Seven Carbon Markets May Replace Kyoto, Barclays Says

From Bloomberg:

At least seven carbon markets will probably replace the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s largest greenhouse gas program by credits, making climate protection more complicated after 2012, according to Barclays Capital.

The U.S. and other nations may resist handing control of environmental regulation over to the United Nations or a new international regulator, creating a patchwork of markets in the eight years through 2020, Trevor Sikorski, a London-based analyst at Barclays Capital, said yesterday by phone.

Separate markets in the EU, U.S. and Japan would provide differing incentives to curb greenhouse gases, which are blamed for climate change. A delayed global carbon market will probably be the price of enticing the U.S. to increase the pace at which it cuts emissions, Sikorski said.

“We’re going to have a rather messy, complicated solution,” Alessandro Vitelli, director of strategy and information at IDEAcarbon in London, said by phone today. “It’s possible it will take longer to have an efficient market system that helps reduce emissions.”

Governments from around the world will meet in Copenhagen starting Dec. 7 for the final round of talks on a climate accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Negotiators are working to incorporate the U.S., which didn’t ratify Kyoto, into a global deal. The U.S. may not agree to cut emissions in a new accord this year because it still has no domestic law setting a framework, the nation’s negotiator Jonathan Pershing said last week.

‘U.S. Essential’

“It’s clear the U.S. will not entertain bits of the Kyoto Protocol and it is essential that the U.S. is directly involved in any future agreement on climate change,” Sikorski said in an e-mail today....MORE