Advanced sustainable accounting and finance

Summary

Students will learn tools and techniques to improve society and create value from an accounting and finance perspective. This course will develop the student's critical thinking, problem-solving and presentation skills to assess and understand the problematics linked to ESG investing and reporting.

Content

Keywords

ESG Reporting, ESG Standards & Frameworks, ESG investment, Net-Zero objectives, ESG Financing, Ethical investing,  Accounting and Finance in the Sustainability context, ESG S&P 500 Index

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Recognize the complexity of ESG and ESG Disclosures
• Examine the trade-offs between creating profits and enhancing ESG
• Distinguish "Greenwashing" and true ESG
• Explore recent developments in sustainability accounting
• Analyze and benchmark ESG and sustainability metrics in the corporate annual reports of companies
• Develop critical thinking, analytical and presentation skills

Transversal skills

• Give feedback (critique) in an appropriate fashion.
• Respect relevant legal guidelines and ethical codes for the profession.
• Identify the different roles that are involved in well-functioning teams and assume different roles, including leadership roles.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking
• Demonstrate a capacity for creativity.
• Continue to work through difficulties or initial failure to find optimal solutions.
• Make an oral presentation.
• Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.

Assessment methods

Group presentations (50% of the grade) and an individual project (25% of the grade), class participation (25% of the grade).

Resources

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

No

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/MGT-540