Ben Caldecott

Dr. Ben Caldecott is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group at the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He holds the inaugural Lombard Odier Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance position, the first ever endowed professorship in sustainable finance, and serves as a Supernumerary Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. Additionally, he is the founding Director and Principal Investigator of the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment (CGFI), established by UK Research and Innovation in 2021 as the national center to accelerate the adoption of climate and environmental data by financial institutions globally. He also serves as a Visiting Professor at the Wealth Management Institute in Singapore.

Ben Caldecott earned his doctorate in economic geography from the University of Oxford, following undergraduate studies in economics with specialization in development and China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the University of Cambridge. He has held visiting positions at Stanford University, Peking University, and several other institutions worldwide.

His research focuses on sustainable finance, climate risk management, stranded assets, carbon markets, and spatial finance. Caldecott pioneered work on stranded assets, demonstrating how environment-related risks could impact company valuations and represent systemic risks for the financial system. His research has significantly influenced impairment tests, credit models, and scenario analysis used by financial institutions worldwide. He has also pioneered spatial finance, integrating geospatial data and analytics into financial theory and practice, as well as developing the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting and the concept of the Carbon Removal Budget.

Analysis of Caldecott's recent publications reveals a consistent focus on the intersection of finance and climate change, with particular emphasis on carbon markets, asset stranding, spatial finance, and transition finance. His work spans empirical analysis of climate policy impacts across multiple sectors including energy, agriculture, and heavy industry, development of frameworks for net zero aligned finance, and investigation of financial mechanisms for climate mitigation and adaptation. His publications increasingly incorporate geospatial data and asset-level analysis to understand environmental risks at granular levels.

• Best Pedagogical Innovation prize at the French Sustainable Investment Forum-Principles for Responsible Investment Awards (2018)
• Listed in 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy by Apolitical
• UK Power List of environmental professionals by ENDS Report
• Star of 2019 by Global Proxy Watch
• Entry into Who's Who (2013 edition)
• US State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program (2011)
• Runner-up in Prospect magazine's Think Tank Publication of the Year award (2010)

Ben Caldecott supervises six Oxford Ph.D./D.Phil. candidates and has raised tens of millions of dollars in competitive funding from foundations, research councils, governments, and industry for his work. His research partnerships include major financial institutions such as Aviva Investors, Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas Asset Management, Brunel Pensions Partnership, CCLA Investment Management, HSBC, Impax Asset Management, Insight Investment, Lloyd's of London, Lombard Odier, Norges Bank Investment Management, Standard Chartered, Temasek, UBS, Wells Fargo, and Willis Towers Watson. He established and leads B.A., M.Sc., and M.Phil. options and electives on finance and sustainability at Oxford and course directs the Sustainable Finance Executive Programme.

Caldecott founded and directs the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group, a world-leading center focused on aligning finance with global environmental sustainability. He established and leads the Sustainable Finance Theme at The Alan Turing Institute and initiated the Spatial Finance Initiative, which aims to mainstream geospatial capabilities into financial decision-making globally. He co-founded and serves on the board of the Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI), and established the Public and Third Sector Academy for Sustainable Finance (P3SA) at Oxford. He is also a Co-Director for the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery where he leads its work on finance.