Get your checkbooks out, Bill Clinton’s Climate Innitiative has garnered the support of 16 cities around the world to renovate city-owned buildings to make them for green/efficient.
$1 billion has been committed to finance this endeavour from a group of banks including: Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and ABN Amro.
Commercial contractors and green product producers/manufacturers should see a nice bump in revenue as a result of this, which is a similar situation we can foresee as well in the residential sector. While this sounds altruistic in nature from these banks and governments, I would not be surprised at all if they are already lining up options/futures contracts for the RECs/Green Credits/Carbon Credits that they will earn throughout the construction and lifetime of the projects.
It seems we have finally figured out the magic formula: good for the consumer+good for the Earth+profitable for the banks+profitable for the markets=success! Governments getting involved, spurring business, that’s what I like to see! When will this happen in the US on a grand scale level? Spain has already mandated solar power to be used in all new buildings, both commercial and residential.
I see this as good for everyone, does anyone disagree?
May 17, 2007 at 11:28 am
I don’t know if or when we’ll see the federal government taking action on as grand a scale as you’d like, but Congress is at least listening to what the industry has to say- it heard testimony from the USGBC, GBI, and NAHB, among others, earlier this week. I wrote a brief post about the hearing here- http://www.greenbuildingsnyc.com/?p=196
May 17, 2007 at 3:49 pm
That surely is a start…I wonder if BP is lobbying for solar legislation…would seem to fit into their “green” strategy;)