News

• Leading investor plays down Climate Change Committee independence threat

  17 February 2011

  Environmental groups fear the independence of the UK's Climate Change Committee (CCC) could be threatened – or worse, the committee could be scrapped – under a public bodies bill which could shift control over the CCC's structure to government ministers. However, a leading carbon market commentator has downplayed the threat.

• Carbon Trust looks to private sector to plug funding gap

  17 February 2011

  UK climate advisory group The Carbon Trust anticipates a 40% cut in government funding next month, prompting the group to scale-back operations, axe jobs and intensify its push for private sector funding.

• Climate action delay could cost $8 trillion, warns Mercer

  17 February 2011

  The economic cost of carbon emissions over the next 20 years could amount to $8 trillion, according to a study by investment consultants Mercer.

• LED group targets $150m IPO

  17 February 2011

  Florida-based Lighting Science Group aims to raise $150 million in an initial public offering (IPO).

• Private capital 'urgently needed to reach biodiversity goals'

  16 February 2011

  A rapid increase in private finance for biodiversity protection is needed if the EU is to achieve its recently watered-down goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2020, according to a report by Climate Change Capital and Economics for the Environment Consultancy (eftec). The previous, missed, goal, set in 2006, was to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

• S&P to integrate climate risk into credit ratings

  16 February 2011

  Standard & Poor's (S&P) is to routinely including an assessment of climate risk into its corporate credit ratings across all industrial sectors, in anticipation of when climate policy begins to "bite hard" in the next few years.

• Geothermal power must address drilling, resource risks - financiers

  11 February 2011

  Renewable energy financiers are bullish on the geothermal sector, but resource and drilling risks still make them skittish.

• Wind sector to benefit from UK FIT review

  11 February 2011

  UK investor attention will increasingly turn back to onshore wind, with the government's recently announced feed-in tariff review sparking market uncertainty and pushing some investors to dump their solar development plans.

• Republicans seek to gut US renewables loans

  10 February 2011

  Republicans in the US House of Representatives have proposed gutting popular government programmes that have eased financing of renewable energy projects.

• Clean energy standard to fail in US Congress, predicts MidAmerican

  10 February 2011

  The odds are against passage of a US federal clean energy standard (CES) and against legislation to prevent the so-called regulatory train wreck, according to utility MidAmerican Energy.