26 March 2007
City launches pioneering London Accord project
Today (Monday) the City of London Corporation, BP, Forum for the
Future, Gresham College and Z/Yen Group together announce a
multi-million dollar pioneering project to put London at the
leading edge of investment research into technologies needed to
tackle climate change.
The first London Accord Conference takes place on Thursday and
Friday of this week at the Reuters offices in Canary Wharf.
Between then and the autumn, the combined brainpower of top City
firms will make an in-depth and wide-ranging financial analysis of
new projects to reduce carbon dioxide. The grouping remains neutral
on the issue of climate change itself but London Accord seeks to
improve the tools investors need to navigate the new
landscape.
Michael Snyder, the Chairman of Policy & Resources
Committee of the City of London Corporation, who conceived the
project with Michael Mainelli of Z/Yen Group, said:
“To get through this century we all need to help find
solutions to the knotty problem of climate change and the UK-based
financial services industry’s contribution will be to help people
seeking to invest in the new technologies do so as efficiently as
possible.
“If a project doesn’t make sense financially then it won’t
offer a sustainable answer – so the London Accord will put the
capital’s talent as a financial innovator at the service of the
nascent climate change industry. It’s just part of what the City of
London is doing in this area – but it’s a crucial part.”
Sponsors of the London Accord, which follows from the
City’s involvement in the Johannesburg Summit in 2002,
are BP, the City of London Corporation (the authority for the
Square Mile business district), Forum for the Future, Gresham
College and Z/Yen Group. Reuters, the London School of Economics
(LSE), the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Cambridge are
also behind the initiative and key City institutions pledging
investment research time include : ABN Amro, CanaccordAdams,
Credit Suisse, Societe Generale , Morgan Stanley, Objective
Capital, Bank Sarasin, Barclays Capital and WestLB
.
Michael Mainelli, who is Professor of Commerce at Gresham
College, said: “The research teams will use and adapt their own
thinking and the reports they publish under London Accord will
provide the core insights into the best-practice
methodologies. The combined work will be drawn together by
academics and other experts and together will leverage the
advantage of a portfolio approach.”
Each research strand will look at one of 10-12 elements under
4/5 scenarios. The LSE and the Santa Fe Institute will help draw
the threads together. Buy-side firms such as USS, Insight, and
Legal & General are helping to shape the project to ensure its
outcomes will be useful to investors.
Observers from the EU, the International Energy Agency, UNFCCC
and others are expected. The March conference will launch the start
of the research and the autumn event will examine it once done.
Michael Snyder said that, for example, a topic might include
"renewable energy" or "clean coal" and the research team working on
the topic would look at it under scenarios for different ranges of
technology, government policy regimes, planning regimes, total life
cycle costs, etc.
He said: “Time will be spent verifying data and coming up with
approaches that investors can rely on as reflecting best-practice.
We hope ‘London Accord’ will become reference point for investment
sound-thinking.”
Project Director Jan Peter Onstwedder of BP said technologies
investigated would include solar and geothermal energy, biofuels
and carbon-reducing building and transport schemes.
“A key point will be to test if something is more than an idea –
ie if it is also scalable and investable. In clean coal technology,
for example, the teams will look at costs of capturing the CO2, the
scrubbing costs, costs of the high temperature ovens, the risks
from electricity price rises, etc, and then set these factors
against a range of scenarios, including soft intervention from
governments - and aggressive intervention.
“Another example might be solar energy. Here we know there are
both centralised solutions and localised ones and different people
are producing different technologies. Each might be good in
different circumstances, in different parts of the Earth, or even
under different levels of price for silicon – a key material
currently booming in price. The modellers will tease out the issues
and establish best practice for their work – thus helping to create
a platform for investors and a market.”
See
website of London Accord
See also www.reuters.com
For more information, Contact Greg Williams, 020 7332 1455,
07889 167 205
Ends
Notes for editors
City of London Corporation:
The City of London Corporation is committed to maintaining and
enhancing the status of the wealth and tax-generating business of
the City as the world's leading international financial and
business centre through its policies and services. Examples are the
extensive overseas business missions on behalf of UK-based
financial services and the wide-ranging economic development,
research and regeneration effort the City of London Corporation
undertakes across London. It also runs the City Office in Brussels
on behalf of the City and City Representations in Beijing, Shenzhen
and Shanghai – and a City Office in Mumbai. Although the City of
London Corporation provides local government services for the City,
the financial and commercial heart of Britain, its responsibilities
also extend far beyond the City boundaries and include management
of the Barbican Centre, Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey,
Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath, three wholesale food markets, as
well as acting as the London Port Health Authority – and running
the Animal Reception Centre at Heathrow.
Other work on climate issues include a pioneering
climate-change adaptation plan for the Square Mile and a
proposal to encourage all City firms to go carbon neutral.
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