In Hong Kong the event was organised by ASrIA, who are currently helping represent the Carbon Disclosure Project in Asia, and hosted by Cliftons at their state-of-the-art venue in Hong Kong. The event was well attended by a range of investors, corporates and civil society representatives.

Gail Kendall, the Group Director for Environment of China Light and Power gave a very clear and well received presentation on this complex subject, explaining the underlying issues, the extent to which companies can respond to them, and the implications for investors. She started by emphasising three key messages:

Politics and global Co-operation. She noted that via such as the Kyoto Protocols an international political framework had been put in place to respond to climate change issues. Yet, there were still key absenters from this treaty, in particular the US and Australia. However she noted increasing recognition by business leaders that this was one issue that they needed to position their businesses on for the long term regardless of the political dimension.

Measuring Risk. With respect to measuring the regulatory risk, businesses needed to consider:

Accountability. Another key issue was the extent to which responsibility for GHG emissions could be allocated. How can we assess the risk and who along the value chain (from the oil company or coal mine, the power station or the equipment manufacturer, all the transport in between, or the eventual consumer) is responsible for the emissions? Gail noted that the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have published the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which clearly sets out to show how to assess responsibility for emissions. The key principle is based on 'tail-pipe accountability' based on what you own and what you control, which tends to place the primary but not sole responsibility on the primary emitter. For instance, a car manufacturer would be primarily responsible to use their resources to create more energy efficient manufacturing processes and cars, but the consumer also still has the responsibility in terms of choosing what car to buy and how often to use it.

Trading. Gail noted that trading only represents a small part of overall initiatives and responsibilities for reducing climate change. However it is still has an increasingly influential role to play. She noted that trading 'tends to favour the least cost options'. Whereas the Kyoto Protocols emphasised government-to-government co-operation, it had given rise to business-to-business trading. There are primarily three ways by which businesses can engage in trading:

After an active question session the event ended with a raffle for two bottles of Australian wine and an informal discussion over wine and snacks, kindly sponsored by Cliftons.