The effect of the Glasgow COP26 meeting continues to grow and is now propelling the carbon-trading market.

JANUARY 28, 2022 

Early in November eight titans of 21st-century industry—including Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft and Netflix—formed the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions, or BASCS. The setting, at the sidelines of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, was more than symbolic.

Despite prevailing skepticism about such all-world jawfests, COP26 did achieve something of note in its 23rd hour and after five numbing years of negotiation: a global protocol for trading carbon credits and offsets, known to the climate cognoscenti as Article 6.4.

That’s a big deal, or could be, for a wide range of industries and financial investors. The carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed in order to power, say, an Amazon server in the US could hypothetically be neutralized by forests the company pays to plant in Central Africa or solar energy it finances in India.

Global Finance, April 2019

Governments around the world may be dawdling in the drive for a greener planet, but private corporations are picking up the pace—at least in switching to renewable energy sources. So-called power purchase agreements (PPAs) for clean electricity more than doubled globally last year, to 13.4 gigawatts (GW), according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Well-known new-economy consumers like Facebook and Google are joining old-school industrialists like Norsk Hydro and Alcoa in sourcing more solar and wind power. Even oil giant Exxon Mobil contracted for 575 megawatts (MW) of renewables on the windy plains of Texas.

Global Finance, April 2019

Governments around the world may be dawdling in the drive for a greener planet, but private corporations are picking up the pace—at least in switching to renewable energy sources. So-called power purchase agreements (PPAs) for clean electricity more than doubled globally last year, to 13.4 gigawatts (GW), according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Well-known new-economy consumers like Facebook and Google are joining old-school industrialists like Norsk Hydro and Alcoa in sourcing more solar and wind power. Even oil giant Exxon Mobil contracted for 575 megawatts (MW) of renewables on the windy plains of Texas.

Global Finance, May 2016

“If we were to write a check to nature to cover the cost of our business activities, what would its value be?” The person posing this question is not a utopian Greenpeace activist. He is Michael Beutler, a onetime Ford Motor Company financial wonk who is now sustainability operations director at French luxury goods company Kering. Based in Paris, Kering controls two-dozen clothing and accessory brands, mostly luxury icons such as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Revenues for Kering in 2015 were €11.6 billion ($13.2 billion).

Beutler is on a quest to quantify the real long-term costs, in terms of water and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, of producing his company’s fashion wares. The project has taken him to the far reaches of the world. “We have to map all our business processes back to the raw materials,” he says. “A pair of shoes goes back to the ranch where the cow came from.”

GLOBAL FINANCE MAGAZINE, APRIL 2017

Politically, 2017 looks like the Year of the Wall, with governments from Washington to London to Beijing committed to hindering the free flow of people, goods or capital, while their ideological kindred bid for power across continental Europe. But protectionist barriers will strain to hold back an unprecedented globalist tide among economic actors, specifically corporations that are scouring the world for deals to juice lackluster growth.