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...
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...
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...
GlyEco Expands Antifreeze Recycling Footprint
by Debra Fiakas CFA Glyeco recycles waste glycol into reusable antifreeze, windshield wiper fluid and air conditioning coolants for the automotive and industrial markets. The used coolant and antifreeze liquids are frequently contaminated with water, dirt, metals and oils. The company uses a proprietary technology at the foundation of its recycling system to eliminate contaminants. The company focuses mainly on ethylene glycol in its six processing plants. Last month chemical recycler GlyEco, Inc. (GLYE: OTC/QB) acquired Brian’s On-Site Recycling, a provider of antifreeze and air conditioning coolant disposal services in the Tampa, Florida area. The deal extends...
Some Tidbits From The World Of Emissions Trading
To be sure, the near-term prospects for carbon emissions trading are bleak. Continued decline in industrial production across the world's major manufacturing economies will inevitably lower carbon emissions. The clearest indicator of this, short of directly measuring emissions, is a sharp decline in the price of various fossil energy commodities (i.e. oil, natural gas and coal) on the back of falling demand. Another important factor for carbon emissions trading is that the commodity in play - the regulatory right to emit a unit of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) - derives its legitimacy entirely from a regulatory scheme...
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...
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...
US Exchanges And Environmental Investing
An interesting bit of follow-up on my article last week about exchanges and environmental markets. Both the NYMEX and the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) have partnered up, in the past 2 weeks, with specialty cleantech and alt energy index makers to launch derivatives products. On March 14, Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE), a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCX, and WilderShares LLC, announced (PDF document) a licensing agreement to launch a futures market based on the WilderHill Clean Energy Index . The ECO is also the underlying index for the Powershares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio ETF...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Biochar’s Likely Market Impacts
Biochar is still mostly a research and cottage industry, yet it has the potential to impact returns for a broad range of investors. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Biochar, or amending soil with biomass-derived carbon, shows great potential to improve the productivity of soils, as well as to increase the utilization of fertilizers by plants, while sequestering carbon to reduce the drivers of climate change. On August 10, I went to the 2009 North American Biochar Conference to look at the potential for investors. Before I went, I took a look at the publicly traded companies...
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...
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...
Carbon Emissions ETF
Today, while reading an article on cleantech ETFs by The Motley Fool, I found out that XShares Advisors LLC and the Chicago Climate Exchange were working on a carbon emissions-based ETF (PDF document). There is not a lot of info available on what exactly this ETF will track. We reported back in November that UBS had launched an index based on European carbon prices. As noted by Richard Kang at around the same time, this index is well-suited for something like an ETF. If any of our readers have any further insight on this, don't hesitate...
