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...
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...
Plastic Recyclers Chasing Arrows
According to Plastics Europe Research Group, over 35 million tons of plastic material was produced globally in 2016, the last year for which full-year data is available. That brought total plastic production to 9 billion tons since 1950. All of those plastic materials remain in existence somewhere - still in use, landfills, junk yards, blowing around the countryside, waterways, oceans, fish stomachs. The post “Plastic Contagion’ on April 13th outline the dangers presented by plastic waste, ranging from respiratory failure from toxic emissions to reproductive interference in aquatic animals.
The building burgeoning volume of plastic waste has sent environmentalists scrambling for solutions to the plastic waste...
ADR For Climate Exchange plc
One of our readers made a useful comment on our last post about Goldman Sachs and Climate Exchange plc. I thought some of you who are unlikely to go back to that post might be interested: "Hey this article on the Climate Exchange was great information. But you should tell your readers that there is an ADR trading OTC here in the states - CXCHF. Get it while the gettin is good. How long 'til GS takes this to the big board?" Thanks for this heads up, cascadehigh. UPDATE: Following this post, I got the...
Trading Places: Will America’s Carbon Market Outsize Europe’s?
Charles MorandIn early January, I said the following on the likelihood that the Obama Administration would move on carbon regulations in the near-term: "The next 12 to 18 months are unlikely to produce much in the way of vigorous environmental action on the part of government (barring subsidies for alternative energy related to the stimulus package), especially if it means additional costs on industry." Clearly, I had underestimated the power of another fundamental rule of politics - besides "don't anger the rust belt states that gave you your presidency by burdening their industries with avoidable costs in the midst...
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...
Carbon Offsets Work – Will the Mainstream Media Ever Get It?
The carbon markets are an area of keen interest for me personally and professionally, so it is always frustrating that the mainstream media largely refuses to learn the details. In general, layman and media who don’t understand the details of the carbon markets attack carbon offsets in two areas, first, questioning whether the credits are for a project that would have occurred anyway (a concept known in carbon as “additionality”), and second questioning whether there are checks and balances to ensure the environmental standards are adhered to and the abatement actually happens (in carbon known as the validation...
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...
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...
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...
NYMEX To Get Involved In Emissions Trading
A senior NYMEX official told reporters Wednesday that the exchange was considering getting into the business of carbon emissions trading. Given the actual, but especially the potential, size of this market, it makes sense that established bourses would take a good hard look at it. This will probably not be seen as very good news by the folks at Climate Exchange plc . Of course, until NYMEX actually unveils anything substantial, this will remain nothing but chatter.
Avoiding a Carbon-Price Backlash
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D. Economics and Greenery, a Belated Rapprochement It is truly a triumph of economic ways of thinking that many of environmental activists are championing market-based approaches to tackling climate change. Those people who are not for cap-and-trade on global warming gas emissions promote the even more economically rigorous carbon tax. The most common defense against criticisms of subsidies for renewable energy is to retort that the fossil fuel industry benefits from much large subsidies. Not only do fossil fuels get generous subsidies in direct and indirect payments, but they seldom pay anything like the indirect costs...
Emissions Standards Driving Algae Aviation Fuel Sourcing…or not
by Debra Fiakas CFA Algae in the River Wate photo via BigStock My post “Algae Takes Flight” featured Algae-Tec (ALGXY: OTC/PK), Lufthansa’s new biofuel partner. Algae-Tec has agreed to operate an algae-based biofuel plant in Europe to supply Lufthansa with jet fuel. Lufthansa is footing the capital costs of the plant, which is to be located in Europe near a carbon source. Algae thrive on carbon so industrial plants and power plants using fossil fuels make the best neighbors. Lufthansa has agreed to purchase a...
Climate Legislation: Who wins? Who loses?
Most Americans now agree that something needs to be done to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully most Americans now appreciate that this is not a small, but even more so, not a simple problem. I am a big believer that the playing field for our low carbon future should start level, and the market should be structured to allow our major power and energy companies a chance to lead the way, instead of simply dishing out punishment for our combined historical choices. Carrots and sticks work well together, but sticks alone are not going to solve our...
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...
Update on the Global Carbon Market
The World Bank Carbon Finance Unit recently released its Q3 2006 update for the global market for CO2 emissions (the carbon market). The document, entitled “State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2006��? (PDF file), contains some pretty interesting information that makes it difficult not to be bullish on the future of emissions trading. Here are some numbers. At the end of Q3 2006, the total value of the market stood at $21.5 billion, up 94% on the whole of 2005 ($11.1 billion). Unsurprisingly, Europe, with its Emissions Trading Scheme, continues to account for the bulk (~99%) of...
