Beware The Vagaries Of Government
I just came across this article on potential problems with the emerging trade in carbon credits. The piece is not technical and I wouldn't say that it is particularly well-researched, but it does raise a key point - as the market for carbon emissions grows, the need for standardization and collaboration between governments and regulators will become ever more pressing. This could create problems. The carbon market is unique in that the commodity traded derives its value primarily from its ability to meet the requirements set by an environmental regulator. There is also a market for voluntary...
Hedging Your Climate Risks
Whether you agree it's because of human activity or not (and, for the record, I do), there's no doubt that the weather has been a little wacky over the past few years, driving a range of events that have had very real repercussions on businesses and the economy. Hurricane Katrina is one obvious example, but there have also been other, more subtle cases. Many ski resort operators in North America, for instance, were beginning to believe that winter would never arrive on the eastern side of the continent. In the west, we're now being told that cold weather...
Climate change, carbon trading and America…it’s only a matter of time
Just a quick follow-up on my carbon trading post a few days ago. Thanks to GreenBiz.com for the heads up on the results of a survey that were released during MIT's seventh annual Carbon Sequestration Initiative Forum. The results show that climate change now tops the list of environmental concerns for Americans. I don't want to reveal too much here since this is a GreenBiz.com story, but it suffices to say that this provides yet more ammunition to the political backers of a framework to reduce greenhouses gases in America. Momentum is building and there will definitely be some...
How Energy Deregulation Affects States and Stocks
by Elaine Thompson
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in an executive summary of its New Energy Outlook 2017 report, predicts renewable energy sources will represent almost three-quarters of the $10.2 trillion the world will invest in new power-generating technology.
Analysts outline several reasons for this increase in spending, such as the decreasing costs of wind and solar and consumers’ increasing interest in solar panels. Competition between power sources also continues to grow, with products like utility-scale batteries upsetting coal and natural gas’s roles in the marketplace.
But more importantly, state-driven renewable portfolio standards pave the way for additional ventures in renewable energy technologies, particularly...
Environmental Markets: The Next Frontier in Environmental Investing?
The term environmental markets remains foreign to most investors (and environmentalists!), even though these markets represent, in my view, a very compelling investment story. Although we've discussed trading in carbon emissions in the past, I thought I would expand a bit and talk about environmental markets in general, and about good ways to play them. What's An Environmental Market? Environmental markets exist at the confluence of two movements: (a) A growing desire on the part of national and regional governments in several countries to both limit environmentally-damaging behavior and to promote the growth of alternative...
Linking Emissions Trading Systems
For those interested in the topic of emissions trading, a new piece was just published by the International Emissions Trading Association on the topic of 'linking' different emissions trading regimes (PDF document). Linking entails allowing emission credits from one scheme to be rendered tradable in another. For example, European credits would be valid and tradable in California, and vice-versa. Beyond allowing the carbon market to become more efficient and liquid, linking could also present a range of arbitrage opportunities. For all of you environmental markets fiends out there, I would definitely recommend this paper. It's short (13...
Fossil Fuel Industry: Killing the Customer
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
Published by the Climate Accountability Institute, the Carbon Majors Reportlays bare the truth about which companies are responsible for industrial greenhouse gas emissions. One hundred fossil fuel producers are linked to 71% of global industrial greenhouse gases emitted since 1988. Something like a line in the sand for climate scientists, 1988 is the year human-induced climate change was official recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Fossil fuels in the form of coal, crude oil and gas are by far and large the culprits. Rolling forward three decades later, we can observe in the charts below that fossil fuel production...
A New Player In The North American Emissions Trading Sector
Over the past two weeks, a couple of announcements were made that went mostly unnoticed despite their importance to the North American carbon marketplace. Firstly, on May 30, the Montreal Exchange, a derivatives exchange, announced that it was launching an emissions trading market for CO2. The Montreal Exchange is now a unit of the TSX Group (TSXPF.PK or X.TO), the firm that runs all of Canada's exchanges. The second announcement came last week, when the premiers of Quebec and Ontario, Canada's two largest provinces and the heart of its industrial base, announced that they were moving ahead...
