Welcome to Environmental Markets. This new SEDA publication highlights a welcome trend - the use of a market framework to solve environmental problems.

Moreover, the fact that the words environmental and markets can be linked to each in the title reflects a sea-change in attitude about our relationship with the natural world.

Business itself is now making this link. Energy and climate policy are intertwined and human-induced climate change is real.

The same financial markets that have been made possible by the telecommunications revolution also promise hope in solving some of our environmental problems - by pricing some of the negative consequences of industrial production and putting a value on clean energy production.

Thanks primarily to the advent of space travel - we view our world differently to previous generations. What was once seen as vast, limitless and overwhelming is now seen as small, fragile and finite.

This is no more so than with the thin gossamer web of atmosphere that makes life on Earth possible. When next travelling aloft in a jet, take time to think that 60 per cent of the atmosphere lies below you. Such is the thinness of the atmosphere.

Indeed, the use of market-transformation as an environmental instrument is a concept that is no more than a decade old but has now been picked up by some of the largest corporations on the planet, in an effort to implement activities such as emissions trading to help overcome global warming.

In Australia, new legislation to grow the size of the renewable energy market requires the full co-operation of properly functioning markets to ensure that at least $2 billion of investment funds are available to capacity build new generating plants sourced from renewable energy sources.

This publication highlights this new approach. Sustainable energy production, that it is no longer the plaything of an eclectic few but a legitimate industry in its own right that deserves to flourish because Australia is already a world leader in many of the technologies involved.

SEDA hopes to make this publication the keystone of a program to engage the financial markets into investing in sustainable energy production. The newsletter is currently free but will become subscription only after a few issues.

We trust you learn from this newsletter and realise just how close the market transformation to a sustainable energy future really is.

We value your feedback and ask you to take time to return our questionnaire to ensure that we can build upon our first edition.

If the rapid acceleration of technology has taught us anything it is that the future tends to arrive sooner than expected.

This newsletter will hopefully go some of the way to ensure that the renewable energy sector is a legitimate asset class in its own right.