The greening of the financial services industry isn’t a moral issue — it’s strictly business. The fact that a more environmentally conscious industry can help save the planet is just a beneficial side effect.

Although the environmental policies of Canada’s new federal government remain decidedly obscure, policy-makers in much of the rest of the developed world are coming to understand the damage that our consumption of natural resources is inflicting on our environment. The chief concern is climate change, so governments are moving to curtail ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions. Financial firms have a big part to play in this effort, and an opportunity to profit as well.

At the most practical level, firms can curtail their own waste. Reducing unnecessary consumption of resources, such as paper and power, benefits both the environment and the bottom line.

Some firms, such as Royal Bank of Canada, are going further and buying a portion of their power from green sources. That may not be immediately financially beneficial, but it can beautify a firm’s valuable public image.

Outside the financial services industry, the challenge of limiting emissions is most fairly met by adopting a cap-and-trade system, as Europe has done. Markets are the most efficient way in which to absorb this sort of policy change, and financial services firms have the necessary expertise in trading and market operations to make it work and make it pay.

Then there is the question of firms’ financing choices. Much as bankers would like to believe that their lending activities are harmless, they aren’t. There are very real effects from the projects that companies undertake, and their financiers inevitably bear some of the responsibility. It would be naive to believe otherwise.

Anyone remember Enron Corp.? The banks that financed its dodgy transactions may have done nothing wrong themselves, but they were repaid with damaged reputations and several billion dollars in legal settlements for facilitating its misdeeds. Similar risks to reputation and credit lie in financial institutions funding big-time polluters.

Alternatively, companies can finance new technologies that are aimed at improving resource efficiency, facilitating the shift to new energy sources and limiting pollution. The stakes for these kinds of innovation are increasing, and the potential financial rewards are compelling.

So, go green — even if you’re only doing it for the money.