A guide to the Kyoto protocol: a treaty with potentially vital strategic implications for the renewables industry

Why should renewables advocates care about the arcane business of multilateral climate negotiations? The answer is simple. Because these long-running and oft bogged-down talks have as their ultimate objective a goal with seismic implications for energy markets: substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Coming anywhere close to that goal would entail the creation of multi-hundred billion dollar markets in renewables in the years ahead. And in Kyoto last December, governments took a meaningful first step in that direction.This paper is a brief summary, and analysis of that first step. It concludes with some observations about immediate implications for the renewables industries.