The Climate Markets & Investment Association (CMIA) is pleased to announce the creation of its new Asia regional chapter. The chapter will be co-chaired by Assaad Razzouk, CEO of Sindicatum and Andrew Affleck, managing partner at Armstrong Asset Management.  CMIA recognises that South East Asia is a key part of the emerging market landscape and could serve as a benchmark for other developing country policy and business model initiatives. Read More

CMIA IS EXPENDING ITS PRESENCE AND INFLUENCE IN ASIA

The Climate Markets & Investment Association (CMIA) is pleased to announce the creation of its new Asia regional chapter. The chapter will be co-chaired by Assaad Razzouk, CEO of Sindicatum and Andrew Affleck, managing partner at Armstrong Asset Management.

CMIA recognises that South East Asia is a key part of the emerging market landscape and could serve as a benchmark for other developing country policy and business model initiatives. The CMIA Asia Chapter will work with Development Finance Institutions and others to design, promote and implement in collaboration with its members, public private partnership schemes to address funding gaps and establish successful benchmarks with the aim of catalyzing greater institutional investment in the region.

Based in Singapore, the chapter will engage with regional policy makers in Asia generally, but principally in Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Vietnam. CMIA’s Asia Chapter’s focus is to provide input regarding market based mechanisms to support the further investment in climate change mitigation projects. The chapter will access and provide constructive feedback, based on practical experience, regarding policy initiatives addressing carbon pricing, Feed-In-Tariffs, Renewable Energy targets and quotas, Fossil fuel subsidies and project permitting processes.

Through this chapter, CMIA has already participated in/organised 2 events:

-              5 March 2014 – Beijing: A joint China Carbon Forum, ASrIA and CMIA event on “Stabilizing Carbon Markets: Lessons learned and applicability for China’s Nascent Carbon Markets.” A summary of this event can be found here.

-              19 May 2014 – Manila: Via a panel discussion followed by a dinner, CMIA launches its thought leadership paper assessing renewable energy regimes in Indonesia, Thailand and The Philippines.

Anthony Hobley, CMIA President says “Once again this is an example of CMIAs membership leading the association into new and exciting territory.”

Miles Austin, Executive Director at CMIA states “Asia is fast becoming the focus of a new wave of mitigation investment, prior to the CDM there were almost no project developers focused on low/no carbon projects present, on the back of the CDM a wave of new companies sprung up who are now expanding their business model into complimentary financing mechanisms, this is a very exciting time for the region which has huge untapped potential”.

Andrew Affeck is the Founder and Managing Partner of Armstrong Asset Management. He has 24 years of asset management and investment banking experience in the Asian region, and has specialized in climate change mitigation investments for the last 8 years. He comments “I am delighted to have the opportunity to co-Chair the newly launched Asia chapter of the CMIA. We aim to leverage the experience and success from other parts of the organization globally, to accelerate this region’s progress with mitigating climate change.”

Assaad W. Razzouk is a clean energy entrepreneur, investor and commentator on climate change, natural capital and clean energy. He is Group Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, a global clean energy company headquartered in Singapore; a Board member of the Climate Markets & Investment Association and of the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia. He is a graduate of Syracuse University (Summa Cum Laude) and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

About the CMIA

The Climate Markets and Investment Association (CMIA) is an international trade association representing companies that finance, invest in, and provide enabling support to activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solely representing organisations that provide services to and invest in the environmental sector, the CMIA’s membership does not include any entities with compliance obligations under cap-and-trade schemes. This results in a unique advocacy platform with emphasis on the environmental integrity of market mechanisms and climate change policies.

Source: www.cmia.net