High time for a Green New Deal for Singapore
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Blog by Assaad W. Razzouk
Make China Great Again: Six Ways Trump’s Energy And Climate Policies Work… For China
Mid-way through the two-week negotiation sessions at the UN climate talks in Morocco in November, results of the US presidential election landed with a thud....
Trumped: Ten Impacts On Energy And Climate
On Wednesday, the United States elected a coal-loving, oil and gas-funded climate denier as President. Here are 10 developments ……...
Businesses Must Wake Up From Their Climate Slumber: Trillions Risk Going The Kodak Way
Conventional wisdom has been turned on its head: The UN is leading the fight against climate change while the private sector is hiding, ducking and ……...
The Business Sector Is The Deer Caught In The Paris Agreement Headlights
Paris climate agreement ratification exposes how the private sector is lagging in fight against climate change....
Time For the Green Climate to Grow Up Fast. Or It Will Die Slow.
An executive search firm recently contacted me to hear my thoughts on recruiting a new boss for the UN’s South Korea-based Green Climate Fund, or GCF....
It’s Time to Get Rid of All the Green Crap in Politics
Britain’s post-Brexit government has scrapped the Department of Energy and Climate Change, or DECC. Good riddance: If we’re serious about fighting climate change, we shouldn’...
Never mind a Brexit recession, Leave voters don’t believe in climate change
Leave voters’ disregard for the facts extends far beyond the NHS and the economy....
EU Referendum: Leave Voters Twice as Likely to Disbelieve Facts and Science
Poll finds that Leave voters disproportionally deny mainstream science. But without a fact-based debate, the referendum could be decided on the wrong grounds....
What Do Saudi Arabia and Ikea Have in Common? They Both Want to Go Solar
Just as Ikea has started stocking solar panels in its UK stores, Saudi Arabia has announced a modest 9.5 gigawatt renewable energy target, part of its 2030 Vision initiative to mov...
Memo to the Financial Markets: Cheap Oil is Great
Exhibitionist more than ever, Wall Street is loudly proclaiming, principally through a painful exercise of financial self-flagellation, that falling oil prices are bad news for the...
2016: The Year the Oil Era Enters Terminal Decline
2015 was a landmark year for climate action. Its many highlights were topped by a Paris agreement where 195 countries set themselves on a low-carbon path via economy-wide plans sur...
Show Me the Climate Money: UN Climate Deal Is a Triumph, now Onto Bridging a Huge Investment Gap
The Paris Agreement reached on 12 December is a triumph of the human spirit, built around the world class diplomacy of France, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres an...
The Three Outcomes That Matter at The Paris UN Climate Talks
The annual climate talks – or COP21 – just began, with forty five thousand people and over one hundred heads of state descending on Paris....
Climate Change: New York vs. Exxon and the Coming Earthquake in the Financial Market
Late last week, New York State decided to examine whether Exxon Mobil, the oil company, may have violated state consumer protection laws or the Martin Act, New York’s powerfu...
The Paris Climate Talks Could Jolt Private Sector Investments Worldwide
Over the past three decades annual climate talks under the United Nations banner have become part of the Zeitgeist of a large movement. They draw government officials, think tanks,...
A Green Economy Will Lift Us All – But Cheats Like Volkswagen Still Stand in the Way
A Joel Pett cartoon from 2009 still making its rounds online neatly summarises the battle to create a green economy. In it, a climate summit is interrupted by an angry outburst: &#...
Three Reasons Clean Energy has Permanently Decoupled From the Oil and Gas Markets
It’s been a rough summer for energy markets: Oil prices crashed, China stuttered, the Federal Reserve dithered and emerging market currencies threatened to fall off a cliff. ...
Why Cutting Solar Subsidies Will Speed Up the Clean Energy Revolution
The UK government has just announced that people will get close to 90% less money than before for installing solar panels on their homes....
The $7 trillion solar tsunami in our midst
Never mind government inaction (or worse) on climate change, writes Assaad W Razzouk. Solar power costs just keep on falling, and it’s already providing the lowest cost elect...
Meanwhile in Lebanon, A Public Health Waste-pocalypse Threatens
For the past six years, Sindicatum Renewable Energy, the company I run, has been operating Asia’s most successful landfill gas to energy project, an hour and a half drive away fr...
