Green Wall Street Gets Together

The barons of Wall Street have been blamed for the global financial crisis. They have been the target of Main Street ire and the butt of talk show jokes.  But as I walk the halls of New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria today, it is clear that the hundreds of suits filling the conference space want to change that.

These folks aim to foster a new image for the financial capital of our country. They aim to be leaders tackling climate change and empowering an energy revolution.

The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) is convening a gathering of financial muscle for the second year, entitled the Renewable Energy Financial Forum (REFF). Last year, over 600 participants came to REFF Wall Street. This year, a similar number are filling the elegant Waldorf rooms to strategize a resurgence of renewable energy finance.

Even though markets continue to struggle, the conference started with positive energy this Tuesday morning. Leaders from finance are discussing how the negative trends of 2009 can make way for robust growth in 2010.

The first speaker was Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson. She represented a goal-oriented DOE that is aggressively interested in tapping into the vast latent renewable resources throughout the US. She put forward goals for wind and solar power to make up 21% of US electricity in 2030 (15% and 6%, respectively). She also focused on the potential for hydropower to grow from its ~6.5% share by adding turbines to lakes that are currently solely for recreation and water supply.

International Energy Agency head, Nobuo Tanaka, called this renewable energy transition necessary to properly address the urgent climate crisis from business as usual energy consumption. He believes current US federal legislation to lower emissions 80+% by 2050 is in the range of what is needed to achieve a safe greenhouse gas concentration of 450 ppm (parts per million in the atmosphere).

The head of ACORE, Michael Eckhart, estimates that such DOE renewable energy growth goals will take $1 trillion in finance over the next two decades to come to fruition. That huge prospective capital flow is why we have standing room only filling the main ballroom. The panelists are hopeful that the current freeze in capital markets will recover by mid-2010. Cards are beings swapped, relationships are beginning, and these industry leaders have better information to lead their institutions to successful renewable energy deployment in the years ahead.

It will take a while for Wall Street to change its image from unchecked greed and rapacious industry. But gatherings like REFF can help empower an ethos of environmental stewardship and climate responsibility into the community.

I’ll keep you updated on how the conference develops over the next two days. Here’s hoping participants are able to figure out and share innovative financing methods that can continue to lower renewables’ cost and help these cleaner sources substitute dirty fossil fuels in our energy system.