Global Carbon Market trading climbed to $176 billion in 2011 according to the The World Bank, which has just released it’s annual State and Trends of The Carbon Market in 2012. That makes it about the same value as total global wheat production — which supplies about 20% of the calories consumed by the 7 billion people on planet Earth.
The global carbon market disguises itself as an angel against the greedy corporates. Yet it is, itself, a giant corporate playing field. The mainstream media remains largely silent on the “vested interests” represented by this major industry that did not even exist 10 years ago.
Global Carbon Markets are worth billions
Was 2011 the peak of global carbon trading? Looks all downhill from here.
A record number of emissions products were traded in 2011, even though prices of EU carbon permits and international offsets fells well below $10 a tonne late in the year. The prices have fallen, but the volumes have increased. Look out, the average price in 2011 was $18.80US, but the prices in 2012 are less than half that. It will take a monster increase in volumes in 2012 to keep raising the total market value.
The Global Carbon Market was still growing in 2011, but not exponentially like it was from 2005 – 2009. The bad news (for carbon traders) is about to hit the fan in the next report in 2013. There is a hint of it in the page announcing the report: “the market for primary CDM has dropped to its lowest level since 2004.”
Global means “EU”
The EU is 80% of the total market. Everywhere else is piddlingly small:
The rise in volume lifted the value of the EU market to $148 billion from a revised $134 billion in 2010, even though average EU carbon prices fell 4 percent year on year to $18.80 a tonne.
But front-year EU carbon prices are averaging under $10 a tonne so far this year as the bloc’s sluggish economy dampens demand for carbon permits in a market that analysts say has accumul1ated a surplus near the equivalent of 1 billion tonnes.
Other national and regional carbon schemes showed mixed results. New Zealand’s carbon market value tripled to $351 million, while the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in North America nearly halved to $249 million, the bank said.
Primary project-based transactions in the voluntary offset market were valued at $569 million in 2011, up 37 percent, the bank said. ($1 = 0.7977 euros)
[Reuters]
Remember that someone somewhere is paying this money that is poured into a trading scheme we don’t need to solve a problem for which there is no supporting evidence. The voluntary market is one three hundredth of the total. Without forced legislation this market would vanish. (Let the people vote, eh?). This is $176 billion of economic activity wasted, mostly in the economic disaster zone that is the EU. People are rioting in the streets. That’s blood, sweat and tears to build things and do things the people on this planet would not choose to do if they were not forced to.
Read on to find out more…
Prices peaked in 2008 but have fallen a long way.
The State of the Market in 2011 – Prices average $18, but are falling fast.
…
Most of the market has become “futures” for both EUA’s and CER’s
The spot contract is for carbon emissions that have already been saved (if only that was useful), but the futures and options market is for emissions that might be saved… one day. In other words, only the smallest part of this market is actually referring to real present day reductions in CO2, and even that part is hard to assess, prone to fraud, difficult to audit, and subject to government whimsy about which savings “count” and which don’t.
There is barely any commodity in this commodity market and it’s becoming less so.
…
…
The CER market peaked in 2007 and has never recovered.
Certified Emission Reductions (CERs)
A CER is a Kyoto Protocol unit equal to 1 metric tonne of CO 2 equivalent. CERs are issued for emission reductions from CDM project activities. Two special types of CERs, called temporary certified emission reduction (tCERs) and long-term certified emission reductions (lCERs), are issued for emission removals from afforestation and reforestation CDM projects. [Source]
…
Climate Alarmism is Big-Business for The World Bank
In 2010 the World Bank was managing $2,388 million dollars worth of projects. It’s not like the World Bank has a vested interest in this market… What bureaucrat would like to give up the power to hand out these funds? The patronage and favors, the status gained from wheeling and dealing with these funds is enormous. It’s an example of why governments of all kinds grows and grows, and why common rational sense, the push-back, can only come from independent citizens, possibly helped by the sectors of the economy that suffer from poor policies.
…
[Source: World Bank]
Hat Tip to Scott the carbon trader.
