Environmental Finance Online News

2 July: A team of former Wall Street bankers have launched a financial advisory firm focused on the alternative energy and clean technology sectors.

2 July: CME Group is to launch a series of futures and options contracts based on sulphur dioxide allowances in mid July.

2 July: Three environmental NGOs have taken legal action against the UK Treasury over its decision to bail out RBS without imposing environmental criteria on the bank’s finance practices

2 July: The UK offshore wind and wave power markets could be worth £70 billion ($115 billion) and provide at least 15% of the carbon dioxide emissions reductions needed to meet the country’s 2050 targets, said the Carbon Trust today.

2 July: Trader and broker Bache Commodities yesterday launched a "green" investment and benchmarking index based on biofuels feedstocks and "clean air" commodities including carbon emissions credits.

2 July: Annual revenues from Siemens’ environmental activities grew 12% in 2008 to €18.9 billion ($26.5 billion) – almost double the rate for the business as a whole.

4 June: Dutch renewable energy company Econcern says it obtained short-term bridging finance earlier this week, and is now seeking to divest itself of potentially all of its joint ventures and operating companies.

4 June: The notional value of transactions in the weather risk market in 2008/9 fell to $15.1 billion, less than half the previous year’s $32 billion, as the economic meltdown took its toll on risk capital, according to an annual survey by the Weather Risk Management Association.

4 June: Carbon costs in a cap-and-trade programme could wipe out earnings for some companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500, according to a study by the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute.

4 June: Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, welcomed a near-complete list of post-2012 emission reduction pledges from industrialised countries, but warned that the level of ambition is not high enough.