Overview of the Climate Change Consulting Industry (excerpt)
Climate change consulting only counts for 2-3% of environmental C&E revenues today, but CCBJ believes a powerful growth trajectory awaits as a result of rapidly evolving regulation, strengthening economic drivers, and a strong response from a wide range technical providers in the service segments listed on the table on page 3.... The result of all these drivers has been exceptional growth in the climate change practices of those companies that have entered the arena to provide technical and strategic advisory services. Providers of climate change advisory services tend to be optimistic about their growth prospects for next year, even during a time of economic turmoil. Consulting & engineering firms providing services to developers of wind, solar, and renewable energy projects may see some delays as the credit crunch places constraints on the availability of capital. Meanwhile, those firms that are providing policy development and implementation support to governments and strategic carbon management support to corporations could weather the economic storm quite well and even grow....
CCBJ ranking of client categories demanding climate change consulting services in 2008 (excerpt)
- Power utilities
- Non-Profits/NGOs
- Universities
- Petroleum/oil & gas
- State government
2009 Could Be a Crucial Year For Consultants (excerpt)
Meeting the issue of ownership challenge of selling climate change consulting services couldn't come at a more critical time for vendors, concluded Verdantix Director David Metcalfe. For the climate change consulting business, 2009 could very well be a make-or-break year for some companies. "The risk for consultants is, if they don't build up their expertise in 2009, despite how bad the economy is, they will miss out on this market," Metcalfe told CCBJ... Few climate change business and policy experts, Metcalfe included, are confident that the United States will enact federal climate change legislation in 2009, but it is pretty clear that such legislation is coming. Even if it arrives in 2010, those firms that hope to be leaders in providing compliance, risk management, opportunity analysis, and strategic services are going to need to have the resources in place...
Risks & Opportunities Drive Climate Change Strategy Development (excerpt)
TRC, ENVIRON, ICF, and dcarbon8
Several executives contacted by CCBJ noted that a climate change strategy often tends to be one component of a broader attempt to implement sustainable operations throughout the organization. "You can't talk about carbon without talking about the overall issue of sustainability, which includes waste, water, and so forth," noted Andrew Marris, CEO of dcarbon8 (London, U.K.), a specialized carbon management consultancy. "A natural progression in talking about carbon with a big business is to ask, What are you doing about sustainability? You need to view the climate changes issues in light of the overall sustainability strategy. And you find that many companies have no more in the way of strategy other than a few sound bites on a web site."
Across the Industrial Spectrum There's Value to Be Won and Lost
In a 2008 report, The Carbon Trust (London, U.K.) looked at a range of global carbon mitigation scenarios as part of the transition to a carbon-constrained future and concluded that companies across a wide variety of industrial sectors not only face significant loss of value-termed "value at risk"-depending on how they respond to climate change, but also have the significant opportunity to improve company value. "Tackling climate change could create opportunities for a company to increase its value by up to 80% if it is well positioned and proactive," The Carbon Trust concluded in Climate Change - a Business Revolution? "Conversely, it could threaten up to 65% of value if the company is poorly positioned or laggard."....
Carbon Footprinting Travels Up and Down the Supply Chain (excerpt)
...Today, companies on both sides of that aisle are moving on to Scope 3 analysis. This means taking a harder look at their product life cycles and following those life cycles up and down the supply chain to evaluate the carbon footprints of their raw material and component suppliers. "This is the new thing-footprinting for the products, and not just the business," said ENVIRON's Grice. "It's happening so fast."...
Sustainability Revenues Double (excerpt)
...Tillman estimated that revenue from sustainability services accounts for only about 5% of net service revenue for 2008, but that's double the figure for 2007. "In 2009, it should double again," he said. Depending on the climate change and environmental policy's enacted by the incoming Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress, sustainability-related services "could become 10% of the business, if not in 2009, then in 2010... Under the EHS management umbrella, EORM's sustainability services cover a broad range: carbon management consulting; assistance with the implementation of corporate carbon footprint reduction programs; energy efficiency system design and implementation; product stewardship and life-cycle assessment; sustainability risk management assessment; and support for programs designed to reduce overall environmental impacts....
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Look inside other CCBJ Editions
Also available from Climate Change Business Journal are recent editions on energy storage technologies, carbon trading markets, the solar energy industry, the wind energy industry, the biofuels business, and the bioenergy industry. Each issue includes trend analysis, market size and growth estimates. Facets of the climate change industry to be covered by CCBJ research 2009 include an Overview of the Climate Change Industry and its nine business segments as defined by CCBJ, in addition to the geothermal energy business, the energy efficiency business, and other segments of the renewable energy business.