UPDATE 2013: The World Bank canceled the State of The Carbon Market in 2013. All indicators suggest the market collapsed. The numbers would have broken the upward trend and not “helped” the PR.
REFERENCES:
Global Wheat supplies 20% of calories. It’s price is $260 per metric ton and nearly 700 million tons is produced world wide, making it a $182 bn global enterprise.
World Bank: State and Trends of The Carbon Market in 2012.
Great post Jo!
The “Global” Carbon Market is clearly nothing more than a roulette wheel and an excuse to gamble. The UK loves penny arcades, lets hope Australia doesn’t join the foolishness.
20
And then there is this!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/9312063/Fraudsters-turn-to-carbon-credits-according-to-FSA.html
20
Carbon trading is the plaything of Environazi groups such as WWF, Greenpeace, Environmental Defence Fund among others.
These groups have the EU in a headlock and together are reaping billions from the EU citizens who are paying the price with unemployment, increased energy prices and political instability.
Don’t believe me? Heres is one simple link
Global Warming, Climate Change, call it what you will, is a scam set up by the UN agencies WMO and UNEP (fully populated by environmentalists) and backed by EU bureaucrats.
It’s a scam, it has nothing to do with science (though science is used as a vehicle) and it has nothing whatsoever to do with saving the planet.
20
There is zero tangible value in so-called carbon markets. Scams have reached a new level when people are actually trading air. Who said they could never tax air? They have created an imaginary product to solve an imaginary problem. Some actually live in a “wonderland” world of pretending. They just as well trade unicorn gas. Billionaires flying around the world on “carbon credits” created by some kid in Asia using “treadle” pumps to irrigate rather than a diesel pump is the height of immorality.
20
It’s amazing that the same people who scream, rant and protest about the CDO and CDS markets on Wall street will turn around and speak in glowing terms of the carbon market, which is going to save the planet.
Derivatives trading on a synthetic market is guaranteed to end in disaster. It is essentially a gambling scheme built on top of a market forced into being by government dictat, based on a pseudo-scientific scare.
At least all the financial instruments that brought down Lehman Brothers and the rest were somewhat based on something real – although interest rates on fiat money are barely any more real than carbon certificates – how anyone can pretend this is not going to end in tears is beyond me.
30 years ago, if the Soviet Union had done something like this, we would have all fallen about the place laughing at their blatant ponzi scheme. Yet the Russians are the ones laughing at the rest of us now.
On the bright side though – it takes serious market crashes and wealth destruction in order for old ideas to die. Perhaps the coming crash in the carbon market is just the type of reality shock people need in order to open their eyes.
I feel for those people who are in an industry super or government pension fund, and who have been placed unwillingly and unwittingly into ‘clean energy’ investments. This will make the dot-com implosion look like a teddy bears picnic, because it’s playing with the foundation of society – affordable energy.
20
Ok, Let me be perfectly clear here:
Buying and selling imagined permits representing a trace gas does not constitute a Good service or commodity.
As a result, this is not a Market at all. It’s a misguided communist idea of what a market is. I am struggling to come up with the correct term for this, but a market it most definitely is not.
Here is the defininition of a market from Dictionary.com:
1.an open place or a covered building where buyers and sellers convene for the sale of goods; a marketplace: a farmers’ market.
Nope. They’re not selling goods. They’re trading regulation and leverage with the technocrats.
2.a store for the sale of food: a meat market.
Nope. in fact one could argue the opposite.
3.a meeting of people for selling and buying.
Nope. What – Rgulaory permits? You’re joking right?
4.the assemblage of people at such a meeting.
Nope. i doubt many of these people buying these trace gas permits ever meet each other.
5.trade or traffic, especially as regards a particular commodity: the market in cotton.
Nope. Carbon Credits are not a commodity. They’re imagined regulations.
This is an imagined solution to an imaginary problem which is has been constructed by ignorant communists to allow the most undeserving rent seeking opportunists the opportunity to siphon massive amounts of money from real markets. All with the bonus of being able to make things up as they go.
