Companies take lead in urging emission targets

By Alex Morales  |   2008-6-21  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

ALCOA Inc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and 97 other companies are urging world leaders to devise a plan for fighting global warming by setting greenhouse gas targets for all nations and creating an international carbon market.

A new climate-change treaty is needed with incentives to capture and store carbon dioxide and protect forests, the 99 companies said in a statement prepared by the World Economic Forum, a Geneva-based business coalition.

The group presented the proposals yesterday to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who hosts a meeting of the Group of Eight nations next month in Japan, said Bloomberg News.

Oil, power and metal industries are among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. To cut their output in half by 2050, an extra US$45 trillion must be invested in clean-air technologies, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said this month.

The business group said it wants government guidance on how new climate policies may affect investment decisions.

"The report makes clear that businesses can't operate in a policy vacuum," Willie Walsh, chief executive officer of London-based British Airways Plc, Europe's third-largest airline, said in a conference call. He is one of 16 corporate leaders who developed the proposals.

Global leaders

The group, representing 10 percent of the market value of the world's listed companies, also is led by Jeroen Van der Veer, chief executive officer of Shell, Europe's largest oil company, based in The Hague; Chairman Alain Belda of New York-based Alcoa, the world's third-biggest aluminum producer; and Chief Executive James Rogers of North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp, owner of electric utilities in the Carolinas and the United States Midwest.

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, presented the proposals to Fukuda in Tokyo.

"This is the first time you've had an international group of business leaders set out in a great degree of depth their vision for what the new framework should look like, and put their name to it," said Dominic Waughray, the World Economic Forum's head of environmental initiatives.

While no companies from the Chinese mainland have endorsed the plan, Rick Samans, managing director of the forum, said invitations are there for Chinese firms to sign up.

To limit global warming, a "paradigm shift to a low-carbon economy" is needed, the companies said, with rich nations leading the way.