This article, by James Palmer and Prof. Michael Mainelli and part of the London Accord, is intended to provide an illustration of the application of portfolio modelling to climate change investment. For more information go to www.london-accord.co.uk

As part of the Centre for Social Markets’ Climate Challenge India Initiative, this paper looks at the state of renewable energy in India.  The challenges faced by India, projected by the International Energy Agency to be the world’s 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2015, are fairly daunting.  Although this means there are many opportunities as well. The Centre for Social Markets (CSM) is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to making markets work for the triple bottom line – people, planet and profits.

(Washington, February 9, 2009) – Over 50 of the world’s leading scientists, China experts, political and business leaders recommend immediate action to create a new, groundbreaking collaboration with China to address the urgent issue of climate change.  In a report released today by Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, these leading figures provide the Obama administration a new policy roadmap for immediate action with China.

The researchers from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy conclude that about US$400 billion should be spent worldwide on ‘green’ policies and investments which also help economic recovery and lay the foundations of sustainable low-carbon growth. The report, ‘An outline of the case for a ‘green’ stimulus’, points out that this sum represents about 20 per cent of the US$2 trillion, or 4 per cent of global gross domestic product, that governments might spend in the next 18 months on fiscal stimulus packages to lessen the economic downturn.

The Ubuntu Declaration is the product of the recent Emergency Congress, with Rights and Humanity, the South African Human Rights Commission and Tomorrow's Company. The Declaration sets out a holistic and systemic policy framework for what to do now to protect the world's poorest peoples, how to reform the global financial system, and how to create the conditions for sustainable development and effective growth. It starts by recognising  - as we would describe it - the importance of 'the triple context': that we all need to bring the economic, social and environmental systems into balance. The Ubuntu declaration consciously and clearly argues for the alignment of the development agenda alongside tackling the climate crunch, the credit crunch  and the threat to  biodiversity.   Amongst other things It calls for one third - $750bn - or current world stimulus packages to be focussed to the green agenda: recongising that this will be the most efficient in creating jobs and building a...