Nov 18 (Reuters) - The leaders of Indian conglomerate Tata
Sons, HSBC Holdings and Australia's Macquarie Group
urged governments to get more involved in the green
transition by providing incentives to develop new technology and
help bring down costs.
The trio were speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in
Singapore, days after the COP26 climate summit with a deal that
for the first time targeted fossil fuels as the key driver of
global warming, concluded with a deal that for the first time
targeted fossil fuels as the key driver of global warming,
though many delegations hoped to have achieved more https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/was-glasgow-pact-win-climate-time-will-tell-2021-11-14.
"The hardest move is that political first move because then
you create the market conditions," said HSBC Chief Executive
Noel Quinn, pointing to risks that the private sector had no
control over, including changing political landscapes.
The CEO of financial conglomerate and the world's largest
infrastructure investor Macquarie, which plans to step up https://www.reuters.com/article/macquarie-group-results-idUSKBN2HI2XJ
green energy investments, urged governments to provide more
incentives.
Shemara Wikramanayake said governments can encourage private
sector investments by supporting the process of funding and
building new technology, such as hydrogen and carbon capture,
and then exiting.
"While there will be a lot of private financing and capital
available, it cannot be done without public financing," said
Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran.
Tata Sons is working with Macquarie on the Climate Finance
Leadership Initiative in India in partnership with Bloomberg.
Both Quinn and Wikramanayake highlighted that lowering costs
of developing and running renewable energy won't take as much
time as the development of solar and wind energy in the earlier
phases of moving towards renewables.
"The weight of the world is now behind this, wind and solar
- you could argue - led the way and the weight of the world was
not behind wind and solar, but there is so much momentum amongst
the private sector and the public sector," Quinn said.
(Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan; Editing by Anshuman Daga
and Bernadette Baum)