The consortium of major institutional investors known as CERES is promoting the idea of an economic surge related to the “Clean Trillion”—a projected annual capital investment threshold required to prevent a 2ºC rise in global average temperatures. CERES projects the world will need to invest an average of $1 trillion per year in clean power generation every year for the next 36 years to effectively put the brakes on global average temperature rise.
The core message is that this is not “added cost”; this is fresh investment and a major opportunity for a new wave of prosperity across the world, which institutional investors whose net worth is more than $75 trillion, can and should support.
According to CERES:
For detailed recommendations related to clean energy investment, download Ceres’ paper Investing in the Clean Trillion.
Total Assests Institutional Investors
Policymakers should level the playing field by adopting policies that accelerate and expand investment in clean energy. Companies and investors should advocate for:
- Policies that stimulate investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and clean transportation
- Policies that put a limit & price on greenhouse gas emissions
- A new global climate change agreement by 2015
We cannot afford to continue business as usual. We need to rescue capital from carbon asset risk. Governments, corporate leaders, major investment managers, and even the Wall Street Journal, now recognize this.
A simple, ideologically neutral, 100% revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend plan will ensure that those who invest in fossil fuels face the true cost of their investment, and know to transition, intelligently and responsibly, in an expeditious manner, to cleaner, less costly alternatives.
This is the true economic context in which all policy discussions around climate and energy are taking place. We need to find the right way to get this message to everyone we speak to. Though public opinion is shifting toward climate action (83% of Americans now favor action), climate science is not always the right way to get people on board, because for some people, it just doesn’t feel like a moral incentive. But the solvency of our Republic is, in many of those cases, and we can show the economic trend lines and make it clear that failure to break the status quo and innovate will cost us dearly, in economic terms, while innovating and leading the global clean energy transition will never hurt us; it will only ensure our economic leadership and prosperity in this century and beyond.
The Poet Economist 