The University of Oklahoma Price College of Business Center for Financial Studies is organizing the Fifth OU-RFS Climate and Energy Finance Research Conference, to be held at the Vast Conference Center in Oklahoma City from November 14-16, 2024. The conference is co-sponsored by the Review of Financial Studies under its dual review system.
Details of the prior conferences are available at: http://www.ou.edu/price/finance/energyfinanceconf. The organizing theme of this conference will be “Climate Change and the Energy Transition.” The scale and scope of the challenges that must be faced in mitigating climate change while simultaneously ensuring global energy security are encapsulated in four recent news announcements. First, multiple national weather agencies document that 2023 was the hottest year on record, with last summer being easily the hottest ever. Second, and not unrelatedly, US and international energy agencies report that global oil demand averaged a record 102 million barrels per day in 2023, and US oil production exceeded its pre-pandemic record. The third announcement–that the assets under management by ESG-focused investment funds are a record $41 trillion, equal to over one-third of global GDP—illustrates the importance that investors place on addressing environmental issues. Finally, the International Energy Agency reports that worldwide energy-related capital investment likely tallied a record $2.78 trillion in 2023, with over $1.7 trillion of that invested in renewables.
About 12-14 papers will be accepted for presentation in plenary sessions in the conference. Besides academic paper presentations, panels comprised of finance, climate and energy industry leaders will discuss key climate and energy transition issues.
Keynote Speaker: Oliver Hart (Harvard University)
2016 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Program Committee: Viral Acharya (NYU), Jawad Addoum (Cornell), Florian Berg (MIT), Tobias Berg (Goethe University Frankfurt), Sudheer Chava (Georgia Tech), Lauren Cohen (Harvard), Anthony Cookson (Colorado), Jess Cornaggia (Penn State), Zhi Da (Notre Dame), Aswath Damodaran (New York University), Ran Duchin (Boston College), Mariassunta Giannetti (Stockholm School of Economics), Rajna Gibson (University of Geneva), Stefano Giglio (Yale School of Management), Deeksha Gupta (Johns Hopkins University), Matthew Gustafson (Penn State), Jarrad Harford (Washington), Po-Hsuan Hsu (National Tsing Hua University), Kris Jacobs (Houston), Ravi Jagannathan (Northwestern), Philipp Krueger (Geneva), Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College), Lutz Kilian (FRB-Dallas), Soohun Kim (KAIST), Praveen Kumar (Houston), Scott Linn (Oklahoma), Doron Levit (Washington), Pedro Matos (University of Virginia), Marcus Opp (Stockholm School of Economics), Nick Pan (Oklahoma), Michael Pollitt (Cambridge), Amiyatosh Purnanandam (Michigan), Robert Ready (Oregon), David Robinson (Duke), Geert Rouwenhorst (Yale), J.B.Ruhl (Vanderbilt), Chester Spatt (Carnegie Mellon), Zacharias Sautner (University of Zurich), Kelly Shue (Yale), Betty Simkins (Oklahoma State), Laura Starks (UT Austin), Philip Strahan (Boston College), Johannes Stroebel (NYU), Ke Tang (Tsinghua), Kumar Venkataraman (SMU), Grigory Vilkov (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management), Alexander Wagner (University of Zurich), Yongxiang Wang (Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance), Sumudu Watugala (Indiana), Russell Wermers (Maryland), Jeffrey Wurgler (NYU), Liyan Yang (Toronto), Josef Zechner (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Ruishen Zhang (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics), Rui Zhong (University of Western Australia).
RFS Editorial Sponsor: Anna Pavlova (London Business School)
Organizing Committee/Conference Co-chairs: Chitru Fernando (University of Oklahoma), Bill Megginson (University of Oklahoma), Anna Pavlova (London Business School), and Pradeep Yadav (University of Oklahoma).
Paper Submissions: Electronic submissions of unpublished papers can be made via the conference website: http://www.ou.edu/price/finance/energyfinanceconf. The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2024, and authors will be notified by July 31, 2024. There is no submission fee.
Send inquiries to finance@ou.edu.
Review of Financial Studies Combined Submission Option: At the authors’ option, papers submitted to the conference will, in addition, be considered for publication at the RFS free of charge. The rules for the dual submission process are as follows:
1. Authors must expressly indicate interest in consideration by the RFS.
2. At the discretion of the RFS Sponsoring Editor (Anna Pavlova), a small number of dual submissions will be invited to submit to the RFS. The RFS will waive the fee on such submissions, and have the submission formally reviewed. In these cases, authors will receive a copy of the RFS reviewer report(s).
3. Papers submitted for dual consideration must not be under review at another journal or the RFS, nor can they be considered for dual submission if previously rejected by the RFS. Moreover, papers cannot be submitted for dual consideration if they are simultaneously under dual consideration at another journal sponsored by the Society for Financial Studies.
4. In the event that a dual submission that has been invited to submit to the RFS is subsequently rejected, its authors have the option to submit a future version of their paper to the RFS without prejudice.
5. While under consideration as a dual submission by the 2024 OU Climate and Energy Finance Research Conference and the RFS, a paper may not be submitted to another journal (or the RFS) until the author has been notified of the dual submission outcome.
Paper Submissions. The Conference will provide a venue for presentation of the very best academic research on climate and energy finance. We solicit papers, both theoretical and empirical, including but not limited to the following topics:
Climate Finance
• Valuing Environmental Investments and the Corporate Cost of Capital
• Sustainability Factors in Asset Pricing
• Financial Economics of Carbon Taxation and Emissions Trading Mechanisms
• Resolving ESG Ratings Conflicts
• Institutional Investors’ Role in Promoting the Green Transition
• Banking and Climate Finance
• Issues in Climate Disclosure: ESG vs Emissions
• Climate Risk and Real Estate Pricing
• Challenges in Managing and Hedging Climate Risk
• Operational and Financial Determinants of Sustainable Investment
• ESG and Corporate Organizational Forms
• Climate Risk, Hedging, and Insurance
• Financial Economics of Mandatory ESG Disclosure
• Sustainability Financing through Private Equity and Venture Capital
Energy Finance
• The Financial Economics of Carbon Capture and Fossil Fuel Investments
• The Financial Economics of Hydrogen
• Energy Storage and Sustainability
• The Financing and Governance Roles of Sovereign Wealth Funds
• Privatization and Nationalization of National Oil, Gas, and Mineral Resources
• Project Finance and the Funding of Climate and Energy Infrastructure Projects
• Measuring and Managing Stranded Asset Risks
• Transition Risks for Energy Companies
• Financing Rare Earth and Specialty Mineral Investments
• Derisking the energy transition
