Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 9 Jan 08;
Global warming is forcing the world to change the way it does business, according to a new report.
A more sustainable global economy is emerging as countries and companies move to combat the challenges posed by climate change.
Huge amounts of money are pouring into clean energy projects, carbon trading and environmental and energy hedge funds, says the annual State of the World 2008 report from the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organisation.
"Once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, environmental problems are drastically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers, affecting over £50bn in annual capital flows," said the report's co-directors Gary Gardner and Thomas Prugh.
The report reveals that an estimated £26bn was invested in renewable energy in 2006, up 33 per cent from 2005 and early estimates say it will reach £33bn in 2007.
Carbon trading grew even more explosively, reaching an estimated £15bn billion in 2006, nearly triple the amount traded in 2005.
Some of the world's biggest companies have announced breakthrough environmental initiatives in the past two years and in a surprising U-turn, huge corporations in American were actually pressing the US Congress to pass laws regulating greenhouse gas emissions, something that would have been unthinkable even two years ago, according to the report.
Companies had also woken up the fact that they could actually make money out of becoming more environmentally friendly. The chemical giant DuPont had cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 72 per cent below 1991 levels by 2007, saving £1.5bn.
Another sign of dramatic change was the 575 environmental and energy hedge funds which had sprung up in the last few years. Clean technology was now the third most popular destination for venture capital behind the internet and biotechnology.
And 54 banks, representing 85 per cent of global private project finance capacity, have endorsed the Equator Principles, a new international standard of sustainability investment.
But the report said two major economic modelling studies had estimated that climate change damage could equal as much as eight per cent of global economic output by the end of the century.
The World Bank had calculated that 39 countries had lost five per cent or more of their wealth because of unsustainable forest harvesting, depletion of non-renewable resources, and damage from carbon emissions. For 10 countries, the decline ranged from 25 to 60 per cent.
The report calls for major reforms of government policy to steer investment away from destructive activities such as the extraction of oil and gas and toward a new generation of environmentally sustainable industries if global economic collapse is to be averted.
It said subsidies for fossil fuels should be reduced and replaced by environmental taxes.
"We have the tools today to steer the global economy onto a sustainable path," said report authors Gardner and Prugh.
"The task now is to bring them together and scale them up so that they become the norm across today's economies."
The report said there was growing evidence suggesting the global economy was destroying its own ecological base.
Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin said: "Continued human progress now depends on an economic transformation that is more profound than any seen in the last century.
"We should be practising a sustainable approach to economics that takes advantage of the ability of markets to allocate scarce resources while explicitly recognizing that our economy is dependent on the broader ecosystem that contains it."
He added: "It is breathtaking to see how much innovation has been unleashed by the wave of concern about climate change that has broken across the world in the past year, culminating in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the world's leading climate scientists and their most effective evangelist, Al Gore."
"Innovative ideas and big money are a powerful combination - and the sums now moving in a green direction are eye-popping."
# State of the World 2008 costs £14.99 plus plus p&p and can be purchased through the Earthscan website at www.earthscan.co.uk, by emailing earthinfo@earthscan.co.uk.
Factfile
Energy
• Corporate R&D spending on clean energy technologies reached $9.1 billion in 2006.
• Venture capital and private equity investment in clean energy totalled $8.6 billion in 2006, 69 per cent above the 2005 level and 10 times the 2001 level.
• Average auto efficiency standards will soon rise to 47 miles per gallon in Japan and 49 miles per gallon in Europe. Biofuel production has grown by 20 per cent per year since 2005.
Agriculture
• A 2003 Swedish study found that beef cattle raised organically on grass emit 40 per cent fewer greenhouse gases and use 85 per cent less energy to make beef than cattle fed on grain.
• A recent two-year study found that sows raised in hoop houses had more live births than those in confinement facilities. Researchers found that group housing could reduce production costs by as much as 11 per cent compared with use of gestation crates.
• Wal-Mart announced that within three to five years it would be certifying that all its seafood for the North American market was raised sustainably.
Investing for Sustainability
• The Equator Principles have been endorsed by 54 signatory banks and represent over 85 per cent of global private project finance capacity.
According to the UN, global venture capital and private equity investment in sustainable energy totaled $8.6bn in 2006, up 69 per cent from $5.1bn in 2005, with the number of deals increasing by 12 per cent.
• There are now 575 environmental and energy hedge funds. Global "clean-tech" capital investment increased by 78 per cent in 2006 to $2.9bn, making it the third-largest venture investment category (and the third largest such sector in both China and the United States).
Measuring Wealth and Wellbeing
• Bhutan has made "gross national happiness," not economic growth per se, its official goal.
• Interest in ways to promote human wellbeing is widening among policymakers, with well-being now a national policy goal in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
• A recent global assessment found green accounting programs in place in at least 50 countries and identified at least 20 other countries that were planning to initiate such programmes soon.
