Sustainable investments : The impact of the EU Green Taxonomy

Abstract: The increasing environmental issues and the measures taken to tackle them, is a topic ofhigh significance in today’s society. In light of this, the EU is underway with developinga taxonomy classifying sustainable economic activities in hopes to raise awareness, increase transparency regarding environmental impact, and motivate investors to invest sustainable. This paper aims to examine if the taxonomy is relevant to its cause, as well as if sustainability factors can be identified with linear regression connected to growth in a company’s value, which may motivate sustainable investments. Several interviews were conducted, along with the creation of a mathematical model. The conclusions drawn was that it is not viable to determine a company’s growth in value using solely sustainability factors. However, the results were promising regarding the implementation of sustainability factors in more comprehensive models. Furthermore, the impact of the taxonomy was hard to predict at this time, however, the consensus of the majority of the interviews conducted with experts on the subject, is that it has potential to impact sustainable investments in the future. Future research on the taxonomy may yield results of higher interest since more comprehensive data will be available, and the impact of the taxonomy will be more concrete.