The Big Carbon Bet:United States Carbon Markets A ONE TRILLION DOLLAR BET:
CLIMATE: Emerging carbon markets spotlighted at U.N. conference (02/14/2008)
Nathanial Gronewold, special to Greenwire
UNITED NATIONS -- Financial experts, investors and government leaders are exploring opportunities for profit here today in an emerging global marketplace aimed at curbing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
That was the message at a gathering of more than 480 corporate leaders, private foundation heads, and state government controllers and treasurers that kicked off this morning at U.N. headquarters in New York.
"The point is we can't think big. We have to think huge," the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, John Holdren, told 480 participants in what is billed as "the largest gathering of financial and corporate leaders ... ever to examine the climate change issue."
The third Investors Summit on Climate Risk is aimed at encouraging CEOs -- estimated to control some $20 trillion in assets -- to consider the range of risks posed by global warming as well as the economic opportunities in adapting to and mitigating those risks.
Attention here is focused squarely on four major reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the debate in the U.S. Congress over establishing a national cap-and-trade system for greenhouse-gas emissions.
"The stunning nature of those [IPCC] reports ... have really given policymakers and the business community a very clear framework about the issue of climate and what has to be done to stabilize the emissions of carbon in our world," said Timothy Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation and a former Democratic senator from Colorado.
Report sees $1T U.S. market
A U.S. cap-and-trade system could yield huge financial dividends, according to a report released today by the emissions-credit trading firm New Carbon Finance. The report estimates a U.S. market could reach $1 trillion by 2020 -- about double the size of the E.U. market. The report is based on the firm's analysis of climate bills circulating on Capitol Hill.
New Carbon Finance believes that the domestic U.S. price for carbon could reach $40 per metric ton as early as 2015. That in turn would boost prices that companies and households would have to pay for energy -- 20 percent for electricity, 13 percent for gasoline and about 10 percent for natural gas.
Most investors and government officials here expressed confidence that a U.S. carbon abatement program is coming, most likely a cap-and-trade plan.
"Even if the current Bush administration rejects all of these bills, the next president will be less inclined to use a veto," said Michael Liebreich, CEO and New Energy Finance, parent of New Carbon Finance.
Sun Microsystems CEO Vinod Khosla, International Energy Agency Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka, and California State Controller John Chiang led panel discussions focused on investments in cleaner energy production, renewable energy, and discussed ways to factor climate change impacts into long-term corporate strategies.
And former Vice President Al Gore -- who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for climate work with the IPCC panel -- is scheduled to speak at a private luncheon that will be followed by panels led by executives from Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and state officials from California and Oregon.