Recession provides boost to blue chip's green investment

Far from quelling interest in clean technologies, the global recession has piqued blue chip firms' interest in investing in low carbon technologies and business models as they seek to identify opportunities to boost operational efficiency and reduce costs.

That is the conclusion of a major new study undertaken by professional services giant Ernst & Young, which surveyed 308 senior executives at global companies operating in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and found that clean tech expenditure has risen to an average of between three and five per cent of annual revenues.

Two-thirds of those questioned indicated that the adoption of clean technologies was now undertaken at an enterprise-wide level, and that such initiatives were championed by senior managers.

A further 85 per cent said that their organisations were either " significantly" or "moderately" accelerating their strategic response to climate change compared with two years ago. Most expected their companies to spend at least $10 (£5.95m) million on clean tech investments a year by 2010, with 22 per cent indicating that the figure would be closer to $100 million (£59.4m).

Gil Forer, global director of Cleantech at Ernst & Young, said that the growing interest of multi-billion dollar global companies in the clean tech arena underscored the increasing number of market opportunities available, and the tightening links between giant multinationals and innovative green start-ups.

"Making good on those [clean tech] opportunities will likely depend on identifying new partnership models that enable corporations and emerging clean tech companies to meet their own objectives while facilitating the arrival of a low-carbon and resource-efficient economy," he added.

A key driver behind increased expenditure on low carbon technologies are predictions that growing demand for finite natural resources such as oil will lead to potentially damaging price spikes.

These factors, Forer said, were "driving the need for corporations to establish a resource-efficiency agenda to ensure sustainable long-term growth and competitive advantage". This efficiency agenda was making itself most felt in areas of high energy consumption, such as manufacturing, transportation, logistics and IT systems, he added.