Report Shows Economies Can Be Built While Protecting the Environment
EarthVision Environmental News
November 13, 2000
WASHINGTON, November 13, 2000 - A newly released environmental report for the first time provides international investment agencies and investors with information on carbon dioxide emissions they need to undertake economic development that protects the environment and the global climate.
OPIC President and CEO George Muņoz said the report will challenge other investment agencies, as well as the private sector, to standardize their environmental strategies, by reporting on emissions from projects in their own portfolios, and urging them increasingly to consider renewable energy sources.
"OPIC has voluntarily assessed its own power portfolio, and in the process has produced the raw data that will provide a beacon and a standard of environmental behavior for companies and agencies to do their share to protect the environment," Muņoz said.
The report, Climate Change: Assessing our Actions, found that OPIC's power portfolio was driven by lower-carbon emitting fuels and is not a major contributor to climate change. Muņoz said rather than calculating only the annual aggregate emissions of carbon dioxide from OPIC's thermoelectric power projects, the report takes into account the cumulative impacts of OPIC's entire thermoelectric portfolio.
"OPIC recognized that carbon dioxide emissions and climate change impacts are global and that the assessment of such impacts should not be limited to the project-specific level, but must be done on a cumulative basis" Muņoz said. "In 1998, OPIC began to calculate and aggregate on an annual basis the carbon dioxide emissions from all its power sector projects. Today's report goes a major step further."
The report found that OPIC's power portfolio is driven predominantly by clean burning, low-carbon natural gas (45 percent) and carbon-free hydro and geothermal energy (27 percent). It concluded that OPIC-supported projects "are not a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions or climate change." Current carbon dioxide emissions from OPIC-supported projects represent 0.24 percent of global CO2 emissions. In addition, OPIC projects tend to utilize highly efficient advanced technologies, more than 45 percent of them making use of combined cycle technology - the most efficient electricity-generating technology available.
"Preserving the environment and building economies need no longer be seen as competing goals. Indeed, if we are to endow future generations with the environment and the economic opportunity they deserve and require, this trend must continue," Muņoz said. "We are issuing this report as a demonstration of OPIC's commitment to the principle that economic development and environmental protection can go hand in hand."
OPIC is a self-sustaining federal agency that sells investment services to small, medium and large American businesses expanding into some 140 developing nations and emerging markets around the world. OPIC's political risk insurance, project finance and investment funds fill a commercial void and support development in emerging economies.