Morgan Stanley to pour $3bn in carbon trading
Agencies LONDON
INVESTMENT bank Morgan Stanley plans to invest $3bn in carbon trading
under the Kyoto Protocol to ’12, it said on Thursday in a vote of support
for a pact that has doubters including, most recently, Canada.
Kyoto sets greenhouse gas emissions limits on 35 industrialised
countries – which they must meet by ’12 – but allows countries busting these
like Japan, Spain and Italy to fund cuts elsewhere and count them as their
own.
This carbon market is seen peaking next year and in ’08, and specialist
investors are hovering up emissions-permitting carbon credits ready to
offload these to countries chasing targets as the ’12 date nears.
It is through this intermediary role – buying direct from
emissions-cutting projects now and selling later to national governments and
industry – that Morgan Stanley hopes to profit.
“We’re talking a lot to the utilities and industrials and national
governments too,” said a Morgan Stanley spokesman. “We do see a healthy
demand. We’re seeing a lot of interest from Japan too.”
The global carbon market was worth $21.5bn in the first nine months of ‘
06 up from about $11bn for all of ’05, the World Bank told a carbon market
trade fair in Beijing in a market update on Thursday. But most of this trade
took place in the European Union’s carbon market, while Kyoto has faced
sceptics – the US pulled out of the pact in ’01 and Canada said this year it
has no chance of meeting its Kyoto target.
The UN’s climate change body launched on Thursday a new carbon trading
arrangement between industrialised and former communist countries – termed
Joint Implementation – and a UN official welcomed the Morgan Stanley
investment plan. “We’re pleased to see the interest the private sector
investment community is taking in Kyoto mechanisms,” said James Grabert, JI
team leader at the UNFCCC.
URL :
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=RVRNLzIwMDYvMTAvMjcjQXI
wMDgwNA==&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom