The planet and the business of the Green Economy – The Republic

FABIO BOGO

The climate conference Paris is recording unanimity: global warming must be stopped to prevent floods, droughts, famines. Less coal, less emissions, more clean energy is the message coming out of Cop21. Pollution and greenhouse have a heavy social and economic impact. Over the past 30 years, according to the World Bank, natural disasters have caused 2.5 million deaths and caused damage to 4 trillion. The losses for the economy in the last decade – has calculated the Munich Re – amounted to 200 billion dollars a year. Also huge financial consequences. The University of Cambridge has estimated that by 2020 the value of the invested capital can depreciate by 45 per cent due to changes in environmental policy, technological innovations and weather events; The Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts that even the average annual returns of industry affected by climate-related problems can be cut between 26 and 138 percent.

The scene, in short, is catastrophic, and no concrete actions that counter the drift environmental costs of climate change in place can be equivalent annually at 5% of global GDP (estimated by the Stern Review). The environmental crisis is also economic emergency. But the environment in the economy can find a solid support. Global investment in greater energy efficiency in recent years

fluctuated between 130 and 300 billion dollars a year. By 2035, the IEA estimates, can rise to 8-15 trillion, with an average of 550 billion dollars a year. If he wants to achieve its goals China alone will need to invest 2.7 trillion dollars by 2030.

The transition to clean energy is essentially a business, on which you have already run corporations that have in fact increased exponentially emissions Green Bond. Eight main areas of intervention: the cars, the buildings, the industry, the Internet of things, the information technology (including cloud and data centers), lighting, energy storage, and air transport , road and rail. Only in real estate, for example, spending on improving the energy efficiency of residential buildings can rise to 160 billion dollars a year by 2035, and that relating to public buildings and shopping centers in 127 billion per year by 2023 (IEA and Navigant Reserarch). Reduce the use of emissions by stopping the cars and using industrial robots can grow the business volume of the sector to 153 billion dollars by 2020, while making “green” energy used for data center and save the ‘ 88 percent of emissions is worth at least $ 76 billion (Precourt Institute at Stanford). So clean the planet is a business. And perhaps it will be the business, rather than the atolls in danger in changing the course of things.