Vestas urges G20 leaders to support green growth
Los Cabos, Mexico - Vestas President and CEO, Ditlev Engel, and Enel CEO and General Manager, Fulvio Conti, co-chaired the G20 Business Summit (B20) Task Force on Green Growth in connection with the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. During the main plenary session with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, Ditlev Engel urged Heads of State to adopt policies that will simultaneously help to green and grow the economy in environmentally, economically and socially sustainable ways. According to Engel, “growing the economy requires government and business to play their different, but mutually reinforcing roles. Governments have to create policy frameworks that re-balance economic incentives to clearly favor green investments. With the right policy frameworks, business will make the investments, take the risks, and create the new business opportunities that the green economic transformation promises.”
Engel and his Green Growth Task Force colleagues are asking G20 governments to demonstrate genuine leadership by initiating negotiations to achieve a sustainable energy trade agreement; create a robust price on carbon through coordinated international policies; end fossil fuel subsidies and other inefficient forms of support for the exploration, production, and consumption of fossil fuels; and to direct a portion of carbon price revenues to support innovation in sustainable technologies.
Business has a critical role to play as well. An important outcome of the B20 Task Force on Green Growth is the creation of the Green Growth Action Alliance, a new public-private partnership initiative comprising dozens of the world’s largest energy companies, international financial institutions, and development finance institutions. Vestas CEO explained: “We created the Green Growth Action Alliance to boost public and private investment into green infrastructure. Each year, $1 trillion is needed to deliver the necessary infrastructure and to shift us onto a low carbon path. Public finance is constrained or shrinking, and the only way to deliver this green infrastructure is to mobilise the over $100 trillion in assets under management by the private finance community.” Engel concluded: “Some people consider this a trillion dollar expense. Vestas and our Alliance partners view it as a trillion dollar business opportunity.”
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