STOCK TRADERS FACING UP TO CLIMATE CHANGE

[Anonymous]

City traders facing up to climate change

The winner-takes-all
world of stock markets and financial trading is not one you usually
associate with attempts to save the planet.

Yet if some of Britain’s biggest pension funds get their way, City
traders will soon be discussing how climate change could affect the
stock prices of FTSE 100 companies.

Nick Robins, of Henderson Global Investors, believes it might not be
long before the market sees a profit warning from a company as a result
of a failure to grasp the impact of emissions on business.

“It is probable that some corporations will have made investments
without taking into account the likely tightening of limits under the
Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS),” he warns.

This European Union scheme, launched in January, aims to reduce
emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas that causes global warming.

Pollution permits

    We’re not trying to save the world – what we want is
for people to realise that climate change is an issue that can affect
the value of their investments
Peter Scales, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change

Under the ETS, installations such as power stations are given
allowances to emit CO2. If they become more efficient and use less than
their allocation, they can sell their spare permits.

If they exceed their limit, they must buy extra allowances to avoid fines.

The price of an allowance per tonne of CO2 emitted shot up from 6 euros
($7.5; £4.1) when trading began to nearly 30 euros in early June.

It has now fallen to around 22 euros, but this is still higher than many analysts had expected.

The driving factor is the jump in oil and gas prices, which has led
some power companies to decrease their use of natural-gas power plants
and switch to coal generation instead.

“As coal emits much more CO2, they have to buy more credits, making
carbon emissions a real cost for some companies. Investors have a
legitimate right to know about such liabilities,” says Simon Thomas,
chief executive of environmental research organisation Trucost.

A recent report published by Henderson and Trucost estimates that
greenhouse gas emissions from the UK’s one hundred largest companies in
2003/04 accounted for about 1.6% of the global total.

Moreover, it calculated that up to 12% of the pre-tax earnings of FTSE
100 firms could be at risk from measures required to incorporate the
cost of emissions into market prices.

Environmental impact

The actual impact of emissions on profits and share prices will depend
partly on the extent to which companies can pass on that cost to
customers.

Mr Thomas points out that those operating in national markets such as
electricity generation have more freedom to raise prices than those in
sectors where there is fierce international competition, such as
aluminium smelting.

If European materials manufacturers want to keep prices as low as their
Asian and US rivals – which are not subject to the same emissions
regulations – they have little choice but to cut their carbon costs.

“If we look at all the climate change issues that could affect
companies’ bottom lines, it is clear that for many there will be an
impact,” says Peter Scales, of the UK-based Institutional Investors
Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

This network, which includes large public pension funds as well as
investment management firms, works to promote better understanding of
climate change among investors.

“We’re not trying to save the world, what we want is for people to
realise that climate change is an issue that can affect the value of
their investments,” says Mr Scales.

Climate reports

A recent report by the IIGCC and the Carbon Trust warned that
“virtually all” types of pension asset could be affected by climate
change.

It defines a number of areas of concern, including regulatory risk –
such as emissions trading, and physical risk – such as extreme weather
events.

To help evaluate those risks, some investors are calling on companies
to publish better information about their greenhouse gas emissions and
how they plan to mitigate the impact of climate change.

In July, a group of 15 leading US investors with more than $550bn of
funds under management asked the electricity sector’s biggest
greenhouse gas emitters to report on how possible future limits on
emissions could affect their bottom lines.

Prior to that, four power companies had already published ‘climate risk’ reports.

According to Dan Bakal of Ceres, a coalition of investors and
environmental groups which backed the initiative, the uncertainty of US
government policy on climate change is a key problem for corporations.

“There is a growing sense that there will be greenhouse gas regulation,
but they don’t know how that will be developed. In the US, investors
and companies are working in a void, and there is a need for
information to fill that gap,” he says.

Yet it is not only the negative repercussions of climate change that investors want to hear about.

Many are also looking to invest in the growing number of companies
planning to make money from technologies that support a low carbon
economy.

In May, US giant General Electric announced it would double both its
investment in research on clean technologies and its revenues from
products and services that provide “environmental performance
advantages” by 2010.

Henderson’s Mr Robins believes that some greener companies offer good
investment opportunities, describing firms that provide goods and
services to improve energy efficiency as “buried treasure”.

In the coming years, green may well become the new black in City circles.

[Author]

August 20, 2005 at 7:57 AM