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The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun & Quoc Nguyen Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We document that traditional energy firms are key innovators in the United States’ green patent landscape. These firms produce more, and significantly higher-quality, green innovation. In many green technology spaces, they appear to be influential first movers and to produce ongoing foundational aspects of innovation and commercialization on which other alternative energy producers build. They additionally invest significantly in labor and capital to complement these green innovations. These traditional energy firms, however, receive significantly lower environmental, …
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The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun & Quoc Nguyen Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We document that traditional energy firms are key innovators in the United States’ green patent landscape. These firms produce more, and significantly higher-quality, green innovation. In many green technology spaces, they appear to be influential first movers and to produce ongoing foundational aspects of innovation and commercialization on which other alternative energy producers build. They additionally invest significantly in labor and capital to complement these green innovations. These traditional energy firms, however, receive significantly lower environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores and fund flows and are not rewarded for incremental green innovation. This behavior is consistent with a competitive response by traditional energy firms to preempt obsolescence of current technology by investing in future replacement technologies.
Understanding the migratory response to hurricanes and tropical storms in the USA Patrick Behrer & Valentin Bolotnyy Nature Human Behaviour, December 2025, Pages 2589-2598
Abstract:
The adverse effects of climate change will be worse in some locations than in others, raising the possibility that migration from more severely impacted areas to less impacted areas will reduce future damages. Assessing whether such migration is already occurring can inform our understanding of future responses to climate change. Using data on the paths of all Atlantic basin hurricanes and tropical storms from 1992 to 2017, we study whether outmigration from US counties increases after a storm. On average, storms are not followed by outmigration, and total population-weighted exposure to storms increases over the sample period. Very destructive storms are followed by outmigration, though often to other high-risk counties. Counties with high economic activity see net in-migration after a storm. Given existing policies and incentives, the economic and social benefits of high-risk areas currently appear to outweigh the incentive to reduce exposure to future storms by relocating across counties.
Quantifying the contributions of climate change and adaptation to mortality from unprecedented extreme heat events Christopher Callahan et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 23 December 2025
Abstract:
Understanding the mortality effects of the most extreme heat events is central to climate change risk analysis and adaptation decision-making. Accurate representation of these impacts requires accounting for the effects of prolonged sequences of hot days on mortality, the change in that mortality due to anthropogenic forcing, and the potential compensating effects of adaptation to heat. Here, we revisit the August 2003 heat wave in France, a canonical event in a region with rich climate and mortality data, to understand these influences. We find that standard heat–mortality exposure–response functions underpredict excess deaths in August 2003 by 55% but that accounting for the temporally compounding effects of hot days better matches observed mortality. After accounting for compounding effects and applying a machine learning approach to single-event climate attribution, we attribute 6,079 deaths in August 2003 to climate change. Finally, we show that recent adaptation to heat in France has reduced the projected death tolls of future 2003-like events by more than 75%.
The Real Effects of Protecting Biodiversity Amir Akbari et al. Review of Finance, January 2026, Pages 193-230
Abstract:
Protected areas are a central instrument in biodiversity conservation. However, their broader implications for corporate behavior and financial performance remain underexplored. This study examines how proximity to newly designated protected areas shapes establishment-level environmental, operational, and financial outcomes from 1990 to 2021. We find that nearby establishments significantly reduce toxic emissions, driven not by cleaner technologies but by production cutbacks and workforce contraction. Exploratory evidence suggests that heightened regulatory oversight may be one channel that constrains operations and is associated with lower profitability and market value. These results underscore the environmental benefits of conservation but also reveal the material costs imposed on affected firms. As global conservation initiatives expand, our findings show that biodiversity-related regulatory exposure constitutes a material financial risk that should be incorporated into policy design, corporate strategy, and capital allocation decisions.
Extreme Temperatures Promote High-Fat Diets Xi Chen et al. NBER Working Paper, January 2026
Abstract:
Extreme temperatures threaten agriculture and exacerbate global food insecurity, yet their direct impact on dietary choices remains poorly understood. We provide novel evidence of how short-term exposures to extreme temperatures affect macronutrient intake in China. We show that both hot and cold weather elevate high-fat diet risks. In particular, hot weather reduces carbohydrate and protein consumption but not fat intake, while cold weather increases all nutrient intake, particularly fats. Temperature-induced dietary changes are shaped primarily by physiological responses to thermal stress, whereas physical activities demonstrate little effect. Technologies that improve indoor thermal comfort (via fans, air conditioners, and heating systems) substantially mitigate high-fat diet risks. Socioeconomic disparities are evident, with rural and poor individuals more likely to adopt high-fat diets under hot or cold weather. Projections indicate that more extreme temperatures due to climate change may increase the prevalence of high-fat diets nationally, while substantial regional heterogeneity emerges, with declines in northeast China and increases in southern China. These results highlight a crucial but overlooked pathway linking climate change to dietary health inequality.