Don’t mention climate change! Europe’s response to the refugee crisis is doomed to fail
The more EU politicians try to look in control of the Mediterranean refugee emergency, the more it’s obvious they aren’t, writes Assaad W. Razzouk. A key driver of the ...
Enough With The Doom And Gloom: Fighting Climate Change Promotes Prosperity
The coverage of climate change and the rhetoric around it are wearing me down.....
5 reasons why low oil prices are good for the environment
Low oil prices are to be cheered: may they stay low for a long time and decrease even further. Here are five reasons why they are great for our health and that of the planet....
The UN climate talks just failed – now for the real battle
The annual UN Climate Talks ended on Sunday in Lima, Peru. In case you were wondering, nothing happened....
We can win on climate change – but without the UN
The climate community has been in a beehive of activity all summer as government officials, corporate leaders and climate activists prepare to congregate in New York City on 23rd S...
Climate change and Lebanon: the elephant in the room
In Lebanon this summer, there has been an array of topics dominating the headlines: ongoing domestic divisions, political soap operas that put the screenwriters of House of Cards t...
Where is the money?
Assaad W. Razzouk on how to finance the transition to a green economy published by UNIDO’s Making It magazine. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...
Four part series by Assaad W. Razzouk on reviving and reinventing the global climate movement
Part 1: Warm, too warm, and warmer still: The climate movement must face up to its colossal failure There is no disputing its passion. But far, far too little has been achie...
It’s been a big week for climate change – but don’t believe all the hype
by Assaad W. Razzouk The announcements by the Americans and Chinese are actually distinctly unambitious. It’s time for leaders to lead and propagate the facts: Climate action pro...
The EU elections “earthquake” is good for climate action
In a torrent of apparent bad news for many, including for the climate movement, a wave of extremist, nationalist, anti-immigrant and generally anti-science parties won elections to...
A barrage of lawsuits is needed to curb climate change
Calling for investors to divest from polluters is laudable but won’t be enough by Assaad W. Razzouk Institutional investors command a stratospheric £70 trillion of assets and te...
How to slow climate change? Target the 90 companies who pollute the most
Very little has been achieved despite scientists sounding the alarm time after time by Assaad W. Razzouk The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Sunday ...
What the climate movement must learn from the fight against AIDS
The battle against Big Pharma was won in a way that offers important lessons for the fight against Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Gas by Assaad W. Razzouk There is a recurring theme in ...
Warm, too warm, and warmer still: The climate movement must face up to its colossal failure
There is no disputing its passion. But far, far too little has been achieved by Assaad W. Razzouk At a sustainability conference earlier this month in New Delhi, a senior represent...
Renewable energy targets are bad policy. Here are five reasons to prove it
by Assaad W. Razzouk A green, competitive Europe doesn’t need them and shouldn’t have them In its White Paper on a 2030 framework for climate and energy policies released today...
What climate action can we expect in 2014?
by Assaad W. Razzouk Top-down talks have failed, now local forces are gathering strength The year just passed may be remembered as a watershed year in climate policy. While clima...
Climate Action? Warsaw 2013 to Paris 2015
The Warsaw ‘COP-19’ climate negotiations were a widely acknowledged failure. But Assaad Razzouk sees a small silver lining among the dark clouds. There is a real prospe...
On climate, we need a global carbon market with its own ‘federal reserve’
On climate, we need a global carbon market with its own ‘federal reserve’ by Assaad Razzouk Predictably, the November round of UN climate talks generated nothing but hot air an...
Why we should kill the Green Climate Fund
It’s not more climate organisations we need. It’s more effective ones by Assaad Razzouk Some three hundred government officials, representatives of think thanks, civil ...
Climate Action: A consensus of the sensible can beat polluters’ PR
Six steps the world should take to fight climate change by Assaad W. Razzouk Last month, the most thorough scientific review of climate science in history was released by the Int...
Sound economics, naturally.
by Assaad W. Razzouk The economic performance of nations and of corporations is judged by imperfect markets without any regard to their usage of our collective natural capital. As ...
A frosty G20 puts global warming on ice.
The summit in Russia may herald the end of the stubborn global climate policy recession by Assaad W. Razzouk It took the frostiest international summit in years to take some heat o...
