Meet Spuerkeess' Science and Sustainability Advisor

Kim Schumacher: Initially, I started to collaborate with Spuerkeess when organising a conference on climate risks and credits in late 2019. This marked the foundation for establishing a profound relationship around the integration of sustainable finance principles and ESG (environmental, social, governance) factors in everyday banking and investment operations. Over the course of the past two years, I conducted several analyses on what potential climate-related or environmental risks might affect Spuerkeess’ operations or portfolios and supported the development of several internal tools to assess and  manage these risks in the most adequate way possible. In addition, I am providing advice and training on how to build internal capacities around the new and complex ESG-related challenges.

Kim Schumacher: Many companies and financial sector actors want to integrate ESG factors into their operations. Oftentimes, they rely on external ESG data providers to obtain ratings and scores on how companies are performing in terms of sustainability. However, these ratings have been shown to have still a number of flaws, notably in terms of data reliability. Therefore, financial regulators have stated that financial institutions should develop internal tools and build internal capacities to carry out their own analyses to the extent possible. This allows them to understand and verify external ESG ratings if necessary. Doing your own research, and having suitable internal tools to do so, can serve as a very useful second opinion to spot problematic external ESG data.

Kim Schumacher: Daily consumables, ranging from food to common household items, represent one area where sustainability can be increased fairly easily. Avoiding food with excessive packaging, reducing the usage of plastic wraps or aluminium foil are very efficient. And then of course the classics such as avoiding unnecessary trips by car, using public transportation or bicycles, reducing excessive water use, recycling, or consuming less meat and more plant-based food.

Complementary to these steps are less obvious ones, for example, allowing partial wild growth in gardens, avoiding stone gardens, or planting more trees and shrubs for shade, are ways to reduce the need for cooling or irrigation in the summer and promote biodiversity in urban or residential areas.

However, Luxembourg has the potential to become a leader in terms of climate change mitigation ambitions, both through scaling its sustainable finance sector while avoiding greenwashing risks, and by establishing the legal foundations for significant carbon emissions reductions in the near future. One example is the law that the Luxembourg parliament passed in December 2020, which states that Luxembourg aims to reduce its carbon emissions by 55% by 2030 and that it wants to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Now, these ambitious targets need to be followed by tangible action.

Kim Schumacher: Pleasure.