Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Carbon markets to be left "more or less unscathed" by financial turmoil

I have my doubts about this one. From Business Green: The price of carbon credits in Europe's emissions trading scheme slipped today as the financial crisis gripped the world's money markets and renewed fears over a deep recession drove down demand. However, experts insisted that the carbon market would remain relatively well insulated against the problems afflicting the financial sector in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and sale of Merrill Lynch, predicting that the price of a tonne of carbon in the EU's cap-and-trade scheme was unlikely to fall much further.

The price of EUA credits has fallen from more than €25 (£14) towards the end of August to around €23 today as the price of oil has dropped to a recent low of $91.54 a barrel.

Experts agreed that fears about the economic outlook had led to a fall in the price of oil that has in turn driven down the price of gas. Lower gas prices encourages power suppliers to switch from coal to gas and as gas is the cleaner fuel their emissions will fall, meaning they require fewer carbon credits under the EU's scheme.

Lower demand for credits creates downward pressure on the price, which is only amplified by the expectation that an economic recession will also lead to less demand for energy, further driving down carbon emissions....

Coal power plant in Datteln (Germany) at the Dortmund-Ems Canal, shot by Arnold Paul, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

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