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As the United States Senate prepares to re-visit climate change legislation, the special envoy to the Chinese president voiced grave concern over the effects un-mitigated climate change could have on China’s economy.

“The scale of economic destruction would be equivalent to that of the two world wars and the Great Depression combined” if global temperatures rise by 3°C to 4°C, Xie Zhenhua wrote recently in the China Economic Herald.  ”Human beings cannot afford such disasters.”

In now appears that the group of BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) are becoming more amenable to the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, which they had previously resisted heartedly.  This resistance was a major reason why the United States never ratified the treaty, which is set to expire in 2012.  BASIC environment ministers will meet in South Africa later this month to incorporate elements of the Copenhagen Accord, the non-binding agreement formulated at the Copenhagen climate talks last December, can be worked into a broader global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

Read more here and here…

After three days of negotiations between 194 countries, the UN’s latest round of climate talks in Bonn, Germany drew to a close with plans for further negotiations in Cancún, Mexico this December.  Two additional negotiating sessions will be added during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which takes place from May 31st to June 11th.

Yvo de Boer, the outgoing executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said “The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún must do what Copenhagen did not achieve: It must finalize a functioning architecture for implementation that launches global climate action, across the board, especially in developing nations.”

Mr. de Boer explained that certain issues in particular demand global attention, namely mitigation targets and action, an adaptation package, new technology mechanism, financial arrangements, deforestation issues as well as a capacity-building framework.

Read more here…

China and India have formally agreed to ratify the Copenhagen Accord, the global climate agreement which stemmed from last year’s U.N. climate change convention in Copenhagen.

Over 100 countries have already approved the Accord, which aims to limit the increase in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels.  The Accord also calls for spending on the scale of $100 billion a year to assist emerging countries in making adaptations to climate change.

China and India are two of the world’s fastest growing economies, and in recent years their rates of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions have skyrocketed.  By joining the Accord, China and India have added legitimacy to the treaty and have demonstrated to the rest of the world that they are serious about addressing these important climate issues.

Read the full article…

Affluent countries are making good on their Copenhagen promises to provide monetary aid to poor nations grappling with the effects of climate change. Thus far, funding pledges for 2010-2012 are nearly $30 billion, including $15 billion from Japan and €7 billion from the European Union.

However, the “Copenhagen Green Climate Fund” planned in last month’s conference has not yet been implemented, making it likely that the donor countries will each determine how their aid packages are distributed and to whom.  Delegates from China, India, Brazil and South Africa have welcomed the pledge, calling the $10 billion expected to be released in 2010 an important symbol of rich countries’ willingness to help.

The Copenhagen Accord set forth a January 31^st deadline for nations to submit quantitative details on their voluntary emissions reductions targets and achievement strategies.  The United States has formally submitted its approval, and informed the United Nations of its intent to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.  Todd Stern, the chief U.S. climate change negotiator, said final emissions targets will be submitted following Congress’ passage of energy legislation requiring carbon cuts.

Although carbon markets have struggled to find their footing in the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate talks, Reuters is reporting an uptick in demand for voluntary carbon credits.

“Since this year started we have seen a huge amount of interest – mostly from the U.S. – in carbon credits and it won’t be long before the voluntary market begins really to gain some momentum,” said Matthew Sullivan, CEO of carbon offset retailer the Carbon Advice Group.

The unregulated voluntary market is a mechanism for businesses to buy and sell credits – known as Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) or Gold Standards – for self-imposed and self-regulated emission reductions schemes.  It operates separately from the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which together comprise the vast majority of the global carbon market.

Interest in both the CDM and the ETS has wavered since Copenhagen, as analysts and traders try to make sense of how the Copenhagen Accord, the non-binding agreement produced at the conference, will affect future demand and prices across the market.

Reuters, 14 January 2010 – Green technologies posed the investment opportunity of our lifetime said Deutsche Bank’s global head of asset management, in a study published on Thursday.

A Deutsche Bank report found that companies specialising in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected more to come in 2010.

Clear proof of the threat posed by climate change meant that governments will only ramp up steps to curb carbon emissions and favour clean technologies, it said.

“The shift to a low-carbon economy to mitigate global warming will require the creation of new technologies, industries and jobs on a massive scale,” said Kevin Parker. Deutsche Asset Management had $695 billion in assets under management as of September 2009.

“The absolute imperative to prevent climate change is therefore also, I believe, the economic and investment opportunity of our lifetime,” he commented in the report.

Deutsche bankers looked on the bright side of a Copenhagen climate summit last December which failed in its main objective to drive global consensus on action to fight climate change.

Their report instead pointed to proliferating national green policies, regardless of a multilateral deal to fight climate change. Copenhagen failed to agree a mandate to agree a legally binding successor to the existing Kyoto Protocol.

“What matters far more is that national and local governments all over the world are not waiting for a supra-national framework,” said Parker.

“They are already pushing ahead with their own policies that will do far more than international regulation in the short to medium term to stimulate private investment.”

The report called for clearer, more transparent policies such as feed-in tariffs which typically guarantee particular prices for electricity generated from renewable sources over several decades, giving investors comfort to fund projects.

Since the 2009 low in global stocks, indices showed that energy efficiency stocks had risen 126 percent and clean energy and technology by 88 percent compared with wider global stocks’ 70 percent, Thursday’s report showed.

“Climate change is not merely an investment sector that may hold future promise; it is a sector that has already delivered and is continuing to deliver,” said Parker.

“That is why we believe institutional investors should be shifting their asset allocation towards climate change.”

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by William Hardy)

Sourced from the Thomson Reuters Carbon Markets Community – a free, gated online network for carbon market and climate policy professionals.

