Yet more climate change reseach: UBS

I’ve now got my hands on the UBS climate change report (98 pages, dated January

2007), to accompany the Lehman

and Citigroup reports.

UBS’s paper doesn’t have much of an equities focus at all, but it does include

an interview with Armory Lovins, the recipient of a fascinating New Yorker profile

by Elizabeth Kolbert last month:

What are the highest priority areas for technological development to

bring about reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? What sort of leading technologies

need to come first?

You seem to be very interested in future technologies to solve our climate

change problem. However, that is not really my focus. The technologies that

are already on the market offer everything we need and more, to reduce greenhouse

gas emissions dramatically…

The climate debate has unfortunately been misguided as implying large costs

of climate protection. In my view there has been a “sign error”

here. In fact, the opposite is true. Climate protection can save money, because

energy efficiency costs less than the fuel it saves. Interestingly enough,

100% of the experts involved in energy efficiency measures talk about profits,

and 100% of the politicians concentrate on the costs.

In terms of what this all means for investments, here’s a couple of interesting

charts from the report.