50 investors pledge $10 billion to clean tech

If you think you’ve lost the ability to be wowed by numbers in the green investing game, think again. How does $10 billion sound? To Greenbang, it sounds like the blast of a Dukes of Hazzard horn, as the General Lee shoots into view, wheels spinning, over the horizon. But that’s just Greenbang for you.

The $10 billion comes from a coalition of nearly 50 investors wit $1.75 trillion in assets and a climate change action plan between them, as they prepare to get involved in energy efficiency, clean tech and tougher scrutiny of carbon intensive investments.

The whacking great investment will be distributed over the next two years, and sits alongside a promise to put green building standards into their investment decisions and cut energy use in real estate by 20 percent over the next three years.

The coalition gives these details on the plan:

The action plan calls for a series of specific steps by investors to address the growing risks and opportunities from climate change. The nine goals include policy actions aimed at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress, engagement with companies to improve their disclosure and responses to climate change, minimizing climate investment risks and maximizing climate-related investment opportunities. Among the investor commitments:

* Support clean technology, with a goal of deploying $10 billion collectively over the next two years.
* Aim for a 20 percent reduction in energy used in core real estate investment holdings over a three-year period, and consider green building standards in making investment decisions.
* Require and validate that investment managers, investment consultants and advisors report on how they are assessing climate risks in their portfolios, whether from new carbon-reducing regulations, physical impacts or competitive risks.
* Encourage Wall Street analysts, rating agencies and investment banks to analyze and report on the potential impacts of foreseeable long-term carbon costs, in the range of $20 to $40 per metric ton of CO2, particularly on carbon-intensive investments such as new coal-fired power plants, oil shale, tar sands and coal-to-liquid projects.
* Push the SEC to issue guidance leading to full corporate disclosure of climate risks and opportunities.
* Push Congress for a mandatory national policy to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the 60-90 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2050 that scientists suggest is urgently needed to avoid the worst and most costly impacts from climate change.