‘The East is turning green’

In yesterday’s Financial Times, Helen Wong, CEO for Greater China of the HSBC, outlines the economic reasons why China and India are turning green.

(https://www.ft.com/content/3e6ac1dc-75e1-11e7-90c0-90a9d1bc9691)

She covers the familiar bases – that it is immediate pollution problems that are driving the shift, encompassing not just the build-up of new green industries but the transformation of existing fossil fuelled industries. Her focus is on the economic advantages of the green shift. As she puts it: ‘It now makes not just ethical but also commercial sense to build wind farms, or to deploy electrically powered buses on public transport routes.’ Ms Wong rightly places the central emphasis on the business transition accompanying the green shift that is taking both China and India up the value chain – as I have argued in Chapter Five of Global Green Shift. Ms Wong does not mention the energy and resource security concerns that I have argued are also driving China’s and India’s green shift. That will no doubt be for a future article.