10
We must pray that the worsening economic conditions in the EU loosen the headlock that Carbon (Dioxide) Trading has on Europe. Billions are siphoned off from the pockets of the EU citizens every week. I am praying for more and more declines and failures in the CO2 trading Markets. Most of them are down, but they need to be down and out! There is nothing like losing money to convince people that they are on the wrong track.
10
Mmm, I wonder whether carbon might not be the ultimate currency, well in the sense that energy is perhaps the ultimate currency. At least it has some real value unlike gold which is a pretty useless metal in a lot of ways. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we used it as such and thus taxed it as a more efficient way for governments to fund themselves. It would just need to be a sliding scale so the poor end of society weren’t unfairly punished.
Just a thought.
00
I know I may harp on this, and you may think it’s not related, but note specifically how all of this Carbon Credits thing has been corrupted into something that was not really the original intent.
In 1997, at the COP3 meeting, the UNFCCC implemented the Kyoto Protocol. It was meant to reduce emissions of dangerous Greenhouse gases, CO2 being the largest of them. 192 Countries signed up, and were hived off into two categories, basically the haves and the have nots.
40 Countries were considered already developed, and from that 40, 23 Countries were further culled as being those able to pay the way for every Country, and yes, Australia is on that short list. This ability to pay was actually made plain in the text for the Protocol, and I’ve mentioned it before in Comments here where I have linked into a Post of my own from November of 2010 having already mentioned it as far back as four years ago when I first started out.
Those 23 Countries would work towards lowering their emissions at their own cost, introduce renewable energy at their own cost, shut down emitting entities at their own cost, and on top of all this, pay ALL THE COSTS of those other 152 developing Countries.
As part of the explanation as to how those 23 Countries would pay their way, the UNFCCC explained that those 23 should instigate an ETS mechanism, and the money raised would then be diverted to pay all those costs for those remaining 152 Countries to lower their emissions and introduce renewable power.
Individual emitting entities would then pay Government for their emissions and they could trade credits as long as they handed back at the end of the year credits totalling their emissions. Individually, those emitting entities could then invest in (approved) ‘green’ or renewable power schemes in those other Countries and gain extra credits for doing so, adding to their total, whether to trade or hand back in to offset their own emissions. Each year the cap would be lowered.
Altruistically, this was the mechanism that UNFCCC hoped would lower emissions. Also altruistically, this was how those 23 Countries as a whole would fund ‘clean development’ in those Developing Countries.
Scroll forwards to right now, and see how this original intent has been totally corrupted, and at every level.
Credits are bought and sold for one purpose only, to make money.
Individual emitting entities have no real concept of what it really means.
And here in Australia, the Government is ‘pricing Carbon’ but in actual fact it is just to help their ‘bottom line’, with a tiny and absolutely useless portion diverted to minute renewable power, with nothing to actually reduce emissions, and the rest given away as a bribe, and there’s no other word for it.
Elsewhere, as you can see in the main text of Joanne’s Post, it’s used as a money making ‘Bubble’, so far removed from its original intent as to seem completely unrelated.
Now, I’m nor standing up for the UN here, because this was never going to work, right from the start, but note how quickly when monumentally humungous amounts of money are involved the ‘sharks’ move straight in, and surely, the UN must have seen this, leading me to believe that all this altruistic stuff of the Kyoto protocol was just a red herring right from the start, something for the green masses to point to and say that something really is being done.
No, as I have said ad infinitum, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the environment. It’s just about the money.
Always was, Always will be.
Tony.
10
Follow the money ! the scary thing is….. it’s in its infancy. Wow talk about capitalism, why aren’t the “left” shouting!
10
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/05/usa-co2-emissions-fall-7-7/
What effect will this have?
00
I knew from the start of the “carbon market” that it would be just another scam by the Big Money boys to rip off the rest of us.
Young sharpies with nasty haircuts and no morals would work complex fiddles to enrich themselves and their bosses, while said bosses would push governments for more deregulation so that they could commit even greater frauds.
10
Germany appears to be heading towards the Notausgang (emergency exit).
Pierre Gosselin has an article on Germany’s new President Gauck is, in front of a conference of the eco-lobby, calling for reason, objectivity, an end to excessive subsidies and a free-market approach to solving environmental problems.