Fracking: American dream, Chinese pipe-dream, global nightmare
Energy policy should instead focus on renewables by Assaad W. Razzouk Across Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, fracking wells periodically burst out of the green scenery , li...
Aviation and shipping emissions: A climate nightmare which must be tackled
by Assaad W. Razzouk and Gareth Phillips The international aviation and shipping sectors are core to the world’s global trade, leisure and commerce sectors. Transportation has ...
Asia set to roast the planet
We need leadership from China, Indonesia, India and the Philippines by Assaad W. Razzouk Last week, President Barack Obama gave a potentially transformational speech on climate cha...
Kick-starting the Clean Development Mechanism to resume investments
Introduce a “Net Mitigation Benefit Fee” to clean energy investments in developing countries. by Assaad Razzouk and Gareth Phillips The global carbon markets are awash with all...
Namaste, NAMAs – some hope for tackling climate change
by Assaad W.Razzouk The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed a level we think we haven’t seen for three million years and catastrophic consequences are sure to ...
The Full Math Around Outsourcing
When a job is outsourced oversees, demand on water and energy resources goes with it. Often forgotten is that one country’s job loss could also represent a big natural capita...
The private sector could help tackle climate change. What a pity it’s left out in the cold
A functioning carbon market is vital to reducing emissions. But ours is broken. by Assaad W. Razzouk In a stark reminder of our failure to bring man-made greenhouse gases under c...
The carbon markets are dead, long live the carbon markets
Political inertia and empty rhetoric are diluting and undermining the efforts of market based mechanisms to tackle climate change. by Assaad W. Razzouk and Gareth Phillips Today,...
It’s time to offset the UN’s carbon footprint
The UN created the world’s most effective offset mechanism but astonishingly fails to use it for its own carbon emissions. This has to change by Assaad W. Razzouk The United N...
Doha was all hot air. It’s high time for a new central body to take action on climate change
We need a rival to the World Bank to address rising temperatures. by Assaad W. Razzouk Let’s face it. The 18th annual climate change talks in Doha achieved nothing. The adv...
Preventing a collapse in clean energy investment across the developing world
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources follow Assaad on Twitter @AssaadRazzouk Despite environmental wake-up calls like Hurricane Sandy, developed economie...
The market for carbon trading is broken, we must fix it before it is too late.
by Assaad W. Razzouk As the European Commission prepares to publish its first report on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the future of the world’s largest “cap and trade�...
Natural Capital series – Part 3: “Outsourcing: Doing the Math”
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources This is the third article in a series about Natural Capital. Read the first article “Natural capital: Stop abusi...
Natural capital series – Part 2: Global warming: Can the accounting industry please do its job?
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources This is the second article in a series about Natural Capital. Read the first article Read the first article “N...
The EU-ETS: Fix it or shut-it down, Part 4 – Winners & Losers
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources This is Part 4 of a blog series on emissions trading systems. Read the first blog: The EU-ETS: Fix it or shut it dow...
The EU-ETS: Fix It or Shut-It Down, Part 3: Brokers’ Carbon Credit Forecasts: Do the opposite of what they say
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources I couldn’t help but smile when I read the following headline in Point Carbon on 22 June 2012: “Barclays slashe...
The EU-ETS: Fix It or Shut-It Down, Part 2: Decisive Korea v. Divisive Poland
According to the Financial Times on 16 April, “Poland is insisting there should not be any “administrative meddling” that would prop up prices in the European Union’s carbo...
The EU-ETS: Fix it or Shut it Down, Please
According to Bloomberg (3 April 2012), “EU carbon allowances for December fell as much as 4.6 percent to a record [low of] 6.05 Euros a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe excha...
Natural capital series – Part 1: Stop abusing it and make more money at the same time
by: Assaad Razzouk, Group CEO, Sindicatum Sustainable Resources This is the first article in a series about Natural Capital. Read the second article “Global warming: Can the ...
Who Can Count To 100 Billion?
On Thursday 10 November 2011, I spoke at an OECD / IEA workshop in Paris entitled “Expert workshop on tracking climate finance flows from the private sector and multilateral deve...
Green Climate Fund: Road to Nowhere?
According to Reuters, “a U.N. committee has completed the draft design of a fund to help developing countries tackle climate change, paving the way for its launch in 2013”. Th...