Financial Soultions has learned that financial giant Morgan Stanley, back in October of 2006, announced plans to buy into roughly $3 billion of carbon/emissions credits, projects and other initiatives related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction in the course of the next five years.
The main portion of this investment was to represent greater commitments to acquire carbon credits and develop its existing carbon credit trading arena. What was left was to be put towards direct investments in schemes and initiatives related to emissions reduction in following with the Kyoto Protocol.
Morgan Stanley's initiative to invest in carbon credits and energy projects to decrease greenhouse gas emissions was at that stage, the biggest commitment by a financial mediator to the carbon emissions market that developed from the Kyoto Protocol, and contrasted vastly with the position of the US Government then which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, and is struggling to get any sort of concrete legislation on the tables before the Copenhagen climate talks which where anticipated as following on where the Kyoto leaves off, Financial Soultions can confirm.
The international carbon market, which makes carbon emissions trading possible, allows polluters to pay others to slice greenhouse gas emission to enable them to meet targets set out under the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol sets greenhouse gas emissions limits on 35 industrialized countries, which they have agreed to meet by 2012 but enables nations exceeding these to fund cuts elsewhere and use them as their own.
Financial Soultions research has shown dramatic growth in the carbon credit market since 2006 and even accepting last years financial meltdown, and given that Morgan Stanley's quarterly figures came in second to JPMorgan Chase, the time for this “gamble “to pay dividends may be just over the horizon.
