As various industry groups marshal their forces to try and add momentum to the push for a carbon price, institutional investors are also mobilising to ensure that their members are not excluded from the opportunities of a low-carbon economy.

The chief concern for Australian-based Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) is of capital leakage, where Australian money is funneled overseas, seeking investments in low-carbon technology and industries because of limited opportunities in Australia.

This is already happening on a small scale. The only two Australian-based funds that specialise in clean technology investments both eschew Australia – not because of of its lack of R&D and innovation, but because the policies are not in place to support the right business models.

Wind farm developers invested billions overseas, before returning to Australia and finding their plans frustrated again, and the geothermal industry is looking increasingly likely to follow the same path. Firms that specialise in carbon offsets and mitigation projects have already decamped.

But if the leaders of global industrial giants such as GE, Siemens, Hyundai, Samsung, Honda, Panasonic are right, and the world is heading into a period of massive investment into what the leaders of the US and China describe as the 'green economy', then that trickle of funds and business opportunities leaving our shores will potentially turn into a steady river and affect more than just a handful of innovative start-ups.

“The risk for Australia is for our capital flows to go offshore,” says IGCC CEO Nathan Fabian. “Miners talk about carbon leakage, but there is just as great a risk of capital leakage – money moving offshore for low-carbon exposure, the money that will go to china, Europe or south America where governments are setting policies in place.

The IGCC, which represents fund managers that account for more than half of total funds under management, including the likes of AMP, Colonial First State, is also working with its counterparts in the US and in Europe, who together manage $US64 trillion of funds, to ensure that financing mechanisms being discussed at  international climate negotiations are structured the right way to attract institutional funds.

It is recognised that the financing task to effect a transition to a low-carbon economy, or even meet the 2c target pledge agreed to at Copenhagen, is too great for any government's finances – apart from maybe China’s – and it will be crucial to find the mechanisms to unlock private capital.

The International Energy Agency has talked in terms of $US500 billion needed each year, at least in terms of energy requirements, but the financing proposed at the climate talks speak of $100 billion in government funds over 10 years.

Fabian says it is imperative to find the right structure to reduce risk to the private market. This also includes the removal of political risk, and some sort of political risk insurance is also being mooted to encourage investors into the market. One early test of those mechanisms will be planned $5 billion retail bond issue by the Asian Development Bank to help fund clean energy investments in the region.

Meanwhile, it was interesting to note who took part in the calls for quick action on a carbon price on Friday, and those who didn’t. The Clean Energy Council mustered 19 of its most prominent members, including global heavyweight GE, and a bevy of international and local renewable energy firms and suppliers, energy group AGL and TruEnergy, the owner of the Yallourn brown coal power station and a growing portfolio of renewables. It must have been thrown together in a bit of a rush, because Origin Energy, one of the most vocal advocates of a carbon price, did not add its name because, we are told, its CEO was overseas.

The National Business Leaders Forum for Sustainable Leadership comprised the likes of Lend Lease, Westpac, Visy, BP, Energy Australia, Dupont, Cisco, Interface, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Not that it got a heck of a lot of media traction. That was afforded only to miners warning of the perils of a mining tax, and poker machine operators warning about limits on gambling. It’s easier to imagine damage done to an existing business than an opportunity lost for a larger one.

What will be fascinating is how this plays out in the medium term. Even heavy emitters cannot pretend that the lack of clarity on a carbon price is a good thing, because it stifles even their own investment choices. And major trading partners such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are all at various stages of planning carbon emission trading schemes and could have them in place by 2012.

But the heaviest emitters, though keen to have this settled, and apparently happy to say this as individuals, will be careful not to appear too enthusiastic as a group, and anxious that any scheme is set up in the image of their current business models.

We could end up with a similar situation to Europe and the US, where the scale of targets is in great dispute, and large friction and fractures appear in the various business umbrella groups. Or we could go down the road of California, where as we discussed on Friday, the fossil fuel and the clean energy industry are preparing for a costly winner-take-all referendum on the state’s climate policy.