Global Fund Exchange is pleased to report that numerous institutional investors, Wall Street and corporate leaders, controlling trillions in capital, will gather today (January 14th) at the United Nations in New York at the first high-level investor forum following December’s Copenhagen COP15 climate negotiations.

Speakers include George Soros, chairman, Soros Fund Management, Al Gore, former US Vice President and chairman of Generation Investment Management, Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management, Anne Stausboll, chief executive of CalPERS and Rick Lacaille, CIO, State Street Global Advisors.

The meeting is sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, Ceres and the United Nations Office for Partnerships.

Deutsche’s Kevin Parker said: “In the wake of Copenhagen, we urgently need to figure out where the investments needed to solve climate change are going to come from. Investors cannot wait for an international agreement to begin shifting financial flows toward building a low-carbon economy.”

Link to the Conference

Watch the meeting live

The post-Copenhagen fallout continues.

China is taking a fair share of criticism from unhappy politicians, negotiators and activists who say that the developing giant prevented adoption of a more ambitious global climate accord in order to protect itself economically.  China has responded in turn, calling these attacks unfounded and citing other developed nations’ reluctance to commit to hefty reductions.

On the contrary, China is satisfied with its participation in Copenhagen, and says for the first time in its history, the nation will reduce domestic emissions in the form of reducing carbon intensity.  Legislation to that effect is intended to go before the National People’s Congress, the highest law-making body.

Read the full article…

The outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks has raised uncertainty over the future of the global carbon market, leaving many analysts and traders wondering about short term market activity.

The Copenhagen Accord which resulted from the talks did not include legally binding targets for carbon dioxide emissions, which may hurt prices for European Union carbon allowances (EUAs), which are traded on the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.  Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), allowances traded under the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), may also take a price hit.

Lack of political direction and and expected drop in the number of projects entering the CDM pipeline have made many analysts bearish for the short term.  However, with the addition of a possible U.S. cap and trade scheme, others are not so quick to write off the sector.

Read more opinions here…

After a tense two weeks of negotiations and over two years of preparatory talks, delegates at the COP15 Copenhagen Climate Summit finally formulated a global agreement, reinforcing the need for strong international action on climate change issues.

The Copenhagen Accord is a non-binding agreement between developed and developing nations which aims to cap overall temperature rise to within 2° Celcius.  Over the next three years, $30 billion in financing from developed nations will help support emissions reductions projects in some of the world’s poorest countries.  Developed nations are working towards a long term, $100 billion a year financing plan by 2020.  Read more about the Copenhagen Accord…

The Copenhagen Accord is not a legally binding agreement, and many delegates are frustrated with the underwhelming results of the talks.  World leaders like Barack Obama, on the other hand, called the accord “an important breakthrough,” but stressed that much more action is needed to truly address the global threat of climate change.  Read more about world responses to the conference…

Greg Neichin of the Cleantech Group offers 3 reasons why the Copenhagen Climate Change conference doesn’t actually matter to the clean energy industry:

Follow the money, not the politicking: Governments around the world are appropriating gargantuan sums toward competing in what they know will be a race for competitive advantage in a resource constrained future. The Obama administration has poured tens of billions into the market and China is reported to be spending $9B a month. Smart venture money is closely following these flows of capital. Money talks far louder than any political sound bite.

Even without regulation, corporate cleantech investment and adoption should be a no-brainer: Regulation is a tool that will be employed by smart governments that seek to accelerate clean, economic development. Regulation may determine which regional economies are winners, but is distinct from which global corporations will be winners. As Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame writes in his Sunday’s New York Times piece, Will Big Business Save The Earth?, global corporations such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Chevron get it. “Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image—one attained, by say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters—reduces criticism from employees, consumers, and government.” You may take issue with Diamond’s specific corporate examples, but there isn’t a responsible boardroom anywhere on the planet that is not spending time evaluating how sustainability (and by extension, clean technologies) should be incorporated into future strategy.

Climate change is only one driver for the cleantech imperative: The Copenhagen meeting, as its title suggests, is about climate change. As we are all quite familiar with by now, the world, in the oft-repeated words of Thomas Friedman, is getting hot, flat, and crowded. While addressing climate change has profoundly positive secondary effects, the Copenhagen proceedings are simply oriented around how to combat “hot”. Even if we were to strike “hot” by conceding to climate change skeptics, the world is still getting crowded, and more importantly, flat (and hence consumptive). The need to manage and conserve resources on a planet that is crowding into cities, consuming at faster and faster rates, generating more and more waste, and in greater need of food and water, is of dire consequence whether or not the planet is getting hotter. So for all these reasons, I’m firmly convinced the momentum the clean technology sector has shown this year, with increased public and private funding, even a return to exits (see Will A123Systems revive the IPO market?), has been in spite of COP15, not driven by it.

Latest news from Copenhagen – a draft political text is calling for a global commitment to reduce carbon emissions 50% from 1990 levels by the year 2050.  Developing nations are encouraged to reduce their emissions 80% by that time.

Read the Copenhagen draft text here…

The climate summit is currently in its second week, and despite rousing addresses from global heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama, the delegates remain deeply divided over issues of funding, transparency and enforcement of proposed emissions reductions.  All are hopeful that the conference will conclude with a cohesive treaty reached.

8:43 AM EST, December 18, 2009

Good morning. It is an honor for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. All of you would not be here unless you — like me — were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, it is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. This much we know.

The question, then, before us is no longer the nature of the challenge — the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now, and it hangs in the balance.

I believe we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of a common threat. That’s why I come here today — not to talk, but to act. (Applause.)

Now, as the world’s largest economy and as the world’s……….read more