Carbon Market Won’t Have U.S. Cap and Trade This Decade: HSBC
The global market for low-carbon energy and efficiency projects probably won’t benefit from a U.S. cap-and-trade program this decade, HSBC Holdings Plc said.
A U.S. greenhouse-gas trading program may not encourage low-emitting technology until after 2020, Nick Robins, an HSBC analyst, said today in an interview in London. That’s according to a “conviction scenario” for global new energy investment set out today in an e-mailed research note from the London bank.
Rich nations that have contributed most heat-trapping emissions to the atmosphere may this decade change their policies to take advantage of new energy opportunities rather than seeing carbon limits as burdening industries with additional costs, Robins said. “You’ll get more jobs, you’ll get more growth, more exports, maybe you’ll become more secure in energy,” he said.
United Nations Climate Chief Christiana Figueres said on June 9 negotiations to extend Kyoto Protocol limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are unlikely to succeed this year. Global coal demand held near a record in 2009, underpinning high emissions, while oil consumption dropped 1.7 percent and natural-gas use fell 2.1 percent, according to BP Plc’s June 2010 Statistical Review.
Least-developed nations at least will require financial help to cope with climate change from richer nations that have contributed most to the risks, Robins said. “For the developing countries, not the huge economies of China and so on, there clearly is a need for transfers of both public and private money.”
Market May Triple
HSBC said the global market for low-carbon energy and efficiency projects will triple to $2.2 trillion by 2020. The bank based its forecasts on the likelihood of meeting renewable energy, efficiency and carbon-dioxide emissions laws.
“We recognize significant upside and downside risks to our forecasts, but even in our most bearish scenario, we expect the market to double by 2020,” Robins said in the note.
The bank expects the European Union will meet its renewable energy targets and miss its energy-efficiency targets. The U.S. has limited growth in the clean-energy sector, and China will exceed its renewable-capacity target by 40 percent, according to the report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net Catherine Airlie at cairlie@bloomberg.net
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