The Renewable Energy sector is growing strongly as fossil fuel becomes less appealing in light of cost parity of renewables, limiting carbon emissions and driving evolution to sustainable societies. In Energy Efficiency, widespread ripple effects positively impact jobs creation, manufacturing and other metrics tracked by traditional GDP and integral to transition management.
The following text was sent to us by noted author and futurist Hazel Henderson to highlight the release of Ethical Market’s new Green Transition Scoreboard report, which you will also find embedded at the end of this blog post.
After decades of pursuing my life’s work helping guide Mother Earth from the Fossil Fuel Age to the Solar Age, efforts of colleagues and RSA Fellows like myself such as Chris Oestereich, Chandran Nair, Michel Bauwens and other pioneers, are driving the necessary change. On Earth Day, the United Nations held a signing ceremony for the UN Paris Agreement, with signatories pledging to finance and implement programs to limit climate change, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
On the same day, Ethical Markets Media released its Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS). As of Q4 2015, the GTS totals $7.13 TRILLION cumulative in non-government investments and commitments tracked since 2007 in the global green transition now underway. As president and founder of Ethical Markets, I wrote the detailed overview of the 2016 report, “Ending Externalities: Full-Spectrum Accounting Clarifies Transition Management”, focusing on the top priority: eliminating “externalities” which the IMF estimates at $5.3 trillion annually worldwide and drawing from the work of Chandran and many others. Companies tracked since 2007 by the GTS are those avoiding negative externalities and focusing on transition management to low-carbon economies agreed on at COP21 in Paris, 2015.
The GTS covers substantial capital investment in areas which my years of research as a science advisor and which the Ethical Markets Advisory Board expertise, including Michel’s, indicate are strongly contributing to the growing green economy. The GTS tracks Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Life Systems, Green Construction and Corporate Green R&D. Fintech for sustainability, a new subsector, includes peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding, in addition to subsectors tracking the system-wide interconnections among information and digitization, water, food, education and health.
Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil), Certified B Corporation, is a micro-multinational social enterprise with the mission of reforming markets and metrics while helping accelerate and track the transition to the green economy worldwide. We strictly define ‘green’ by omitting technologies such as nuclear, clean coal and most biofuels while carefully assessing rapidly advancing technologies such as nanotech and IoT (Internet of Things). Sources of financial data are screened by rigorous social, environment and ethical auditing standards.
The upward trend in investments since 2007 aligns with our recommendation to invest at least 10% of institutional portfolios directly in companies driving the global Green Transition. Updating strategic asset allocation models serves both as opportunities and as risk mitigation.
The Renewable Energy sector is growing strongly as fossil fuel becomes less appealing in light of cost parity of renewables, limiting carbon emissions and driving evolution to sustainable societies. In Energy Efficiency, widespread ripple effects positively impact jobs creation, manufacturing and other metrics tracked by traditional GDP and integral to transition management. Life Systems encompasses broad areas systemically linked, including water, remediation, waste and recycling, green infrastructure and info-structure, community investing and education, investments often overlooked as too small. Green Construction ranges from “low-tech” passive solar buildings to “high-tech” flow 3D printing. For consistency, we omit labor, thus undercounting a form of capital which intrinsically increases the value of green construction. Corporate Green R&D is powered by the automotive industry and also heavily weighted in favor of energy generation, conservation and distribution with a precipitous decline in fossil fuels P&E.
We track nearly a $1 trillion invested in the green transition every year! With great hope and pride, I’m pleased to spread the good news that the Solar Age is here.
Ending Externalities: Full-Spectrum Accounting Clarifies Transition Management by P2P Foundation