Finance

3-02-21

One way of encouraging development of sustainable technologies is by personally making investments in them. Since technologies such as wind power, solar power, bicycles, electric cars are the future, these funds have as good a chance of yielding reasonable returns as traditional technologies.

People who keep with the traditional industries like oil and large cars are likely to find their investments declining in value as the burning of petroleum-based fuels become heavily taxed or rationed. Carbon fuel deposits may in time become un-burnable.

From a personal experience, my Jupiter Ecology fund grew 12% per annum over the last six years (2010-2020) while our Henderson’s Global care fund grew by 11%. These performed as well as, or better than our conventional investments. Our investment in ACE hydro-electric scheme on the Bridge of Don, Aberdeen, in comparison yields 4%.

Stockbrokers can go one further. A keen environmentalist stockbroker I knew, who invested on behalf of a major investment bank, used to ask potential recipient companies for their environmental statements during negotiations. These were produced with alacrity.