Tag Archives: finance
Divestment? Engagement? Video of my New School talk on investor strategies to address climate risk
Financing the Clean Energy Future: Panel from 2014 Investor Summit on Climate Risk
At the United Nations last week a panel of financial experts discussed the keys to quadrupling annual global investment in clean energy by 2030. The panel included my colleague Mark Fulton, who served as Editor of the new Ceres report – “Investing in the Clean Trillion: Closing the Clean Energy Investment Gap” – on which I had the privilege to serve as Lead Analyst. A full list of panelists is below; check out their thoughtful and provocative ideas on how to link capital markets to clean energy.
Watch the panel at the link below (to get to the start of the panel, fast-forward this video to 1:55, or an hour and fifty-five minutes in):
– Mark Fulton, Senior Fellow, Ceres; Founding Partner, Energy Transition Advisors
– Jack Ehnes, CEO, California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) (moderator)
– Lisa Carnoy, Head of Global Capital Markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
– Michael Liebreich, CEO, Bloomberg New Energy Finance
How many financial leaders does it take to quadruple investment in clean energy? – “Clean Trillion” report released at UN summit
What do Bob Rubin, Tom Steyer, Christiana Figueres, Richard Trumpka, and the NYS/NYC Comptrollers have in common? They and 500 other global financial leaders were all at the United Nations last week for the release of a new Ceres report – Investing in the Clean Trillion: Closing The Clean Energy Investment Gap – on which I had the privilege to serve as Lead Analyst (with my former Deutsche Bank colleague Mark Fulton as Lead Editor).
The report provides 10 recommendations for investors, companies and policymakers to increase annual global investment in clean energy to at least $1 trillion by 2030 – a roughly four-fold jump from 2012-13 levels. Such an increase is the bare minimum necessary to limit future global temperature to two degrees Celsius (2 °C) above pre-industrial levels and avert the worst impacts of climate change.
A list of the report’s recommendations are below, and you can read the full report (or much shorter executive summary) here.
Mobilize Investor Action to Scale Up Clean Energy Investment
1. Develop capacity to boost clean energy investments and consider a goal such as 5% portfolio-wide clean energy investments
2. Elevate scrutiny of fossil fuel companies’ potential carbon asset risk exposure
3. Engage portfolio companies on the business case for energy efficiency and renewable energy sourcing, as well as on financing vehicles to support such efforts
4. Support efforts to standardize and quantify clean energy investment data and products to improve market transparency
Promote Green Banking and Debt Capital Markets
5. Encourage “green banking” to maximize private capital flows into clean energy
6. Support issuances of asset-backed securities to expand debt financing for clean energy projects
7. Support development bank finance and technical assistance for emerging economies
Reform Climate, Energy and Financial Policies
8. Support regulatory reforms to electric utility business models to accelerate deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
9. Support government policies that result in a strong price on carbon pollution from fossil fuels and phase out fossil fuel subsidies
10. Support policies to de-risk deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
Reid Capalino's blog 