The reporter helpfully notes that in 2005, farmers in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas generated $380,000 selling carbon credits to companies and universities. Bankers, the 21st Century Agricultural Policy Project [!], are projecting an exponential rate of growth and implying minimal investment risk over the next 40 years. The forecast value of trading CCS properties ranges $2.6B - $24B per year. Modest return by subprime CDO standards. Still ...
"If structured properly, it ["credit" price structure] could create a huge market and bring in a large source of emissions reductions," said Gia Schneider, vice president of energy trading and environmental markets for Credit Suisse. [...] Offsets can lower the cost to utilities of meeting new pollution requirements, said Elizabeth Thompson, legislative director for Environmental Defense, an advocacy group. It will be years before power plants can use technology to capture and store carbon from power plants that burn coal. Allowing polluters to use some domestic and international offsets would lead to carbon credit prices of about $14 per ton in 2015 and about $77 per ton in 2050, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis. If offsets are not allowed, prices jump to $40 in 2015 and $219 in 2050. "We view offsets as a very useful bridge," Thompson said.
Allowing polluters to use some domestic and international offsets would lead to carbon credit prices of about $14 per ton in 2015 and about $77 per ton in 2050, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis. If offsets are not allowed, prices jump to $40 in 2015 and $219 in 2050.
"We view offsets as a very useful bridge," Thompson said.
"A useful bridge:" Will (carbon) credit exchanges induce a calming effect on global commodity and capital price volatility in the near term? Perhaps so long as "value" creation for investors is evidently positive. But I'm not optimistic, given AgriBiz monopolies, ongoing E8-stock production by the self-same credit trading "farmers," and Peak Soil science. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Will (carbon) credit exchanges induce a calming effect on global commodity and capital price volatility in the near term?
Carbon credits come from the very same stable of intermediaries who bring us Debt as Money, and is equally unsustainable.
Moreover, these intermediaries who are selling us this total bollocks make their money from the volatility which is the consequence of the market manipulation and speculation inherent in what they do.
Far from calming it, they cause it.
What's needed IMHO is an "asset-based" market in energy units based on the carbon in fuel, rather than a "deficit-based" market based on the carbon in emissions created when carbon- based energy is used.
It's not Rocket Science to do, either. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Credit Suisse said: ´we have our fees and commissions sheet ready.´
USEPA said: ´our regulated businesses have told us to say this is good and we agreed.´ Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
