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Where is the due diligence on 600 billion dollars invested in “decarbonisation”?

According to Nicholas Stern, the climate industry is set to rival the Industrial Revolution. Graham Lloyd of The Australian asked the obvious question that nobody at the COP 21 Flop thought to ask in Paris: “if [the] $650 billion a year being promised by US banking institutions will ever be expected to make a profit and, if so, will it need public support to do so.”

“US Secretary of State John Kerry sees it as “the most extraordinary market opportunity in the history of humankind”

Michael Kile expands on the little conflict of interest in the UN’s decarbonisation mission

It seems the UN is co-founding groups for money managers to get large funds to “decarbonize”. That’s code for chiseling investments out of coal and forcing them into the pointless, inefficient and uncompetitive “renewables”. But of course, renewables are only worth investing in if governments keep demanding people use them. If the darn voters vote muck it up, by voting for leaders who will stop wasting their money, the renewables industry is a dead dog. So the UN project (which is probably funded by taxpayers) aims to remove the risk for investors by lobbying governments to keep the regulations friendly to green investors (and not so much to taxpayers).

For the Green Machine, “due diligence” means putting the risks onto the taxpayer and citizen. For the free market, “due diligence” means assessing the scientific credibility of those who say they can control the weather. What are the odds that the debate can be kept out of the mainstream media, and this bizarre meme (man-made global warming) will still be running in a few decades? The risk is that voters will get sick of being called names for asking good questions, and they chuck out the gullible fools and parasites. How long has the Golden Gravy Train got?

As Michael Kile notes, the UN’s Portfolio Decarbonisation Initiative talk about Fiduciary Duty, but…

“…there was no mention that changes in outlook could arise due, say, to a decline in scientific ‘consensus’ about climate theory; the continuing lack of empirical validation for climate-model ‘predictions’; doubts about public statements claiming quantifiable links between atmospheric carbon dioxide, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and future global temperatures; more revelations about the accuracy of agency data collection over time, and so on.”

The regulatory climate is what matters:

Oliver Bäte [Allianz’s CEO,]: “FD is not the real issue (24min.) The real issue in Allianz’s mind is often the legal frameworks for investing in RE infrastructure that are spanning decades – so you need to commit money for several decades – are not properly protecting long-term investors.”

“We are very often at the mercy of the public mainstream [voters] and courts that in hindsight declare some of these contracts invalid and therefore make it very difficult for long-term investors to justify committing money for decades.”

“So let me summarise. It is not a problem of financiers not wanting to put the money in, or a lack of liquidity. It is the wrong incentives from the public [voters] – and the wrong legal frameworks for funding infrastructure – that make it very difficult in practice.” (25min.)

Of course, if only renewables were really cheaper than coal, everyone would want them, they’d be a great investment, and who cares about voters?

It’s big bucks:

“Allianz is one of the leading private investors in renewable energy, with more than EUR 2.5
billion committed and plans to at least double these investments.”

Not big bucks, it’s  massive bucks:

“Mr Steiner’s closing remarks.

Financial assets of the global banking sector alone amount to USD135 trillion. Institutional investors represent somewhere in excess of another USD100 trillion – just to give you a sense of the magnitude here. This is why what Allianz and the other PDC members are trying to get others to recognise that you can invest public finance in an alternative pathway.

But if the mainstream financial system – which is 1,000 times more significant in terms of volume and scale is investing in the other direction, you are not going to see the kind of shifts [that UNEP and the UN want]. This is why what we are now seeing in the financial and insurance world is so significant – because it reinforces what Paris COP21 is trying to do with public policy and international co-operative instruments”.  (23.50min.)

According to the panel, annual global investment of USD1 trillion in RE infrastructure was ‘doable’.  In calendar 2014 it was USD270 billion. China claims it alone will be investing USD300 billion annually from 2016.

These are the big groups to watch:

“Consider now the UN’s Portfolio Decarbonisation Initiative. … it was co-founded by UNEP FI*, the fourth National pension fund of Sweden, AP4, Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi, and CDP, an international not-for-profit organization reportedly holding the ‘largest global collection of corporate environmental data.’

There is not just an “initiative”: there is a “Portfolio Decarbonisation Coalition”  (PDC) too, also founded by the UNEP F1. Giant  groups like Allianz and APB joined the PDC on Dec 7th 2015, when the total funds under management which are being “decarbonized” reached $600 billion:

“With Allianz and ABP, the PDC now convenes 25 investors overseeing the gradual decarbonization of a total of USD 600 billion in Assets under Management (AUM), dramatically surpassing the PDC’s target of USD 100 billion. By joining the coalition, the two organizations are sending a strong signal to world governments gathered in Paris to negotiate a new global treaty on climate change.

Read it all at Onlineopinion.

We are indeed looking at investment opportunities and doing due diligence ourselves (the proper kind), and will be talking about that exciting development very soon.

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*UNEP F1 — the UNEP Finance Intiative.

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