For all the investment banks that keep piling into carbon trading and carbon exchanges that keep launching, don’t worry: The market just keeps growing.
Global trades in carbon-dioxide emission rights will be worth about $92 billion in 2008, up from approximately $60 billion in 2007, says Point Carbon, a carbon market analyst and advisor. All the figures are based on current carbon prices, or roughly $30 per ton of carbon dioxide.
The group’s new “Outlook for 2008” (available to paid subscribers) says the centerpiece of the global carbon market will continue to be the European emissions trading scheme, which could jump to as much as $68 billion in transactions this year.
U.S. policy-makers take note: The growth in 2008 will come from tighter allocations of emissions permits for Europe’s second phase of carbon trading, as well as an even tougher proposal unveiled last month that will see many of the pollution permits sold (”auctioned” in the lingo) to utilities and industries rather than given out free, as they were in the past, Point Carbon says....MORE
