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Behind the numbers
01 May 2008Statistics can obscure as much as they illuminate. Ivo Knoepfel and Gordon Hagart caution that the rash of numbers showing the growth of socially responsible and sustainable investments should be treated with caution
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Cleaning up the energy sector
01 May 2008The credit crisis, likely carbon caps and a new president will all impact on the US renewables market. But, as Michael Eckhart tells Christopher Cundy, the industry's future remains very bright
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Opening the books.
01 May 2008Corporate responsibility reporting is getting deeper and broader – by and large. Paul Scott reviews trends in corporate disclosure
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Picking up speed
01 May 2008Richard Boddington and Simon Luby examine how trends in wind farm financing have evolved as the market has entered the mainstream
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China issues environmental insurance, securities diktats
01 April 2008China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) has issued 'green insurance', 'green securities' and 'green trade' regulations, three of five expected 'green economic' schemes. The regulations are part of an ongoing policy shift from "top-down, administrative means" towards bottom-up, market-based solutions for China's environmental problems – but observers question the degree to which the agency will be able to enforce the new rules.
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New standards to boost NOx market
01 April 2008The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has lowered the eight-hour ground-level ozone standard to 0.075 parts per million (ppm) from 0.08 ppm, a move expected to have significant implications for new power sources and other emitters of ozone-creating nitrogen oxides (NOx).
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Auction roils SOx market
01 April 2008Prices for US sulphur dioxide (SO2) allowances under the acid rain control scheme slumped at the end of March, following the annual Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) auction – in which compliance buyers were conspicuously absent.
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Clean Edge sees $250bn clean energy market
01 April 2008Clean Edge predicts that the market for clean energy will grow to $254 billion/year within the next ten years, after hitting $77 billion in revenues in 2007.
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Catastrophe risk markets explode
01 April 2008Record volumes of catastrophe (cat) bonds were issued in 2007, as demand from investors continued to outstrip issuance, according to an annual review* of the market by Guy Carpenter. Secondary trading of cat bonds has also soared, as has a new market for cat derivatives, say participants.
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Innovest claims (partial) ESG win on Bear Stearns
01 April 2008Innovest Strategic Value Advisors raised concerns last July over exposures at Bear Stearns to "unanticipated environmental and social shocks (especially in the sub-prime sector)". The New York-based investment research house awarded the stricken bank a "sub investment-grade" rating – in marked contrast to 'buy' recommendations from some Wall Street analysts at the time, Innovest has said.