Morgan Stanley to invest $3 billon in green projects

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has announced today that it plans to expand its carbon trading business through a $3 billion investment. This includes projects working on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a significant move towards the expansion of Morgan Stanley’s current carbon trading activities it launched two years back within its commodities division. This new investment will now put substantial capital behind the carbon trading business as well as direct investment in green over the next five years. Morgan Stanley is not the only investment bank involved in carbon emissions trading worldwide which is developing very fast in Europe, the US and other developing countries and emerging markets like Russia (one of the major polluters). Last year, the global carbon trading market was estimated to be around $10 billion. Under the Kyoto Protocol and similar environment agreements, polluters to pay others to cut greenhouse gas emissions on their behalf to meet targets. The heartening thing is that investment banks are now finding carbon trading as a potentially huge and viable market. If going green is good for the economy, it will speed up countries reluctant to sign up to agreements like the Kyoto Protocol (the US incidentally is not a signatory there) to jump into the bandwagon.