Climate Change and the Private Sector: Scaling Up Private Sector Response to Climate Change

Climate Change and the Private Sector explores the challenges of transforming our energy infrastructure to become carbon neutral and adapting to climate change in the twenty-first century. It examines the critical role that the private sector must play in these challenges.

To transform the global energy complex to be carbon neutral within a time frame designed to prevent irreparable damage to the environment presents unprecedented challenges. The private sector must deploy financial, material, and engineering resources on a scale never before undertaken -- with government providing leadership, removing barriers and supporting industry efforts through policies that mobilize markets to achieve environmental objectives. A key element of supporting private sector initiative to address climate change is policies that help form and sustain markets that supply, finance and generate demand for the technologies necessary to transform our energy infrastructure. The characteristics and examples of these policies are explored in detail.

Companies that respond to these challenges both by mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to climate change will enhance their own competitiveness and contribute to society in the process. Companies that embrace the challenge to decarbonize their manufacturing operations, whether in response to regulation (or the threat of regulation) or market opportunities, invariably discover ways to improve their operations in the process that could potentially enhance their ability to produce better products, more efficiently. The book explores examples of companies that have redesigned their products and manufacturing processes, and in doing so transformed themselves and reshaped their industries. As in the case of companies mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, companies that lead their industries in adapting their own operations to a changing physical environment are more likely to ensure their resilience in a changing business environment.

This book provides business, policy and academic audiences with an in-depth exploration of the subject, and a practical guide to action.

Craig A. Hart is Associate Professor at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at People’s University of China in Beijing, and Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Energy Policy & Climate program in Washington, D.C.