EU Carbon Trading 'death spiral' continues

kingsford_BBQ
A bag of charcoal briquettes is worth more than a ton of EU carbon right now.

UPDATE: it’s worse than we thought, see below.

Carbon has closed below $4 a ton in a new record low while Deutsche Bank bails

From Reuters:

Deutsche Bank quits carbon market: board member

31 Jan 2013 12:42 Last updated: 31 Jan 2013 15:04

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Deutsche Bank has shut its global carbon trading operations, a member of the investment bank’s board of directors said on Thursday.  Source: http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2162216

In addition to the price dropping to below the price of a bag of charcoal briquettes, it may have something to do with this investigation:

Deutsche Bank co-chief named in carbon tax investigation

Two board members at Deutsche Bank, including the lender’s co-chief executive, have been drawn into a police investigation into tax evasion related to the group’s carbon trading business.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9740904/Deutsche-Bank-co-chief-named-in-carbon-tax-investigation.html

Meanwhile, carbon closed yesterday at a new record low, losing about 8% of its value yesterday.

EUCarbon_1-31-13

It looks like that by the close of trading today, EUA carbon will have lost about half its value since the peak in early January.

New Zealand’s experiment in carbon trading isn’t looking good either:

NZ carbon finds new record lows amid stable supply

31 Jan 2013 09:59

BEIJING, Jan 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Spot permits in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) fell 6.5 percent week-on-week to close Thursday at NZ$2.45 ($2.05), the lowest weekly closing price ever recorded as fresh supply continued to find its way to the market.

Source: http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2161391

UPDATE: the market has closed today, with another record loss, for a nearly 50% drop in value in January 2013.

pointcarbon_1-31-13

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Leonard from Belgium
January 31, 2013 11:13 am

Deutsche Bank quitting carbon market: it’s as if the Pope didn’t go to the mass anymore…

Big D in TX
January 31, 2013 11:15 am

richard verney says:
January 31, 2013 at 10:18 am
What I want to know is why an individual cannot buy say 50 tonnes of carbon and then pay no green taxes on their electrity supply for many years on the basis that they are carbon neutral and can offset the carbon bonds against CO2 emissions resultant from the energy used. Indeed, why can’t it be off-set say against air travel thereby avoiding the green taxes that the government levies on air travel, or perhaps patrol and the green taxes levied on that etc..
I pay at least £1,000 per year in green taxes on my electrity supply so it would make good financial sense to stock up on say 10 tonnes of carbon bonds and pay no green tax. . .
*************************************************************************************8
You know, you may be on to something there… what country are you in? Ask some counsel about it, see if you can’t stir something up.
It would be pretty funny to wait until it drops to pennies per ton, then drop a c-note and just call it good for life.
I mean, it would be a waste of a hundred bucks, but it would be pretty funny. Justify an amount based on how much you value entertainment (anything that beats $5/hour is a good deal in my book, using ~$10 for a ~2 hour movie as a baseline value standard).

January 31, 2013 11:33 am

2013 – unlucky for some.

Sun Spot
January 31, 2013 11:34 am

The EU is desperate to jettison their anti-carbon faith, letting the carbon exchange collapse is step one in the CO2 reformation.

Mickey Reno
January 31, 2013 11:47 am

You can’t have a religion based around Climate Scientology unless there’s some sort of hell, so burn in hell, all you evil automobile drivers (and bus or train or airplane travelers), you evil people who have warm houses during this cold winter, you evil eaters of food grown more than a mile from your homes, and worst of all, you evil climate deniers who refuse to buy Climate Papal indulgences. Pope Hansen is very displeased! Cardinal Mann requires your penitence. Friars Jones and Trenberth order you to flail yourselves.
/sarc (just in case, although I hope it’s not really needed in this instance)

Peter Miller
January 31, 2013 11:49 am

Now down to €3.31, that’s a 10.3% drop today.

