Major initiative for the renewal of Norwegian hydropower
This week marked the launch of the national research center, RenewHydro, which will receive NOK 370 million to usher hydropower into a new era. NHH is one of the key research partners.
The largest nonprofit climate database for corporate emissions
This week, the international climate data platform EcoMap was launched. NHH has been involved in the development of this nonprofit project.
The EcoMap database expresses the social costs of corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, covering 20,000 companies, 381 industries and 86 countries.
Developed in collaboration with the NHH Norwegian School of Economics, MSCI Sustainability Institute and International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI), EcoMap aims to sharpen decision-making by integrating environmental impact accounting into corporate performance analysis.
A common language for all stakeholders
The platform is designed to quantify and monetize corporate environmental costs and integrate them into traditional financial analysis, according to NHH Professor Gunnar S. Eskeland, himself an expert on environmental policy making and climate change.
EcoMap offers an independent, transparent, and data-driven approach to tracking environmental performance. Unlike traditional ESG reporting, EcoMap monetizes emissions, creating a common language for all stakeholders.
This allows environmental performance to be assessed on equal footing with other financial metrics, making impacts more tangible and actionable.
EcoMap: An Example
One remarkable finding EcoMap reveals is that 25 percent of companies globally would operate at a loss if operational environmental costs were accounted for. While 83 percent of companies reported positive operating profits in 2023, factoring in these hidden costs would push 10 percent into a loss-making position.
Kaja Dahl, whose master's thesis and later work sparked the mapping project, said the analysis is meant to offer transparency in how companies and industries operate, through making complex environmental and climate data useful for people who struggle to understand it.
EcoMap demonstrates that the cost of climate change is not just environmental. It is also financial. Businesses that ignore these hidden costs risk losing competitive advantage in an evolving economic landscape´, Professor Eskeland says.
Independent platform
Through offering open-source, independent, and highly granular assessments, EcoMap illustrates how firms’ environmental impacts compare to their financial outcomes.
The platform introduces adjusted financial metrics that account for environmental costs such as Adjusted EBITDA and EBIT (Operating Profit), offering a clear understanding of how environmental costs may impact financial profitability. EcoMap empowers users to benchmark “adjusted” performance across peers and industries, revealing leaders and laggards through the financial and environmental lens.
Wallace Receives Rare Honor
Stein W. Wallace has been named an honorary member of the Norwegian Operations Research Society.
Professor Eskeland says that current ESG indicators lack direct integration of environmental considerations into financial analysis and adds:
`EcoMap enables a dual perspective—assessing companies through both financial and climate lenses simultaneously. This approach not only reveals profitability but also profitability when societal costs are accounted for, providing a more complete picture of corporate performance. An area where EcoMap provides significant value´.