The carbon credit market is rising exponentially every year given the global warming awareness. To know more about carbon credits price, read on.
Is carbon credit the new global currency? All the drawbacks and problems related to currencies like Dollars or Euros are taken care by the Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits. It can be traded all over the world. And it is used by all the major countries more or less in similar proportion. Its unit one metric ton of carbon is universal and doesn't change from country-to-country. Moreover, its relevance is understood all over the world. Even if the question is hypothetical (or real?), one thing is for sure - carbon credits have assumed a significance we didn't think of some ten years before, and it has caused a visible rift between the industrialized and developing world. Even if the 'diplomatic' sources don't allow the differences to boil over, this one issue has polarized the world after the democracy-communism ideology cold war. With all this interesting background, let us understand what are carbon credits, in the real sense.
Carbon Credit
Contrary to the above picture, the concept of carbon credit is very beneficial and easy to understand. This concept was brought to help reduce carbon dioxide, the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases leading to global warming. A carbon footprint is measured of each company or individual or country using various carbon calculators, or a central authority is assigned for this purpose. As per the calculations, a certain number of credits are assigned to each company for a certain period of time. If the company is successful in controlling its carbon emissions under the assigned credit value, it is permitted to sell those credits in the carbon market for monetary gain. On the other hand, those companies or countries who fail to control their emissions under the required limit, need to purchase these carbon credits as a offset for the extra carbon they emitted. In a nutshell, having one carbon credit permits the holder to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, there are three carbon credits exchange mechanisms - Joint implementation, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and International Emissions Trading (IET). These mechanisms allow the developed countries or companies with high carbon footprint to acquire carbon credits, but all differ according to the clauses of buying and selling the carbon credits. These mechanisms aim at achieving carbon neutrality, which means there should be net zero carbon footprint.
Carbon Credits Price
One carbon credit (or carbon 'offset') is a closely regulated certificate representing a reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. In dollar terms, carbon credits price per ton is about $15 to $40. This cost of carbon credits fluctuate on a large scale over the continents and over small time periods, and hence, is one of the dangers of the climate change policy. That means, even though the unit 'one ton of carbon dioxide' remains unchanged, the Dollar and Euro equivalent values may not be similar. Also, the variation in the demand and supply of carbon offsetting in various countries keeps the carbon credit price unstable. Many times, it is left to the individual buyers and sellers to negotiate and determine the current price of carbon credits. The lack of information on the appropriate prices leaves the buyers and sellers in a dilemma about the timing and expectation of optimum price. But one good thing carbon pricing has done is that it has helped the common people to understand which products induce carbon emissions, and hence should be used sparingly, and it also provides incentives for the investors and innovators to produce and invest only in low carbon products, thus benefiting them financially.
Many individuals are taking up this issue as a moral duty and are calculating their carbon footprints to understand and buy the required carbon credits. This trend is gradually rising, but what is needed is global awareness! Until and unless all the developed countries take up this issue seriously and proper international laws are made, carbon credit concept will not help in minimizing the emissions on a large extent. Accepted that many international organizations are working towards the carbon neutrality goal, but stringent punitive laws will go a long way in ensuring that global warming is dealt with.
The heavily anticipated (before its start) Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009 fell flat on its face. Then the Cancun Conference last year zoomed past without any significant achievement. An expected progress meant for taking the world beyond Kyoto Protocol didn't materialize, and frankly, is nowhere in sight. The whole world is waiting for the responsible countries to stand up and take action. A catastrophe is waiting to happen alongside. If the global warming issue is not taken care of within a short period of time, all the carbon credits price and buy-sell brouhaha will amount to nothing, and we may be staring at a bleak future. I imagined to end this article optimistically, but I cannot help in being cynical about the whole issue.