Matt
January 31, 2013 11:59 am

The problem with the “carbon trading” markets is that they aren’t trading carbon, or even carbon dioxide, both of which are valuable raw materials for all sorts of industrial processes. What they are trading is indulgences which have no inherent value.

H.R.
January 31, 2013 12:03 pm

I’ve got a buy order for $50USD worth of credits when the price hits a nickel a ton. That oughta last me ’til I’m dead and gone. Well that, or I can insulate the attic with the certificates.
What to do… what to do… tough choice.

DirkH
January 31, 2013 12:04 pm

Sun Spot says:
January 31, 2013 at 11:34 am
“The EU is desperate to jettison their anti-carbon faith, letting the carbon exchange collapse is step one in the CO2 reformation.”
I’ll believe that when they jettison Hedegaard.

January 31, 2013 12:20 pm

Reblogged this on acckkii.

thunderloon
January 31, 2013 12:30 pm

Chris Beal @NJ_Snow_Fan says:
January 31, 2013 at 7:14 am
ENRON ENRON all I can Say. Lock them up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

… don’t need to, I was living in Atlanta when a family was billed $140.00 for keeping a single pilot light lit for a month.
Carbon trading is just a joke, the way they go about it is equivalent to selling shares in a company then using the money as start-up funds. There’s no production or efficiency report. It simply becomes an investment scam.

Silver Ralph
January 31, 2013 12:43 pm

>>Can someone please explain to me how this was supposed
>>to work initially? That people should pay someone for the right
>>to burn carbon?
The idea was not unlike conventional money supply. However, the flaw in this carbon-money system is that any old lying scammer in the Third World could claim they were saving the planet (planting trees, cleaning up industry, stopping cows farting) and thus print new fiat (imaginary) carbon-money.
It was designed to fail because it was designed by idealists, and fail it will.
You might say the same about the Euro. It was designed to fail because it was designed by idealists, and fail it will.
.

Gerry, England
January 31, 2013 12:47 pm

And I still get spam email trying to get me to sign up to the scam!
Given that the eurozone part of the EU is sinking into recession, it’s no surprise CO2 output is dropping. Then add in outsourcing production to non-CO2 scamming countries like China, India and even to the US since the fracking revolution cut gas prices, although Obama is committing to wreck that. Europe – continent not EU – I understand doesn’t have great potential for fracking. Britain – island separated from Europe by moat dug by ancients – does have huge potential if only we weren’t governed by morons both in Westminster and Brussels.

January 31, 2013 1:12 pm

It’s one of those rare cases where seeing something go bankrupt is very good news for all the people. It is even good news for the Warmistas, although, of course, they do not realize it yet.

pat
January 31, 2013 1:37 pm

into the Deutsche Bank void???
INTERVIEW: World Bank eyes spring launch for new carbon fund
LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The World Bank aims to launch a new carbon fund this spring after it was delayed almost a year because falling carbon prices made it harder to raise cash, a senior official at the bank told Reuters Point Carbon..
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2162479?&ref=searchlist

Admin
January 31, 2013 1:46 pm

Carbon trading is the only market in which fraud benefits all participants.
Sellers benefit because they get to make money for nothing, selling fake carbon permits.
Buyers benefit because a flood of fake carbon permits keeps prices down.
The only people who are disadvantaged by carbon fraud are the greens – and who gives a stuff about them?

Brendan
January 31, 2013 2:04 pm

Spare a thought for us dunces from down under. Our Government’s Carbon tax is locked into the EU’s price from 2015 and has been done on a predicted price of $29 a tonne. That price has been used to pay compensation to the usual key groups of voters.
Clever

DirkH
January 31, 2013 2:18 pm

Gerry, England says:
January 31, 2013 at 12:47 pm
“Europe – continent not EU – I understand doesn’t have great potential for fracking.”
You are wrong. France, Germany and Poland at least have significant resources. All blocked by green activist policies. Except maybe in Poland.
The EU greens have traditionally been the KGB’s shocktroops as the Russians recognized in 1980 that infiltrating the young green movement would be much smarter than continuing to try to keep Eurocommunist groups up. Trittin, Fischer, Roth, Kretschmann – leaders of the German Greens – were such infiltrators, moving from communist groups into the Green/antinuclear movement and quickly purging the party from non-leftist elements, aligning it with USSR interests.
So the European green opposition to shale gas plays into the interests of Russian gas exporters.
Fracking itself has of course been used for decades in Germany to get at oil in Lower Saxony; only the horicontal drilling is new, and through all the decades the Greens have never said anything about fracking because the oil gained was simply too little to disturb Russian interests.

