Articles
Peter Fusaro, of Global Change Associates, was ahead of his time 13 years ago, when he first launched the Wall Street Green Summit and he still is. Instead of a summit for traders looking for "green companies," the intimate Columbia Club hosted leaders from big government and multinationals, inventors and entrepreneurs with breakthrough solutions, as well as fund managers meeting the demand for green...
Interview with Peter Fusaro in the Journal of Environmental Investing, October, 2013.
"No more Solyndras!" may make the headlines but money is continuing to be deployed in the green energy sector each year.
An interview with Peter at treehugger.com, discussing the intersection of Wall Street, climate change, and the green technology movement.
Cap and Trade has been hijacked, the wind taken out of its sails by climate change skeptics. More specifically, the issue of market-based solutions for addressing environmental problems has been utterly distorted. The truth of the matter is that markets have worked to drive efficient, environmental results.
Greenhouse gas emissions have been receiving a lot of attention recently. Last week, President Barack Obama traveled to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and pledged a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Meanwhile, other initiatives have taken place both within the US and in other regions of the world. At this time, despite continued uncertainties, we may well stand on the precipice of an era in which carbon becomes a globally traded commodity and in which companies, particularly energy companies, are forced to monitor, track, report and reduce their GHG and other emissions.
While the focus today is on greenhouse gas reductions, there are many more emerging and maturing environmental financial markets that are often overlooked by investors. We believe that the new compliance driven EPA and other federal regulatory agencies will actually unlock the value of other environmental financial markets and represent new opportunities for investors to protect the environment. It is important that as business metrics begin to permeate socially responsible investment it will make increased sense by non-profits to start considering market-driven solutions, not only to do good but also to continue their own financial sustainability in today's new economic environment.
Given our expressed interest in learning more about environmental markets, Peter Fusaro, Erb Institute External Advisory Board member and Chairman of Global Change Associates, invited Erb students to attend the Wall Street Green Trading Summit (WSGTS) which he has organized for the past eight years. Peter is well networked in this space, and a quick browse through the program revealed a Who's Who of people active in environmental markets. We knew this would be a conference like no other.
By now we have all heard of the “Carbon Footprint,” and how it impacts our planet. Five years ago, the expression would have elicited blank stares. Today, one cannot pick up a newspaper or peruse the Internet without seeing article after article from around the globe focusing on how the Carbon Footprint is destroying our planet. We believe the general public is about to embrace another footprint that will impact almost every aspect of their lives, the Water Footprint. In commodity markets, many think that water is the next carbon market.
My last IssueAlert article focused on the framework needed to create the Green Financial Markets. What troubles me today is how slow this process has been, given the urgency of the situation. It can be argued that the public policy process is always slow and riskaverse, but I am actually looking back at 19 years of incremental change at best. I was recently interviewed by the Congressional Research Service regarding which agencies should regulate cap and trade. I argued that it should not fall under FERC jurisdiction because FERC has no experience in environmental financial markets. The following day I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on carbon market developments in the United States and abroad. This is their first coverage by the journal of this sector as a commodity.