Gauck was responsible for cleaning up a major part of the shemozzle created by those running East Germany. His new role as President is markedly less potent, but nevertheless influential.
10
I like the way that whenever we talk about the money and the futility of the whole thing it is a one sided conversation but when we talk about the statistical significance of a 0.001 C increase in the temps etc we are inundated with white noise.
00
BRC,
Your 4 comments 6.2/8.2/11.1 and 14.2 are all excellent thoughts thankyou for sharing them with us would it be alright if i plagiarise the crap out of them on other sites :-)))?
regards
Crakar
00
We need this ETS so we can stop weather like this
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/coldest-may-in-50-years-20120529-1zgcr.html
We need this ETS so we can pay for our own stupidity
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345439/Customers-face-huge-wind-farms-dont-work-cold.html
We need this ETS so we can tell everyone to shut up
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9311365/Bribe-residents-to-accept-wind-turbines-says-Tim-Yeo-MP.html
But most importantly we need this ETS so the money junkies can make even more money.
10
O/T: UWA’s Lewandowsky gets a Jubilee spanking from Ben Pile on Lewandowsky’s “reformulation” of the Precautionary Principle.
P.S. Note that our failed (Fabian) Premier Carmen Lawrence is on the editorial board of the “Shaping Tomorrow” blog which is funded by a grant from UWA’s Vice Chancellor and Murdoch’s Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy. Curtin Uni’s banner is also on the blog. It’s so wonderful to see the pull factor for nincompoops being so clearly advertised by what are supposed to be the premier institutes of education in Western Australia.
10
Great post Jo. Follow the money, as always:
I posted this in December last year. The day after, the police turned up at my home with a warrant citing anti terrorist legislation to seize my computers…
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/climategate-2-follow-the-money-to-see-who-calls-the-shots/
10
O/T but of maybe of interest to readers here:
Discovery of Historical Photos Sheds Light On Greenland Ice Loss
June, 06 2012
A chance discovery of 80 year old photo plates in a Danish basement is providing new insight into how Greenland glaciers are melting today.
cO2 to blame?
No clean energy future?
Now that is inconvenient.
10
Now without trying to sound flippant or silly, I am an engineering professional (which is down the food change from a professional engineer but thanks for asking) and never really studied ecconomics at school.
However, as I understand it, here we have a market that is effectively trading in promises and the vast majority of those promises are only there due to government legislation.
So if the legislation was weakened to the extent that the owners of said promises just told the market to GFI… then… well, should I be scared?
Just how much of the real world is going to get dragged down when this farce collaspses?
00
One of my favourite sites for dispelling one particular Green myth about reshiftable energy.
Have a play with the time series output graphs and it will whack the solar fanatics over their tinfoil hats, not that any scientific output data like this will make any difference whatsoever to their religious beliefs.
The RECs,direct subsidy, etc on this solar system, just like mine and so many others, will be one small phoney bill in the Morgan/Sachs/Macquarie Monopoly money game. The left are such disgusting hypocrites over thin air derivatives trading.
00
Years ago the first of the large Russian cruise liners berthed in Sydney to refit for Australian tourists. The Russian captain was protesting the installation of poker machines. Why? “Because I can see no value in a machine where you put money in ome end and get less money out of the other. It’s stupid!”
The vacuous nature of the Ponzi carbon credits scheme was equally visible as flawed from the outset. I’ve tried to chase down somew of the racketeers, but they have more money than I do and they cover their tracks well. Time will expose them as the tide goes out. Keep an eye on big German banks and their senior advisors.
00
Jo,
You should follow the money of bonuses and the amounts these swindlers receive each year. Staggering amounts for these inventive schemes that need no actual physical capital. And yet when they collapse, the salaries and bonuses have made these executives filthy rich on transactions that have no actual worth. Bankers get political policies changed in order for these schemes to flourish through “keeping the markets self regulating”
Ya riggggggght!!!!!
