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....
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 ……...
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....
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’...
Poll finds that Leave voters disproportionally deny mainstream science. But without a fact-based debate, the referendum could be decided on the wrong grounds....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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: ...
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. ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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’ by Assaad Razzouk Predictably, the November round of UN climate talks generated nothing but hot air an...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...