Risks in Green Investments

These days only the very wealthy have any money and they are hanging onto their dollars until that old eagle grins. Because these are difficult times business people and investors are looking for risk free investment, and although no investment is ever risk free, they are seeking to mitigate risk by whatever means they can. In fact, “de-risking” a project tends for most investors to be a condition precedent before lending or investing. The old “risk reward” mantra looks very old fashioned now.

How Green Was the Budget?

On Wednesday the British Finance Minister, who is rather grandly called the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the budget for the coming financial year. I have never understood why it is called a budget because a principle of every budget it that it should balance. The economies of the world’s developed nations rarely have balanced budgets; it is all about borrowing and more borrowing. I always look at the budget measures from an environmental perspective, so how green is this budget?

Mr Cameron’s Green Agenda

Politicians and leaders of nations have two ways of communicating their ideas to the public. The first is in a speech; they universally like to make speeches and they probably attach too much importance to their effect. The second way is by writing. In writing the words can be studied, and it is easier to form a logical reaction to the words and develop arguments supporting or gainsaying what is written without the interference of emotion that political rhetoric raises.

Mr Cameron, the Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government, wrote yesterday in the Observer newspaper about a green economy. He writes “there is a compelling economic case to be made for fighting climate change …The green effort should not be downgraded or swept under the carpet because of spending cuts and austerity…”

Why we do not need a Green Investment Bank

When the Green Investment Bank idea was announced I was puzzled. The only thing that I could learn from the United Kingdom’s government’s publicity about it was that it would have an awful lot of money. I did not understand what it would do and how it would do it and subsequent announcements by Ministers shed no light but rather added to my confusion. I suspect that I was not alone in this because we are still no clearer on what the Green Investment Bank would actually do.