Investment And The Environment
Your author has tickets to EBS next week (26th and 27th March in Brussels). This isn’t because of my stellar environmental knowledge, but for other occupational reasons. For those that don’t know, EBS is the European Business Summit and is a similar type of event to Davos. However, EBS concentrates on the environment, business and innovation.
EBS is a very high level event. To my knowledge, there will be 10 European Commissioners there, many many, global CEOs and probably lots of other important folk that I am simply unaware of for now.
All this anticipation has had me thinking about the environment, climate change and investment a little more than might be normal…
Whilst the topics to be discussed - and the panels to discuss them - were set some time ago, they still appear to be relevant. In other words, since set, the world has not fixed either climate change or the global financial crisis and recession. It is quite possible that these issues could be identical next year. And the year after…
I wonder whether the financial world is suddenly switching off the capital to new, small companies that are trying to develop breakthrough clean energy technologies and equipment. If they are then it could be a shame for more than just some venture capital investors. It could be a real problem for us all.
In this recent report by Ethical Corp. they report how the ultra-rich are not very well targeted with specialist ethical investments - even though interest in such products is rising. The mega-wealthy of this world, of which I am not one, have massive amounts of investment potential and would be a sure way of bringing capital into these smaller firms.
Of course, other ways of creating funds for what is known as ethical investment include venture capital, private equity, hedge funds and angel investors. Currently, most of that list would appear to have bigger issues to worry about (short-term survival) than investing for the planet.
Governments too can and should play a part in developing lower impact technology, but it could easily appear that they are a little ‘tapped out’ right now, having helped out the world’s banks and insurance companies.
I will be sure to report back on anything interesting I pick up on this and other related topics at EBS. Until then…