate and contributed to the State of European Pension Funds Net-Zero Transition report by Climate Policy Initiative.
Wincel is an Advisory Board Member of the Solar Impulse Foundations World Alliance for Efficient Solutions and serves as a judge for the Women of the Future Awards. She has spoken at prestigious forums, including New York Climate Week, the Milken Institute Global Investors Forum, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. With an MBA from INSEAD, a degree in Economics and certifications in ESG investing, she brings a global perspective to advancing sustainable finance.
She is a Swiss-Filipina who has lived in five countries and speaks three languages. Now living in Switzerland with her husband and their dog, she continues to advise and teach others how to navigate sustainable investing.
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