Undergrad, MBA & Executive Education for a climate insecure world
MBA Elective - Climate Risk & Innovation
Climate-related risks — from hurricanes disrupting supply chains to wildfires driving up insurance costs — are now among the top strategic challenges facing companies across every industry. FIN 579 equips students from all professional backgrounds with a practical understanding of how these risks, together with renewable energy investment and emerging technologies, are transforming the economy.
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The course is structured in two parts. The first half examines the financial dimensions of climate risk: how companies quantify and manage physical, market, and operational exposures; how climate-linked insurance models and catastrophe bonds transfer risk; and how green bonds, tax credits, and energy transition financing are reshaping capital flows. The second half turns to business strategies for adaptation and resilience, covering smart contracts and energy market innovation, decentralized energy finance, AI-driven climate risk analytics, smart grid modernization, and the convergence of blockchain and distributed energy systems.
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Case studies feature companies at the frontier of climate innovation, including Arevon Energy, Bboxx, AutoGrid, and Energy Web. Guest speakers drawn from industry bring perspectives from across the value chain — from quantitative research at Russell Investments and reinsurance/ risk transfer at Guy Carpenter to grid modernization at AECOM, sustainable investing with the Washington Green Bank, and low carbon corporate venturing with the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund.
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Students complete two major deliverables. An individual assignment applies the Resilience Advantage Theory to a climate challenge within the student's own professional field, using large language models as analytical tools and critically evaluating the AI-generated outputs. A team-based capstone project, supported by the UW Climate Risk Lab, tasks student teams with assessing the total cost of climate hazards on U.S. housing markets by 2035 — modeling financial impacts and developing strategic recommendations for metropolitan areas exposed to wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and sea-level rise. The course culminates in a competitive case presentation to a panel of industry professionals from Russell Investments, followed by an on-site visit to their offices in downtown Seattle.
Undergraduate Elective - Sustainable Finance & the Real Economy
Financial institutions and multinational corporations are under mounting pressure to align their business models with climate goals — yet the tension between short-term profit-seeking and long-term sustainability remains one of the defining challenges in modern finance. FIN 490 gives students from both finance and non-finance backgrounds a practical, evidence-based understanding of how this tension is playing out across markets, regulators, and civil society.
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The course is organized in two parts. The first half lays the foundations of sustainable finance: what it means, how the real economy evolved to its current state, the scale of the global climate problem, the mechanics of building and financing renewable energy, and the role of climate justice in shaping financial outcomes. The second half turns to green bonds, tracing the history of carbon markets, examining ESG as both investment product and process, exploring whether and how nature can be priced, surveying the emerging field of biodiversity finance, and confronting the limits-to-growth debate.
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Classes combine lectures, case discussions, and guest speakers, with an emphasis on interactive debate and individual reflection. Readings draw from journal articles, case studies, and contemporary industry reports, and the course is taught in the style of "junior exec ed" — designed to offer an insider's view on what is real, and what is not, about efforts to make finance sustainable.
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Students complete two major assessments. A team-based consulting project, conducted on behalf of a hypothetical client — Brookfield Renewable Partners — requires each group to analyze a distinct renewable energy investment opportunity, ranging from offshore wind in Japan and geothermal in Alaska to energy storage in Texas and Australia. Teams deliver a one-page outline, a twelve-page written report including a discounted cash flow model, and a five-to-seven-minute executive presentation with Q&A. A final exam rounds out the evaluation alongside an individual class participation grade that rewards quality of contribution over quantity.
Executive seminars on Climate Risk, Security & Economics
Climate change is no longer a future scenario — it is a present-day driver of economic disruption, geopolitical instability, and strategic risk. From energy supply shocks and sovereign credit downgrades to climate-driven migration and resource competition, senior leaders across industries now face a landscape in which environmental, financial, and security risks are deeply intertwined.
This seminar series equips executives with the frameworks, data, and strategic vocabulary to navigate that landscape with confidence.
The program is structured around three interlocking pillars. The first examines climate risk through a financial lens: how physical and transition risks propagate through portfolios, supply chains, and balance sheets; how carbon pricing, green bonds, and energy transition financing are redirecting capital at scale; and what the latest regulatory developments — from mandatory climate disclosure to taxonomies for sustainable investment — mean for corporate strategy and fiduciary duty.
The second pillar addresses the security dimensions of climate change. Sessions explore how resource scarcity, extreme weather events, and ecosystem degradation are reshaping geopolitical alliances, threatening critical infrastructure, and amplifying fragility in both emerging and advanced economies. Participants examine the intersection of energy security and decarbonization, the strategic implications of the global race for critical minerals, and how climate-related displacement is redefining national security doctrine.
The third pillar brings these threads together through the lens of macroeconomics and long-term value creation. Seminars consider how central banks and sovereign wealth funds are integrating climate into economic modeling, the tension between growth imperatives and planetary boundaries, and the emerging debate over natural capital accounting and biodiversity finance as tools for systemic resilience.
Each seminar combines faculty-led instruction with case-based discussion, scenario exercises, and conversations with practitioners drawn from finance, energy, defense, and policy. The format is designed for senior professionals who need to make consequential decisions under uncertainty — and who recognize that climate risk is no longer a sustainability issue alone, but a core question of strategy, security, and economic durability.
