China has emerged as one of the world’s top ten countries tackling climate change, according to the third annual review of the HSBC Climate Change Index.

Boosted by private sector climate-related investment, which has grown 30-fold since 2004, coupled with strong political leadership and focused climate stimulus spend, China is poised to be at  the forefront of developments in the emerging low carbon economy. 
 
Globally, the climate change sector has proved resilient to the global slowdown, seeing less than a 0.9 per cent decline in revenues in 2009. In contrast, the revenues of the approximately 2,400 companies in the MSCI ACWI fell three per cent.

In dollar terms, global revenues amounted to USD530bn in 2009, making it greater than the wireless telecom services sector and comparable to the GDP of Switzerland.
 
Joaquim de Lima, global head of quant research for equities at HSBC, says: “The rapid growth of China’s engagement with climate change has been staggering: last year China accounted for over 24 per cent of total global investment into the climate change sector, having represented only six per cent of the total in 2004. We believe with continued strong investment flow from the private sector, coupled with political leadership, China is now well positioned to move to the forefront of developments in the emerging low carbon economy, which should ultimately feed into the future growth of its own economy.”