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Global Clean Tech Investment Growth Seen Slipping    •

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    Investors Tackling Global Warming While Governments Spar
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 21 February 2008

    Monte Carlo, Monaco - Private companies will soon be investing more than governments in cutting the production of greenhouse gases, the U.N.'s top climate change official said Thursday.

    Yvo de Boer said business efforts were good but also not enough - and that only a binding international agreement on cutting carbon emissions will make private sector efforts financially viable.

    "Business is really beginning to take climate change into account," de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention for Climate Change, told The Associated Press. "There's a momentum building in the finance community."

    He was speaking on the sidelines of a U.N. Environment Program forum in Monaco, the biggest meeting of environment ministers since international talks in Bali, Indonesia, in December produced agreement to adopt a plan by 2009 on collective worldwide efforts to reduce global warming.

    French nuclear manufacturing giant Areva announced Thursday that it went "carbon neutral" in 2007, joining the list of companies that say they have or plan to do so. An increasing number of multinational corporations are reporting their carbon footprint in their annual reports - and seeking to reduce it to please shareholders.

    Going "carbon neutral" generally means taking steps to compensate for the greenhouse gases that companies or individuals emit in doing business or in their daily lives. Such measures can involve funding projects that aim to reduce emissions elsewhere in the world of the gases blamed for climate warming, for example by giving money to plant trees, build hydroelectric dams, or provide cooking stoves that use less fuel.

    Towns and even countries are also trying to compensate for their emissions. Costa Rica says it wants to be carbon neutral by 2020, and China's sustainable cities program is aiming to do something similar on a municipal level.

    De Boer predicted that private investment would soon outpace government investment in combating global warming. Already, he noted that the world's carbon markets generated US$60 billion (€40 billion) last year, compared to about US$80 billion (€55 billion) in official development aid for climate change.

    Most of that private investment is going into carbon emissions trading deals. Rich nations that signed on to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol were given a limit for permitted carbon emissions. Companies in these countries can earn credit toward their quotas by paying to clean up the environment in poorer nations.

    It took several years for the emissions trading scheme to catch on on a large scale, amid skepticism about global warming and fears that "green" investments weren't profitable.

    But de Boer said companies are increasingly signing on as consensus has grown about the causes and dangers of global warming and as they brace for tougher government emissions rules expected post-2012.

    Some of the private investment is in renewable energies such as wind and solar power - and nuclear energy, which has many activists wary.

    The Bali talks were aimed at launching negotiations to replace the relatively modest emissions cuts laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The final agreement from Bali has no specific emissions reductions targets, at the U.S. delegation's insistence.

    Many countries are looking to the next U.S. president to mobilize American government efforts against climate change after years of resistance by U.S. President George W. Bush.

    De Boer noted that leading presidential candidates John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton all support government limits on emissions.

    The challenge, he said, will be coming up with an international plan that will pass the U.S. Senate, where many are reluctant to endorse anything that does not require developing nations such as China to cut emissions, too.

    The current U.S. administration's position caused tensions at the Monaco conference. The U.S. delegation insisted that the conclusions reached this week be merely "welcomed" instead of formally "adopted" - a position ridiculed by several European and African ministers present.

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    Global Clean Tech Investment Growth Seen Slipping
    By Gerard Wynn
    Reuters

    Friday 22 February 2008

    Monaco - Booming global investor interest in an emerging industry to supply clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels, such as wind and solar, has temporarily peaked in the wake of a widespread credit squeeze, a U.N. official said.

    Investment by major, institutional investors such as banks and pension funds soared 229 percent last year in technologies that produce and store low carbon-emitting renewable energy or that cut waste, on the back of rapidly rising concern about global warming and government support to combat it.

    But such investments may not hit such peaks this year as investors withdraw money generally from financial markets lacking confidence after failing, sub-prime mortgage repayments fed a cycle of credit pullbacks by lenders.

    "You can already see the consequences of sub-prime, a lot of money coming out," said Paul Clements-Hunt, head of the United Nations Environment Program's Finance Initiative.

    "You did have a spike effect last year. It will plateau at a higher level and for decades," he added, reflecting widespread enthusiasm for the long-term future of the renewable energy sector.

    Clements-Hunt was speaking at a "CleanEquity" conference in Monaco organized by corporate finance advisers Innovator Capital.

    Solar stocks particularly fell in January in the wake of investor fears that these were overvalued, but the effects of sub-prime had hit the clean tech sector generally.

    An exchange-traded fund that tracked the biggest 30 clean tech stocks worldwide by market cap dropped more than 30 percent in the first three weeks of January, said Jean-Marc O'Brien of Ardour Capital.

    "Investors have to be nimble," he said on the sidelines of the conference.

    But specialist fund managers remained confident in the clean energy sector at a time of rising interest in climate change and spiraling oil prices.

    "I can't say I'm serenely confident, but I can sleep at night ... it's only going one way," said New Energy Fund's Mark Cox.

    The CleanEquity conference closed on Thursday with awards designed by British artist Damien Hirst and presented by Monaco's sovereign Prince Albert II for the three most innovative of 48 presenting companies.

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