Climate Friendly gives Macquarie Capital a footprint in carbon market

Age
Thursday 6/12/2007 Page: 3

Macquarie Capital Group has joined those becoming more active in the carbon market, buying 50% of climate change company Climate Friendly for an undisclosed sum. The deal comes a day after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which sets a legally binding emissions reduction target for Australia. But Macquarie said it had been looking for some time to break into what it predicted "is about to become a very big market."

Climate Friendly, established in 2003, helps businesses and individuals adopt energy-efficiency targets and gain renewable energy carbon credits. Oliver Yates, Macquarie's global head of climate change practice, said the partnership would link Climate Friendly with Macquarie's international contacts and help Macquarie get into the growing market.

The timing looks opportunistic, but when you are getting into an acquisition of a business, it doesn't happen overnight," he said. "We think this market is going to be significant and we think enabling ourselves to get a better understanding of it, and enabling our clients to participate in it, is in the best interests of ourselves, our clients, Climate Friendly and the environment." Mr Yates said Mr Rudd's decision to ratify Kyoto would only strengthen Macquarie's position. From an Australian side, that process will benefit the business." he said.

"Corporates now need to directly focus on this issue. It can't be something that people ignore any longer." Climate Friendly, which this year has traded about 70,000 tonnes of carbon, the equivalent of taking 15,000 cars off the road, said it expected growth to explode following the Kyoto ratification and through the synergies of the Macquarie deal.

Climate Friendly chief executive Joel Fleming said the business would operate in the voluntary carbon market as well as through mechanisms available through Kyoto. "We could be doing a million tonnes in a very short space of time and that is what is needed for us to solve this problem of climate change," he said. "The benefit of Macquarie being involved is that they own a lot of assets and infrastructure and have a large global reach. This is the type of thing we needed to do to scale the business up globally."

Link: www.climatefriendly.com