Global bias towards recording latitudinal range shifts Pieter Sanczuk et al. Nature Climate Change, January 2026, Pages 21-25
Abstract:
Studies reporting shifts in species distributions may be biased by sampling choices, which can either exaggerate or underestimate range responses to various global changes. Here we demonstrate a geometric bias favouring sampling along latitude, which increases the likelihood of observing latitudinal range shifts as expected under climate warming. A global bias towards studying species redistributions preferentially along warming gradients may veil the true direction and magnitude of range shifts.
AI in Charge: Large-Scale Experimental Evidence on Electric Vehicle Charging Demand Robert Metcalfe et al. NBER Working Paper, January 2026
Abstract:
One of the promising opportunities offered by AI to support the decarbonization of electricity grids is to align demand with low-carbon supply. We evaluated the effects of one of the world’s largest AI managed EV charging tariffs (a retail electricity pricing plan) using a large-scale natural field experiment. The tariff dynamically controlled vehicle charging to follow real-time wholesale electricity prices and coordinate and optimize charging for the grid and the consumer through AI. We randomized financial incentives to encourage enrollment onto the tariff. Over more than a year, we found that the tariff led to a 42% reduction in household electricity demand during peak hours, with 100% of this demand shifted to lower-cost and lower-carbon-intensity periods. The tariff generated substantial consumer savings, while demonstrating potential to lower producer costs, energy system costs, and carbon emissions through significant load shifting. Overrides of the AI algorithm were low, suggesting that this tariff was likely more efficient than a real-time-pricing tariff without AI, given our theoretical framework. We found similar plug-in and override behavior in several markets, including the UK, US, Germany, and Spain, implying the potential for comparable demand and welfare effects. Our findings highlight the potential for scalable AI managed charging and its substantial welfare gains for the electricity system and society. We also show that experimental estimates differed meaningfully from those obtained via non-randomized difference-in-differences analysis, due to differences in the samples in the two evaluation strategies, although we can reconcile the estimates with observables.
‘Bad’ Oil, ‘Worse’ Oil and Carbon Misallocation Renaud Coulomb, Fanny Henriet & Léo Reitzmann Review of Economic Studies, January 2026, Pages 404-437
Abstract:
Not all barrels of oil are created equal: their extraction varies in both private cost and carbon intensity. Leveraging a comprehensive micro-dataset on world oil fields, alongside detailed estimates of carbon intensities and private extraction costs, this study quantifies the additional emissions and costs from having extracted the ’wrong’ deposits. We do so by comparing historical deposit-level supplies to counterfactuals that factor in pollution costs, while keeping annual global consumption unchanged. Between 1992 and 2018, carbon misallocation amounted to at least 11.00 gigatons of CO2-equivalent, incurring an environmental cost evaluated at $2.2 trillion (US$2018). This translates into a significant supply-side ecological debt for major producers of high-carbon oil. Looking forward, we estimate the gains from making deposit-level extraction socially optimal at about 9.30 gigatons of CO2-equivalent evaluated at $1.9 trillion along a future aggregate demand pathway coherent with the objective of net-zero emissions in 2050, and document unequal reserve stranding across oil nations.
Climate change has already made the United States poorer Derek Lemoine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 23 December 2025
Abstract:
The climate is already changing. The present study shows that these changes have already affected the U.S. economy. It develops a formal framework that accounts for how climate change has affected each county’s economy by altering current and past weather, both locally and elsewhere around the country. The results show that climate change is already reducing annual U.S. income by 0.32% [95% CI: −0.17 to 0.82%] by altering counties’ current, local temperatures, with losses concentrated in the Great Plains and Midwest. Accounting for effects on past temperatures and on temperatures in other counties increases income losses to 12% [2.0 to 22%] and makes them more widely distributed, with suggestive evidence that trade networks propagate effects around the United States. Central estimates can change with different indices of nonlocal weather or models of cross-county heterogeneity. Calculations like those developed here could be updated annually as a way of measuring and communicating the progress of climate change.
Fishing fleets as ecosystem sentinels Heather Welch et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 30 December 2025
Abstract:
Marine apex predators are promising sentinels for detecting the ecological impacts of climate variability and change. Fishermen are increasingly recognized as marine apex predators, and there are extensive satellite-based geolocation data on fishing vessel activities. Despite this potential, the utility of fishermen as ecosystem sentinels remains unexamined. Using one million vessel positions from 600 U.S. vessels, we assess the effectiveness of fishermen as sentinels for the ecological impacts of Northeast Pacific marine heatwaves on tuna distribution and availability. Fishermen were skillful predictors of extreme northward shifts for albacore and bluefin tunas, and extreme inshore shifts for albacore. Fishermen signaled low albacore availability over a year in advance of a formal fisheries disaster declaration request. Notably, fishermen also indicated true negatives during marine heatwaves: periods of anomalous warming but stable tuna distribution and availability. This information could aid management of transboundary shifts during marine heatwaves of albacore from U.S. to Canadian waters and bluefin from Mexican to U.S. waters. Advanced warning of fisheries disasters could expedite the delivery of relief funds for struggling communities. The number of Earth-orbiting satellites is exponentially rising, generating a wealth of geospatial information on fishing vessels. This rich and growing resource can signal otherwise unobserved ecological impacts, aiding rapid management responses to climate extremes.