From the University of Edinburgh
Free market is best way to combat climate change, study suggests
The best way to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change is through the use of market forces, according to a new study.
Researchers who monitored the effectiveness of the European Climate Exchange (ECX) – the world’s biggest carbon trading platform – found it to be as efficient as Europe’s two biggest exchanges, the London Stock Exchange and the Euronext Paris.
Using free market platforms like the ECX to combat climate change could provide the basis for the introduction of a mandatory emissions cap and trade scheme worldwide.
The report found that the value of the trades on the ECX were higher after the market closed, a sign of growing sophistication within platforms. It means that trades were made with greater confidence based upon increasingly detailed information.
Researchers said there are also signs of maturity based on increased liquidity – the immediate availability of a party to trade with – and price efficiency, which means all available information is incorporated into prices so they are traded in a relatively transparent manner.
The ECX was created by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) in 2005 to help the European Union (EU) achieve its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon emissions.
The EU set limits and issued permits for how much carbon firms could emit into the atmosphere. If companies exceed their limit, they incur regulatory penalties.
To avoid this, the EU-ETS allows firms with high emissions to buy the permits of other companies on platforms such as the ECX. By creating a market, it gave firms a financial incentive to reduce their carbon emissions.
Researchers said that changes are needed to ensure the EU-ETS survives Europe’s economic downturn. Since the study appears to confirm the ECX’s effectiveness, researchers say the EU-ETS should be allowed to self-adjust emission caps in reaction to changes in the Eurozone’s fortunes and industrial production.
Gbenga Ibikunle, from the University of Edinburgh Business School, said: “While individual responsibility for combating climate change is important, much needs to be done to incentivise companies – especially those who emit most of the world’s carbon – to cut back too. This study shows that free market mechanisms such as the EU-ETS can be effective in doing that. Several other schemes around the world are already learning from this and adopting it as a model.”
The paper is published in the International Journal of the Economics of Business.
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A “free market” created entirely by regulation for something that has no market value? Count me in!
I like this idea, I will hold my breath for 30 seconds for only $100.
There is no solution required to tackle an imaginary non-problem. We need to look at ways to subsidize the emitters of carbon dioxide. This is a con job and I am not buying.
A free market for which there is a monopolistic suplier?
EU Emissions Trading Scheme, emphasis on “Scheme”.
The BIG BANKS have absolutely nothing to do with this con job. Sheesh! Just say no.
For $1000 I will not fly to New York, for $2,500 I will not fly to China.
move along people. . .nothing to see here:
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/eaus/flash-wv.html
or here:
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg
You might talk to Willis about this. As Eli Lehrer (ex Heartland) of R Street points out
interesting, more cut off lows in eastern pacific
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/flash-wv.html
looks like surf is up in Hawaii. . .
and eastern atlantic
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/eumet/neatl/flash-wv.html
seems to be a global phenomenom. . .
Carbon markets reward inefficiency – they’re communism in action.
Say two companies start by producing the same amount of goods.
They are both allocated the same number of carbon permits.
Then one company increases production, through aggressive marketing and cost cutting.
In a normal market, they take market share from their competitor – their reward for hard work is more profit.
But in a carbon market, they have just increased carbon usage. They have to buy carbon credits from their poorer performing competitor. Their reward for working hard and improving their processes is to pay a tax to their lazy, less efficient competitors.
Carbon markets are eerily similar to the “equalisation of opportunity” bills in the story Atlas Shrugged – schemes in which “costs” were shared according to criteria other than who incurred them, as a method of looting the productive and hard working.
I am willing to not fly to New York for only $900 and I will throw in three not-raised hogs.
(http://www.joke-archives.com/govt/notraisinghogsbusiness.html)
Why is Deutsche Bank interested in controlling the trace rise of a trace gas called co2? I am baffled and confused. Can someone please give me some information.
Ooops again. My last blockquote went pear shaped.
Oh, I should have mentioned that the reason it went pear shaped is because our electrical power went out…….again. Three bloody times this evening. This is what happens when you don’t live in a modern economy. I am working from the light of my monitor and can’t see the damned keyboard clearly. This is what it may mean for you one day. Just say no to these con jobs. I know the end result.
“Using free market platforms like the ECX to combat climate change could provide the basis for the introduction of a mandatory emissions cap and trade scheme worldwide.”
Absolute blithering idiocy. A “free market” where the “product” is just certificates for hot air produced by one supplier and their use mandated by an unaccountable, unelected EU government?
