The governments of the world today reached agreement on a international agreement to finally deal with climate change on a global basis. The agreement reached in Paris will, for the first time, provide binding limits to carbon pollution for each of the 196 countries that are signatories. This agreement, although imperfect in that even deeper cuts to carbon emissions will be needed over the next decades to hold the earth's temperature rise to under 2 degrees Celsius, is the first binding agreement that holds all nations to quantifiable efforts to lower carbon emissions over time. This agreement is being praised by international leaders, companies, and environmentalists as the first really big step in confronting climate change.
Despite continued denials by many in the U.S. that climate change is real and happening, most global corporations accept the need for international efforts at reducing carbon emissions. Those companies that have already taken steps to reduce their own emissions will begin to distance themselves from their competitors that have failed to take such steps. The corporations that take the lead in carbon emission reductions will increasingly have a real and significant competitive advantage over those corporations that do not take such steps. With this major international agreement, it really becomes irrelevant if there are still pockets of climate change deniers holding to their beliefs. All of the world's governments, the vast majority of the world's scientists, and a large majority of major global corporations are now united in their efforts to confront the issue of climate change and work together to hold the global temperature rise to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Renewables will continue to grow around the globe, no doubt at an increasing pace. Natural gas use will also gain significant market share in the next decades as the developing world is held to carbon reduction goals, which will increasingly mean that those economies will have to begin to shift away from coal-fired electricity production. The obvious transition step for these economies will be to convert many of their existing coal-fired plants to natural gas-fired production. Because of this new international agreement, the economies of both India and China will have to take concrete, quantifiable, and observable steps in the next few decades to reduce their carbon emissions. This shift should be especially significant for IOC as it assets are very close to both of those large markets. Naturally Japan, Korea, and the smaller economies of SE Asia will also be bound to reduce their carbon emissions as well, which will also bode well for IOC in the next few decades.