Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Equity Portfolios

Abstract

This paper investigates the e ect of reducing the carbon footprint of Swedish equity portfolios. In order to decrease CO2e emission of investments, the constituents of the portfolios are re-weighted with regards to their carbon footprint, while minimizing the tracking error against a benchmark portfolio. The study provides insight to whether it is possible to construct portfolios with lower CO2e in a limited investment environment. Our ndings show that we can decrease carbon footprint by 25% without altering the portfolios' sector exposure or su ering loss of returns. The optimization incorporates a recently proposed Swedish national standard for calculating portfolio footprint as well as a calculation of how much an investor contributes to emission when investing 1000 SEK a month for ten years in each of the portfolios.