Four of the past five years, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business has been the only business school to send a delegation of students to an annual summit focused on climate change. Three second-year Tuck MBA students traveled last month to Warsaw, Poland, for the 19th Annual Conference of the Parties (COP19), sponsored by the United Nations.
“Climate change is not only one of the central issues of our time, but it’s one in which businesses are front and center, both as the cause and the solution,” finance professor Anant Sundaram, who teaches the Business and Climate Change elective at Tuck, said in an article on the school’s website. Recognizing this, Tuck believes it is crucial to bring MBAs into the conversation and expects other business schools will follow its lead, Sundaram added.
Tuck’s Center for Business & Society provided funding for second-year students Harrison Kahn, Difu Li and Brian McKenzie to travel to Poland for the event, which took place from November 11th through 22nd. The students shared their experiences with the larger Tuck community through a COP19 blog they created for the event.
Sundaram predicts that a “climate economy” will develop as our climate continues to change, evolving around four broad areas: energy and carbon efficiency technologies; non-fossil-fuel-based energy; carbon capture and storage; and carbon markets. Each will represent a multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity, Sundaram says.
“From a business school standpoint, this presents not only career opportunities for today’s MBA students, but potential research opportunities for my faculty colleagues; funding opportunities for new curriculum initiatives; executive education opportunities for practicing managers and interdisciplinary program opportunities across Dartmouth,” Sundaram said.
Learn more about Tuck’s student delegation to the Conference of the Parties.