The Republican-Proposed Carbon Tax
by Noah Kaufman A group of prominent conservative Republicansincluding former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Walmart Chairman Rob Waltonmet with key members of the Trump administration on Wednesday about their proposal to tax carbon dioxide emissions and return the proceeds to the American people. Such an economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide could enable the United States to achieve its international emissions targets with better economic outcomes than under a purely regulatory approach. Attributes of the Republican Carbon Tax Proposal While the details on the...
US Presidential Election & Carbon Markets: Is The Climate Exchange Story Overdone?
An interesting piece yesterday in POLITICO on how carbon prices on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) have been trending up in recent months, mostly since it's become clear that all three remaining presidential hopefuls will likely regulate CO2 emissions at the federal level. In fact, as per the chart above, prices for the right to emit a metric ton of CO2 have been on a tear, recovering from a pretty significant slump in the preceding months. Last week, the World Bank Carbon Finance Unit released its annual update on the state of global carbon market (PDF...
Is Energy Sourcing the Gateway Drug to Energy Efficiency?
Tom Konrad CFA I recently interviewed Richard Domaleski, CEO of World Energy Solutions (NASD:XWES). World Energy is a comprehensive energy management services firm whose core offering is extremely price competitive energy sourcing (that is, finding an energy provider to supply all of a client's energy needs at the lowest possible cost.) They achieve competitive sourcing using an electronic energy exchange designed to achieve much better price discovery in what is traditionally a very opaque market. According to Domaleski, a recent KEMA study showed that only 7% of large commercial, industrial, and government customers are sourcing their...
Investing in Climate Change
This post was supposed to be about coal-to-liquids (CTL), but I came across interesting info yesterday after opening a former colleague’s mail that I thought would make for a more interesting post. The CTL piece will thus have to wait a bit. What was in the package was a hard copy of the January/February 2007 edition of CNBC European Business. This edition is dedicated to climate change, but, more importantly, to how some firms are positioning themselves to benefit from the markets that will be created as a result of regulatory and other actions to tackle greenhouse gas...
Wall Street And Climate Change Get Cosier And Cosier…
A couple of interesting news from Wall Street this week in the realm of carbon finance. Firstly, on Tuesday, JP Morgan announced the launch of what is, as far as I can tell, the first ever bond index with a special climate change risk overlay. In the interest of disclosure, I was tangentially involved with this project. While this overlay probably won't have much of an impact in the very near term, it will be interesting to see what happens once constituent firms are all subjected to some form of greenhouse gas regulation. Second, on Thursday, Lehman...
What’s In Store For Emissions Trading Stocks Under An Obama Administration?
All the recent talk about Barack Obama creating a "Climate Czar" position in his administration begs the following question: will Obama dare to implement a nation-wide cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the midst of an economic collapse? While the recent pullback in energy prices will certainly provide some cost relief to energy-intensive industries, which were getting squeezed by rising energy prices, this pullback pales in comparison to the challenges they face in other areas of their businesses right now, and slapping them with complex and potentially-costly new regulation could create significant political backlash. What's more, continued...
List of Environmental Markets Stocks
This post was last updated on 4/27/2022.
Environmental market stocks are publicly traded companies whose business involves the trading of commodities designed to represent an environmental attribute, such as renewable electricity, the environmental benefits of renewable energy (Renewable Energy Credits ), Carbon Offsets and other types of environmental offsets.
Carbon emission trading implemented
Carbon emission trading scheduled
Carbon tax implemented
Carbon tax scheduled
Carbon emission trading or carbon tax under consideration
By Tbap , via Wikimedia Commons
Crius Energy Trust (KWH-UN.TO, CRIUF)
GlyEco, Inc. (GLYE)
Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure (HASI)
Just Energy Group Inc. (JE)
KraneShares Global Carbon ETF (KRBN)
Trading Emissions PLC (TRE.L)
If you know of...
EDF Sets Up Carbon Fund
The French electric utility EDF announced today that it is setting up a €300 million ($396 million) carbon fund to help meet its regulatory requirements under the EU ETS, Europe’s regulatory framework to control CO2 emissions. Carbon funds allow companies to make investments that create CO2 emissions reductions in emerging markets, such as upgrades to industrial operations or renewable energy projects, and use the credits generated thus to meet regulatory requirements in their home jurisdictions. This is a good way to concurrently reduce compliance costs at home and foster environmentally-friendly investments in emerging economies. I have discussed...