James Ard
January 31, 2013 2:47 pm

Silver Ralph, I would say idealists is much too kind of word. And it’s past time to start calling the spades the spades.

Simon
January 31, 2013 3:28 pm

Wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC Pension Fund have investments in this. For them to lose on this is hard on the BBC employees, but just might trigger a change of heart at the organisation, forcing it to re-evaluate its currently overtly biased position wrt CAGW. Then again, pigs might fly, as the common reaction to something failing is for the supporters to try even harder to change the outcome (Einstein’s definition of insanity?)

RoHa
January 31, 2013 3:40 pm

If the Big Money boys with the nasty haircuts aren’t making big money, we will stop hearing about CO2 driven Climate Change very soon.

I. Lou Minotti
January 31, 2013 3:55 pm

No wonder Algore is hitting the talk show circuit promoting his new book! (As if he needs a few more bucks–does Algorezeera Currently come to mind?) Maybe Obama and Maurice Strong will soon join him on his book tour, seeing as the Chicago Climate Exchange is likely the next domino to fall.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/9629

mfo
January 31, 2013 5:20 pm

As most people know there is a huge glut of carbon dioxide allowances (permits to emit 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide) in the European Union. Therefore supply vastly exceeds demand which is causing the price of allowances to collapse.
The EU emissions trading scheme (or scam) is worth 54 billion euros ($73 billion). The cap and trade program in the EU does not allow a price floor (or ceiling), so with further allowances being added to the massive oversupply, the allowances could actually end up being worth nothing at all.
The European Commission, the unelected body which effectively controls the European Union, has come up with a scheme to artificially raise the price of allowances called backloading. This means that the EU would postpone selling 900 million new carbon allowances due to be sold during 2013-2016 until 2019-2020.
Connie Hedegaard the EU Climate Commissioner is beginning to panic. The European Parliament’s Industry, Research, and Energy committee has voted against the proposal to withhold allowances from the market. Yet another committee, The Environment Committee, is due to vote on February 19. After which representatives of the 27 member states will also have a vote.
Connie Hedegaard has stated: “The alternative to a well-functioning carbon market is hardly that the EU member states will make it cost nothing to pollute.”
She claims that if backloading is not agreed, the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will have to be re-nationalised by each individual member state using 27 different regulatory systems and taxes.
For backloading to be put into effect it requires a qualified majority of 255 votes from the member states out of a total of 345. Therefore only 91 votes could block the proposed change in the EU’s emissions trading law.
A number of EU states are either undecided or have expressed concern. For instance Marcin Korolec, Poland’s Environment Minister, has stated that backloading amounts to market manipulation.
The 8 EU member states which have expressed misgivings about backloading are Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Cypress and Malta. The number of votes each country has varies, but they total 111 and so together could block backloading.
Carbon prices would crash and buyers would be able to buy carbon dioxide emission allowances at their true value, zero.

timbrom
January 31, 2013 5:49 pm

I. Lou Minotti says;
I don’t think you’ll see Strong on tour any time soon. Someone might like to correct me, but I seem to recall that the boys in blue are looking to feel his collar over the Iraq Oil for Food scam.

H.R.
January 31, 2013 6:28 pm

Eric Worrall says:
January 31, 2013 at 1:46 pm
LOL! It’s worth a re-read.
(And I might add… the really stupid greens lost their shirts.)
Thank you, sir!