As adding radiative gases to the atmosphere does not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability, there is no need to control CO2 emissions. As to supplies of hydrocarbon fuels, market forces already control those. There is already a market for CO2 as an industrial gas. CO2 cannot cause dangerous global warming even if all known and projected hydrocarbon reserves were consumed. A market for the non-production of CO2 is an therefore an artificial construct that must be viewed as a ponzi scheme requiring the intervention of the courts or as a fraudulent tax negating the rule of law and authority of any government introducing it.
A true free market for the non-production of CO2 could be devised such that it was not a de-facto suspension of democracy or in breach of corporate laws. In such a market, “carbon guilt” businesses would produce and sell “carbon guilt” certificates bought by choice by those who believe in global warming. The guilt price per tonne would be set by market forces. Carbon guilt businesses would then spend the money from guilt certificates on alternative energy plants that were cost competitive with hydrocarbon power plants or research into other energy systems. Carbon Guilt businesses that charged too much per tonne or did not provide enough power plants to offset their customers guilt would fail.
I suspect that for a truly free market carbon guilt business the message from the market would be very loud and very clear. Ie: “Put a sock in it you trough feeding doom monger, take you BS brochures and get of my property this instant!”
As carbon dioxide has been shown to have no effect on climate a “free Market’ carbon trading system will have zero effect on the climate. It will make bankers and the original market creators rich at the expense of the energy users – and that is its aim. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘climate change’ which will continue however many unicorn taxes the politicians and bankers dream up. It is all a confidence trick to enrich politicians.
if this CO2 trading bubble ever gets going, watch out in case your retirement funds get invested in it, without your permission. meanwhile:
16 July: Bloomberg: Alex Morales: Each Degree Celsius of Warming May Raise Seas 2 Meters
Sea levels may rise by more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) for each degree Celsius of global warming the planet experiences over the next 2,000 years, according to a study by researchers in five nations.
The research, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, attempts to iron out the impact of short-term fluctuations in sea levels, examining changes over a longer term for which forecasts are more certain…
“Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down,” Anders Levermann, the lead author of the study, said by e-mail from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, where he is based…
Researchers from Germany, the U.S., Canada, Spain and Austria also contributed to the study. They used computer models and analysis of past trends in sea levels derived from sediments and raised ancient shorelines to make their predictions…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-15/each-degree-celsius-of-warming-may-raise-seas-2-meters.html
See the ethanol mandated RINs by EPA if you want to see where this is all going.
Eli,
This has nothing to do with conservatives. It has to do with gullible morons (like you) who have not one ounce of scientific common sense. There is no climate crisis.. Our current climate is in no way unusual per the data.. You have your panties all in a wad over some minor late 20th century warming. Your “droppings” along the bunny trail is a perfect description of your musings. Rather than B.S., you engage in bunnysh*t. Same thing. I suggest you go back to school and try to understand the concept of the scientific method, which has nothing to do with politics. Your absolute stupidity in scientific matters is amazing.
What a con! Same as solar power panels cutting CO2., what’s that got to do with it! Subsidies push up the price for other consumers.
The carbon trading scheme has been a wet dream of Wall Street types for years. After all, these are the same people who have been trading “synthetic” CDOs (credit debit obligations) and derivitives for years. Synthetic meaning they don’t, in actuality, exist! You just take a real live CDO, and make believe there’s another just like it! Voila, a new “market”.
Even if one were to believe in the so-called wonders of the free market, how can it be a free market if the underlying premise, combating climate change, is a canard in the first place? How do you combat that which you cannot control? The hubris is breath taking.
Gee, why didn’t the designers of the catalytic converter think of that? Or the designers of the smokestack scrubbers?
The ultimate goal? (How do you tax the ocean and trees?) Enron opined their ideal in the early 1990s after their $20 billion/yr sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade profit was to find a way to do it to CO2. The problem was CO2 wasn’t a pollutant, so they had to figure out a way how to make it one. New Zealand investigative reporter Ken Ring exposed this in 2006.
Read the rest here:
http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html
My electrical power went off this morning. That is a crisis. Carbon emissions and climate change is not a crisis.
The Bear quotes:
`Using free market platforms like the ECX to combat climate change could provide the basis for the introduction of a mandatory emissions cap and trade scheme worldwide.’
Yeah, dream on. Stopped reading at that point. Another `world government’ fantasy.
It seems to me that every time I hear some loud spruiking of free markets, it is shortly followed by a bunch of people with nasty haircuts getting hold of wads of cash (from my tiny income and modest savings), and then a financial disaster in which I get totally screwed.