Compared to the previous two years, we had a much healthier roster of transactions to assess for this year’s awards issue – with the IPO market especially much more active than in the recent past.

WINNER: Caithness Shepherds Flat wind farm financing RUNNER UP: Eaga social housing solar financing

WINNER: Amyris RUNNER UP: Enel Green Power

WINNER: The Kasigau Corridor REDD project

WINNER: Christopher Flensborg

WINNER: Clariden Leu’s notional USA natural perils catastrophe derivative

WINNER: Sindicatum Carbon Capital structured CER sale RUNNER UP: Parhelion EU ETS eligibility insurance

WINNER: SunPower Andromeda Finance solar project bond

With the run-up to the Copenhagen talks, 2009 was the year of climate change. For many, this year is all about biodiversity – indeed, for the UN, 2010 is its International Year of Biodiversity.

Of the few companies that listed in the public markets over the past year, many have taken investors on a stomach-flipping rollercoaster ride.

The message from the industry is clear: if the EU is to meet its ambitious renewable energy targets, massive investment in the sector is needed.

Registering the first ‘programmatic’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project was always going to be a stand-out moment in the development of the carbon market.

Environmental Finance’s Weather Risk Deal of the Year was groundbreaking in several ways: it was in a developing country and was a complex ‘quanto’ product, combining weather and commodity risk.

The global economy may be limping back to health, but it’s been another tough 12 months for environmental markets. Environmental Finance recognises the stand-out deals that have overcome adversity

The annual Environmental Finance Awards recognise excellence in the application of financial markets know-how to the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

In the US catastrophe insurance-linked securities market, almost half of all deals are referenced to industry loss estimates, quickly produced by an independent third party to provide an objective, transparent assessment of the impact on the insurance industry of a particular event.

Any hopes that the environmental markets would escape the worst of the last 12 months’ financial crisis proved in vain – but financiers still managed to put together some innovative and game-changing transactions. Environmental Finance recognises last year’s leading deals

As we approach the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen this December, it is the world’s politicians that we are relying upon to forge an ambitious successor to the Kyoto Protocol – but it is the world’s business leaders who will be expected to deliver its goals. And few business leaders have been as outspoken on climate change, or as ambitious, as Lars Josefsson, chief executive of Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company with pan-European ambitions.

SMA Solar Technology listed in June 2008, at a time when the market was almost shut for initial public offerings (IPOs). The Environmental Finance IPO of the year was one of only three IPOs in Europe in the first half of 2008, raising €362 million ($512 million) through its listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

It is perhaps indicative of the past 12 months that this year’s renewable energy deal of the year saw no cash change hands – but it did mark, in the words of one analyst, a “watershed for the sector”. On 2 March, industry-leading US solar photovoltaic (PV) module maker First Solar announced that it was to acquire for $400 million in stock the development pipeline of Optisolar, a California-based manufacturer and developer of solar PV systems, which had been struggling to find the finance to develop its projects.