University's course in carbon finance a first

EDINBURGH University has designed the world's first masters course to help business students tap into the £6.2 trillion low carbon industry.

The university's business school has launched a masters in carbon finance to provide training to the burgeoning renewables sector and firms that have to address legislation and carbon trading schemes.

Course director Francisco Ascui said the masters will help bring financially savvy people into a sector previously dominated by scientists, engineers and environmentalists.

Quoting estimates from the International Energy Agency, he said: "There's $10tn dollars of investment that needs to be made to bring us on a safe target in terms of climate change and there's a shortage of people who are qualified to bridge the gap between the environmentalists and policymakers on the one hand and the financial community on the other."

In a climate of carbon trading schemes, emissions targets and other ethical concerns, it's becoming increasingly important to be able to measure businesses' environmental performance, Ascui said.

The university already has a spin-off company, Ends Carbon, offering similar services. It provides reports for companies that want to benchmark their performance on the FTSE4Good and the FTSE CDP Carbon Strategy indices.The MSc in carbon finance, which starts in September, is already oversubscribed and the business school received six times more applications than the 25 places available.

With uncertainty over what will replace the Kyoto Protocol next year, Ascui said students will graduate into a complicated framework of regulation and rewards for decarbonisation.

Emissions legislation and carbon trading rules are likely to be varied, he said, as countries not only pass their own laws but enter into a complex series of bilateral agreements.