As the uncertainty over the outcome of the global climate change negotiations continues, carbon consultants are increasingly reinventing their businesses to expand into alternative opportunities in related fields like renewable energy, clean technology and environmental sustainability, irrespective of their carbon component.
CDM
When UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon held a press briefing at the UN Global Compact Leaders’ Summit 2010 in New York, he had Ajit Gulabchand, CMD, HCC for company.
Transfer of clean technology from industrialised countries to developing countries is one of the main issues holding up progress in climate change talks in Copenhagen.
India’s insistence on transfer of clean technology from industrialised countries to developing countries may indicate that the country has a fixed position on fighting climate change, but in practice the country has been pursuing a multi-pronged policy.
UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer’s worst fear is if the climate change agreement in Copenhagen is not 100% clear and countries have to spend time arguing how to implement the agreement than implementing it.
The global Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is set to look up. The Certified Emission Reduction (CERs) credits issued under CDM would double by 2010, says new research by IDEAcarbon, a carbon rating agency. CERs are issued by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to projects in developing counties for reducing the emission of planet warming greenhouse gases (GHG). Reduction of one tonne of carbon dioxide per year earns one CER.
The next round of climate change talks in Bonn hang on who will commit and to how much cuts in GHG emissions? Who will pay developing countries for emission cuts and how much? How can cleantech be transferred from developed to developing countries?
While some b-schools are launching programmes on sustainability, others are starting courses in climate change, CDM and carbon trading.
India is promising to become the world’s clean energy hot spot. Seven trends are catalysing the evolution of low-carbon economy in India.
Clean technology or cleantech is a happening business opportunity worldwide. Venture capitalists invested $2.2 billion in US cleantech companies in 2007.