Energy strategist: Financial sector incurring up to $4trn of externality costs from fossil fuels

The financial sector is incurring between $2trn and $4trn of externality costs from investing in the fossil fuel system each year, an energy strategist has warned. 

Speaking in a Better World Interview conducted by Net Zero Investor, Kingsmill Bond, who works for RMI, highlighted that - as the climate crisis is becoming worse - governments could start to put a price on pollution, which will leave investors with high “karma prices” to pay.

He said: “At present, the fossil fuel system is causing externality costs, call it between $50 and $100 a tonne and then you have got 36, call it 40 giga tonnes of pollution. If you do the maths, it is between $2 and $4trn a year of unpaid externality costs that this sector is incurring.”

“If you are an investor in the sector you are investing at the moment on the assumption that governments will never make you pay, you can always pollute with impunity because you always have. But the problem with that framing is the world is changing.

“Increasingly, inevitably governments are starting to make you pay and you see this through slowly rising carbon taxes, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in Europe. It is very obviously the start of a very long trend, which will ultimately see much higher karma prices being placed on all of this pollution.”

To listen to Kingsmill Bond’s full Better World Interview, click here.