| Sourced From Greenleft |
The global carbon market, which trades
Related posts:
- World Bank finds future demand in global CDM market
- Report Shows Solid Foundation For Carbon Market
- Global carbon credit market set for dramatic growth
- Carbon Trading Market Requires Improved Infrastructure to Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions on a Global Scale, According to Bank of New York Mellon Report
- Analyst: World carbon market doubles in 2008
Daniel
on Jul 30th, 2010
@ 1:53 am:
It’s disappointing to read articles about the imperfection of the cap-n-trade system. The system was set up with a straight forward objective to reduce carbon emissions following the blueprint of the successful cap-n-trade system for SO2 in the US, but it has obviously been abused by the financial speculators and VAT fraudster, to the extent it has been a hedging instrument for energy price and currency fluctuations rather than to faciliate reduction in CO2 reduction.
The simple alternative to cap-n-trade is probably a carbon tax. But perhaps the problem with EU cap-n-trade system is not so much the imperfection of the concept but rather the lack of stringent supervision and rules and limits of trade that led to loop-holes for abuse.
I do hope that if (and when) the US does decide to introduce the cap-n-trade system, they will learn from this and build in sufficient supervision mechanisms to prevent abuse and speculation. At the end of the day, if abuse happens again, the parties that eventually suffers are companies that have to buy highly inflated credit prices to meet compliance limits; this effect will indirectly lead to unnecessary global inflation and a bubble economy that is built upon the unreal price of carbon credit commodities.