After years of intermittent excitement and fizzled expectations, environmental-oriented investing is no longer just a niche interest
By Scott Patterson and Amrith Ramkumar
Some of the world’s biggest companies and deepest-pocketed investors are lining up trillions of dollars to finance a shift away from fossil fuels.
Assets in investment funds focused partly on the environment reached almost $2 trillion globally in the first quarter, more than tripling in three years. Investors are putting $3 billion a day into these funds. More than $5 billion worth of bonds and loans designed to fund green initiatives are now issued every day. The two biggest U.S. banks pledged $4 trillion in climate-oriented financing over the next decade…
Reed Hundt was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration, when the internet and mobile phones were just starting to take off. He now runs the Coalition for Green Capital, which helps start so-called green banks that fund alternative energy. He sees parallels to the earlier era in the scale and the pace of change that is occurring in the energy industry.
“These are profound economic shifts,” he said. The wave of investment, he said, will drive down prices and accelerate the transition from fossil fuels. “The direction set by the market is to go to the cheapest possible fuels—which are wind and sun,” he said.
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