00
The EU, however unlikely, may be beginning to experience a dose of reality as it starts to dawn on their bureaucratic minds that apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming is a crock. Coupled with this is the fact that they are trying to hold together a political project, the EU, which the Euro is pulling apart.
EU carbon permits peaked at 34.40 euros ($45.17) per metric ton in 2008 but have since lost over 80% of their value. So the EU B’crats are realising that a market solution to the non-existent anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, is unworkable, however much they try to rig it.
Economic activity in the EU is stagnant as a result of the recession and there is therefore a huge oversupply of carbon allowances. The US Senate very sensibly has not passed cap-and-trade legislation. So the EU carbon trading fandango is the largest in the world.
Carbon trading in the EU has been hit by the theft of carbon allowances and tax fraud, which undermined the trading bubble that was being created. I would have simply said caveat emptor, but a lot of unknowing people may have had their pensions invested in carbon permits.
What’s just as concerning is that the International Energy Agency said, in April, that the amount of additional investment required for renewable power, energy efficiency and cleaner transport by 2020 is $5 trillion.
Presumably this would pay for windmills, mercury filled light bulbs, golf carts and luxury lifestyles.
00
Thanks for the great summary of the “market”.
I can’t wait for the first CO2 auctions here in CA- that are schedule for the end of this year- NOT! I assume that the powers that be are keeping track of the administrative costs of this market. I wonder what the true effect on CO2 is when you subtracted out the CO2 generated by all the activities put in place to administer this market……….
00
[…] Jo Nova Share this:PrintEmailMoreStumbleUponTwitterFacebookDiggRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Cap & Tax, Carbon trading and tagged carbon scam, climate fraud, government cash grab. Bookmark the permalink. ← Robert Rapier: If We Only Had a Stable Energy Policy […]
00
Why are they called ‘markets’ or ‘permits’? When the Mafia does it, it’s called ‘insurance’.
“Nice little business you’ve got here. We’d hate to see anything happen to it. Pay us money and we’ll let you stay in business.”
Various Governments take the role of the Mafia in that analogy. Governments are as addicted to other people’s money as any branch of organized crime. The collapse of the Carbon Market does not mean they’ll stop their money grab any more than the Mafia would.
00
It’s not like the World Bank has a vested interest in this market…
Might be: It’s not like the World Bank has novested interest in this market…
00
Australians will shortly be able to enjoy all the benefits of their own carbon taxes, which is precisely nothing. The cost will be horrendous and the long term economic damage incalculable.
On at least one occasion before, I have compared the payment of carbon taxes to paying a hooker for her services. In both cases:
1. The seller is selling something intangible and of no material use.
2. Having sold it once, the seller can sell it again and again and again and…………….
3. The buyer may, or may not, have a fleeting sensation of satisfaction.
4. The buyer has acquired absolutely nothing of any value and is poorer for the experience.
5. Both are extensively exploited by organised crime.
The European Union has grown famous for its goofy/green policies, which provide no benefit except to the bloated egos of certain politicians, but inflict a heavy, pointless, economic burden on a system already buckling at the knees.
00
The link below leads to a new book called “the Green Illusion” sounds like it will make CO2 look like what it is: harmless. But it also shows that the production of solar cells creates a range of real man made products way worse than what is currently being traded or taxed, depending on where you live.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/738098
A solar rethink seems advisable if humanity is to survive.
00
Given the huge sums of money involved here what I am about to ask is not really that off topic.
Heard BBC radio this morning interviewing their reporter who is here to observe an experiment being conducted by University of Western Sydney academics to raise CO2 levels in a eucalypt forest to those expected by 2050 to see how the trees respond.
He described the apparatus pumping out the carbon dioxide and interviewed the head researcher who said while not everyone agrees that CO2 is damaging everyone agrees that CO2 is definitely continuing to rise. He also said 2050 levels are expected to be reached in 6 months.
The cynic inside my head is saying that any observable damage to these gums by December will be music to the ears of all the rent seekers and the current Australian government. That same cynic also wonders whether there is another odorless, invisible gas that is not quite so benign as CO2 where a teensy percentage introduced to the mix being pumped out might produce results that would stop the sceptics in their tracks?
