London scoping - ukcip

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES
Final Report
269
• Sustainability - what happens to it? This is the over-arching and uniting factor that
will help tie together arguments/actions from economic, social and environmental
perspectives.
• Evening economy
• Products made from sustainable materials.
• Investment in more sustainable industries/activities.
• Need to distinguish between sectors that need to act in the short and long term e.g.
restaurant owners - short, property developers - long.
• Increase in eco-economy jobs. New services such as climate change strategy,
climate change consulting, green house gas auditing and verification. New need
for environmental green collar market e.g. water recycling and solar energy.
• Increased maintenance requirements on housing may lead to new products offering
servicing.
• Insurance opportunities - greater hazards lead to greater consumer demand. Longer
life leads to increase in pensions/savings product demand.
• Opportunity to include environmental and social externalities in economic
reasoning.
• People may become more resource efficient.
• Opportunity to develop real price for carbon related to environmental cost.
• Cut down on importing carbon fuels from abroad which equals better balance of
payments
• Investment in renewable energy companies/technology due to high P/E ratio
predicted.
• Shift towards less fossil fuel dependent transport.
• New markets: carbon trading weather derivatives.
• Development of alternative energies e.g. wind power.
• Employment in energy efficiency industry (development and manufacture).
• Increase amount of vegetated structures (through planning policy ad guidance) in
built development to provide benefits for energy/noise limitation, air quality and
therefore economic benefits (see Chicago and Canadian studies for cost savings on
green roofs).
• Increase density and create new open space.
• Reduction in need to travel if new ways of doing business can be found.