Feb-June Catchup!

In a blink of an eye, it's been nearly 4 months since I last updated my blog!!

Unfortunately, my podcast came to no avail as it was either too time consuming or I just lacked motivation. Maybe both combined. Seems like it hasn't just been me though. Thomson Reuters have terminated their carbon market community, which was invaluable source of information for me. Now I troll around carbonoffsetdaily.com, businessgreen.com and other sites for my news feeds but it's not the same really. The carbon markets are no longer so sexy, though I still wish I was working in the CDM field.

During these months I've been following more generally the business world, and started investing in some unit trusts, taking advantage of my ISA allowance. By stroke of luck I actually managed to avoid any exposure to BP before the oil spill. But to be honest, I really don't have much clue what I'm doing. The 8 funds I've put money into are:

Aberdeen Emerging Markets A Fund Acc
First State Greater China Growth A Fund Acc
Invesco Perpetual Latin American Fund Inc
Jupiter Financial Opportunities Fund Inc
Jupiter India Fund Acc
Legal & General All Stocks IL Gilt Ind Trust Inc
M&G Strategic Corporate Bond A Fund Inc
Neptune Russia & Greater Russia A Fund Acc

I only really wanted to go for the emerging markets...though they are the highest risk ones. But I succumbed to my own risk averse nature and bought into funds in UK gilts, corporate bonds as well as no-risk cash. Unsurprisingly, they are performing the worst of them all. Overall, it's small money and nothing really to be excited about.

I've been thinking about buying gold the last 2 months, and keep holding it off because I think there's no way it'll keep rising. But as always, it just keeps motoring upwards with no end in sight....if only I was making some money for myself back in 2001...when gold was around $200 an ounce (it's $1200 an ounce now). Back then, Gordon Brown inexplicably sold off half of UK's government's gold reserves, some 375 tonnes at those ultra-cheap prices. How they wished they had held on!

In terms of the carbon world, it's been a year of consolidation and wait and see, I guess. Carbon is no longer significant enough to make big news, and major players have lost value and been bought off by large multinationals really as leverage for the off-chance that carbon will one day matter again.

Under everyone's radar, Ecosecurities have been bought by JP Morgan, Point Carbon by Thomson Reuters, New Energy Finance by Bloomberg, and Tricorona by Barclays. Now they are all operating under the umbrellas of those big companies and it's no longer so transparent what they're doing and where they are going.

As for global climate policy, it's so predictable that it's no longer worth reading beyond the headlines. Of course COP will meet again and again and developing and developed country won't agree because geopolitics is more important.

Nevertheless, there are progress made everyday on GHG mitigation methodologies and new projects through the CDM pipeline.

In the developed world, the most clean tech could hope for is to survive. Especially given the sovereign debt crisis, huge cutbacks will be announced in Germany, UK and beyond. In actual fact the UK emergency budget will be announced tomorrow and it'll be interesting to see how much the green agenda will be cut.

In my particular field, supply chain carbon management remains to be a very niche field involving only the brave few. However, the global standard 'wannabe', the WRI standard on product carbon footprinting is due to be finalised in late December this year and if companies unite and embrace this particular standard, it may bring some co-ordination in the market.

Outside of worklife, I've been keeping up with Kendo as per usual and also enjoying the city of London. Without being too touristy, I've been doing historical walks around London on my ipod, and recording my tracks as I go. Hopefully I'll keep this up and show everyone all the facinating strands of London life.