Morgan Stanley will invest $3 billion in carbon trading and offset projects
Investment giant Morgan Stanley announced today that it will invest $3 billion in carbon trading and offset projects over the next five years. Expecting a rush to purchase offsets as the Kyoto Protocol’s 2012 deadline approaches, the bank is playing the middleperson — buying offsets from emissions-cutting projects now, with the plan to sell them to governments and industry later. Most of the industrialized countries signed on to the Kyoto Protocol are lagging on meeting their emissions targets and will need to either buy other countries’ rights to emit, or purchase carbon credits. The global carbon market jumped from $11 billion in 2005 to $21.5 billion in the first nine months of 2006. “We strongly support the use of market-based solutions to meet environmental policies and objectives,” says the head of the bank’s carbon-trading business. Especially when it means there’s moola to be made.
