Soros calls for US cap-and-trade scheme

Billionaire financier George Soros has thrown his weight behind the campaign to introduce a legally-binding cap on US emissions, warning that without some form carbon pricing mechanism the country's clean tech sector will quickly lose ground to foreign rivals.

Speaking at the UN-backed Investor Summit on Climate Risk in New York, Soros urged Congress to pass the cap-and-trade bill that is currently being debated by the Senate and is facing fierce opposition from Republicans.

"If you had the legislation in the United States you would have a [carbon] market” he said, arguing that putting a price on carbon was the only way to make many clean technologies profitable. "Right now you don’t even have that. The United States is the laggard.”

He said that in contrast the Chinese government had "internalised"climate change risks into its planning and policies.

Soros' support for a cap-and-trade scheme will strengthen the hand of Democrat Senators as they seek to deliver a compromise version of the bill that can secure the 60 votes needed to pass through the Senate. The proposals have faced sustained attacks in recent weeks with senior Republicans vowing to block the bill and business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce leading a high profile campaign to discredit the proposed legislation.

Soros has emerged as an increasingly vocal advocate of action to tackle climate change after last autumn pledging to invest $1bn in clean technology firms and provide $100m to set up a new think tank called the Climate Policy Initiative. He also attended the Copenhagen Summit last month where he called for the International Monetary Fund to be given responsibility for investing in low carbon energy projects in developing economies and vowed yesterday that he would "get more engaged" in helping to shape the global response to climate change.

Speaking on the same day as the lead US climate change negotiator Todd Stern insisted that the Copenhagen Summit had delivered some meaningful progress, Soros rejected the US administration's assessment of the talks, labeling them a "failure" that "delivered very little".