00
OT,
Farmers in areas of Pakistan are in deep trouble as the river waters from snow melt are 35% below normal here is the link
http://tribune.com.pk/story/389319/climate-change-slow-melting-of-glaciers-to-delay-crop-sowing/
Let me repeat that headline
climate-change-slow-melting-of-glaciers-to-delay-crop-sowing
WTF!!!
Enough is enough.
00
One of the lead authors is from NYSE / Bluenext the global carbon exchange. Shame on the World Bank. This report does not have any credibility. Don’t take my word for it just search on the authors. This should be investigated it is just plain wrong.
00
Sorry, couldn’t find anywhere to post this BUT … Gergis et al gets trashed at Climate Audit:
Gergis “Significance”
00
I copied this from the “Barnabyisright.com” to outline just how scary this market will become now that the ALPGreen fools (Useful idiots!) has given our banks exactly what they want. A Ticking Time Bomb Hidden In The Carbon Tax called “derivatives”.
Carefully buried in 1,000+ pages of legislation, just 2 tiny, opaque clauses (109A and 110) have been included that allow the banks to immediately begin creating and trading unlimited quantities of unmonitored, unregulated carbon “securities” (another term for “derivatives”).
Australia’s banks already trade in derivatives. Most of their derivatives bets are on movements in Interest Rates and Foreign Exchange Rates . And they have a total exposure to just these forms of derivatives, that is a truly mind-boggling $17.93 Trillion. The value of all Australians’ superannuation savings combined, is about $1.3 Trillion. As is the claimed annual “GDP” of the Australian economy.
Almost everyone incorrectly believes that no trading will happen until 2015. But the truth is, the banks can begin creating and trading in carbon derivatives from Day 1. Even though the scheme is supposed to be a “fixed price” scheme for the 3 years up to 2015. The $10 billion that the government will raise from forcing companies to buy carbon permits – the basic mechanism for “putting a price on carbon” – is almost nothing compared to the value of derivatives that banks will create and trade.
Our government has followed the lemming-like lead of Ireland, by explicitly and implicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for the deeds (and misdeeds) of the banks, by placing the nation as guarantor for the solvency of the Australian banking system. Meaning, just like the rest of the West, our banks are Too Big To Fail.
And from July 1, thanks to the Clean Energy Future scheme and those two little clauses, the government has handed the banks a licence to print.
00
Kind of OT
from Bolt
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/dam-their-flood-of-mistakes/story-e6frfhqf-1226386752134
I just want to highlight one statement from the story
00
Apologies, the site will be down today for a while to try to restore those 100,000 comments that went missing. Here’s hoping it is successful.
Jo
00
All the extreme Green and other comrades warnings against fossil fuels and promoting very inefficient and expensive so called “green” alternatives is crazy, Google: Helium-3 or what China refers to as the perfect fuel that Earth has very little of but on the Moon enough to provide a clean energy future here for thousands of years, renewable in the the Sun deposits it into the Moon soil. Several nations are working on plans and systems to recover it and bring it in liquid gas form to Earth, one space shuttle load would power the US for a year via reactors. NASA are well advanced, China and Russia and others are in the race.
00
The left have many ways of self-funding, union superannuation funds in Australia are primarily businesses created on the superannuation guarantee levy against employers for employees and bonus of unions having more influence in the board rooms of public companies via fund shareholding on behalf of fund members. Bottom line: manipulation and control
00
[…] American Thinker reports that Global Carbon Market
00
[…] the
00
[…] trade (C&T) is in the news again: Global Carbon Market trading (practically all EU) climbed to
00
Carbon Traders amongst us ?
check this website very very interesting
http://www.capitalalternatives.com.au/australian-carbon-credits/
00
[…] Global Carbon Market Hits $176 Billion in 2011 […]
00
[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/global-carbon-market-hits-176-billion-in-2011/ […]
00
Please direct me to the update of this story. Thanks.
——
REPLY: Good question. I’ve added a note to the post. The 2013 report was so bad it was canceled. It shows how impartial the World Bank is. – Jo
10