Stranded assets and environment-related risk

This thesis represents the first comprehensive attempt at providing conceptual and scholarly coherence to the topic of stranded assets and the environment. Over the last five years the topic has risen up the agenda and has become of significant interest to scholars and practitioners alike, as it has influenced a number of pressing issues facing investors, companies, policymakers, regulators, and civil society in relation to global environmental change. The thesis reveals how the topic developed and emerged, notably through a unique first-person account based on autoethnography and close dialogue. Four self- contained papers demonstrate the wide applicability of stranded assets, and further existing, relatively well-developed literatures (namely carbon budgets and stranded costs) and also two much less developed literatures (namely the calibration of climate policy to minimise stranded assets and policy mechanisms to quickly and efficiently strand assets). Though a significant amount has been written on stranded assets over a short period, there remain significant gaps in the literature. The thesis identifies substantial research opportunities, particularly to better connect our understanding of physical and societal environment-related risks; to improve our knowledge of perception and behaviour in relation to the creation and management of stranded assets; to expand the scope of work into new sectors and geographies; and to place stranded assets in an appropriate historical perspective. Stranded assets is, if anything, a geographical concept. The thesis makes the case for economic geography as the disciplinary home for stranded assets. The sub-discipline can both contribute to the development of stranded assets as a scholarly endeavour and itself benefit from interacting with a topic that intersects with some of the most pressing contemporary issues related to environmental sustainability.