Effective Global Carbon Markets

As numerous jurisdictions implement emissions mitigation mechanisms that put a price on carbon, this incisive book explores the emerging emissions markets and their diverse and fragmented nature. It proposes an innovative model for connecting such markets, offering a significantly more successful and expeditious achievement of climate policy objectives.

Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2010 award. This book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to understanding the opportunities offered by regulated and voluntary carbon markets for tackling climate change. Coverage includes: - An overview of the problem of climate change, with a concise review of the most recent scientific evidence in different fields - A highly accessible introduction to the economic theory and different constitutive elements of a carbon allowances market - Explanation of the Kyoto Protocol and its flexibility mechanisms - Explanation of how the EU Emissions Trading Scheme works in practice - Ongoing developments in regulated carbon markets in the US - Up-to-the-minute coverage of regulated carbon markets in Australia - Developments in New Zealand and Japan - Carbon offsetting and voluntary carbon markets. Combining theoretical aspects with practical applications, this book is for business leaders, financiers, carbon traders, lawyers, bankers, researchers, policy makers and anyone interested in market mechanisms to mitigate climate change. The carbon emissions resulting from the production of this book have been calculated, reduced and offset to render the bookcarbon neutral. Published with CO2 Neutral

The world carbon market is growing at a staggering rate with trading volumes into the tens of billions of dollars and approaching a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The growth prospects for business are enormous and the potential positive impacts for greenhouse gas emission reductions, climate policy options, renewable energy investment, development projects and efficiency gains are increasingly apparent.A key part of the market in greenhouse gas emissions is the rapidly growing voluntary carbon market driven by companies, organizations and individuals committed to efficiency, profitability and rapid action on climate change. HSBC, Volvo, Avis, Ricoh and American Express are but a few of the many companies now offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions and becoming 'carbon neutral', fuelling an international voluntary carbon market that is growing exponentially. This groundbreaking business book, written in a fast-paced journalistic style, draws together all the key information on international voluntary carbon markets with commentary from leading practitioners and business people. The voluntary market is complex, fragmented and multi-layered, but it is beginning to consolidate around a few guiding practices and business models from which conclusions can be drawn about market direction and opportunities.The book covers all aspects of voluntary carbon markets around the world: what they are, how they work and, most critically, their business potential to help slow climate change. It is the indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand voluntary carbon markets and capitalize on the opportunities they present for economic and environmental benefit. If you want to be ahead of the curve for the next big thing, you need this book.

The global carbon market currently faces a deep demand crisis. The consequent price fall reduces the incentive to make low-carbon investments and thus increases the risk of locking in carbon-intensive infrastructure. The global carbon market relies on ambitious climate policy and consists of a mosaic of different schemes. Despite the current lack of ambitious global climate policy, various market-based approaches are emerging around the world, indicating increasing scope and fragmentation of the carbon markets. This report, conducted by GreenStream together with Climate Focus, analyses the status and outlook of global carbon markets and identifies measures and circumstances how new demand for carbon credits could be created to strengthen global efforts to limit the global average temperature rise to 2êC, taking into account the trend towards fragmentation of carbon markets.

Explores what went wrong with global carbon markets and what this means for future climate change policy and capitalism.

How can REDD credits be included in a future global carbon market, and what are the impacts of inclusion? We analyze ten different scenarios through 2020, varying the global emission caps and the REDD rules. An inclusion of REDD credits without any adjustments in the global cap will lower carbon prices significantly and cause crowding out. The cap must move towards the 2 degrees climate target if REDD inclusion is to maintain high carbon prices and strong incentives for emissions reductions in other sectors. At the same time, reaching the 2 degree target without full REDD inclusion will increase global mitigation costs by more than 50%.

In this timely book, Sven Rudolph and Elena Aydos take an interdisciplinary approach that combines sustainability economics, political economy, and legal concepts to answer two fundamental questions: How can carbon markets be designed to be effective, efficient and just at the same time? And how can the political barriers to sustainable carbon markets be overcome? The authors advance existing theoretical frameworks and examine empirical data from various real-life emissions trading schemes, identifying strategies and policy windows for implementing truly sustainable ETS.

Carbon markets – both emission trading systems and baseline and credit systems – are an increasingly common policy instrument being introduced to address climate change mitigation. However, their design is crucial to ensure that they deliver cost-effective emission reductions while maintaining environmental integrity. This Element puts together a comprehensive, principle-based overview of the risks and abuses to environmental integrity and cost effectiveness that have emerged for carbon markets at all jurisdictional levels around the world, provides concrete examples, and offers effective policy and governance solutions to overcome such risks. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.