Global carbon market values hit $176b in 2011 – World Bank
The total value of the global carbon market grew by 11% to $176 billion in 2011, a World Bank report said May 30, 2012.
Transaction volumes reached a new high of 10.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) during the year, said the report titled “State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2012”.
Growth took place in the face of economic turbulence, growing long-term oversupply in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and plummeting carbon prices, it noted.
The report explained that as prices declined, the value of the global carbon market increased in 2011 and this was driven predominantly by a robust growth in financially motivated transactions.
The largest segment of the carbon market was that of EU Allowances (EUAs), valued at $148 billion while the secondary Kyoto offsets which grew by 43% to 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2e was valued at $23 billion.
Following the same pattern observed in previous years, the World Banks says the global carbon market in 2011 was primarily driven by the EU ETS.
By Ekow Quandzie
Full disclosure: one of the lead authors works in business development for the carbon exchange Bluenext. Given their commercial interests I’m not surprised at the results. If the report is accurate then it is sad because the one thing expanding in Europe is trading hot air and this can’t be good for Africa.