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July 01, 2009 at 04:00 AM
At this point it seems highly likely that a climate and energy bill will make it out of Congress this year. Whatever the final form of the legislation that makes it to the President’s desk includes, it’s likely to be similar to the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009, more commonly referred to as the Waxman-Markey bill. That piece of legislation passed its first major hurdle with the approval of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21 and has been referred to a number of other committees including Ways and Means, Agriculture, and Natural Resources for their input.
It’s also almost certain that the final law will also include a cap and trade program for carbon emissions, with the ultimate goal of dramatically reducing those emissions by 2050. Not surprisingly there have been criticisms of such proposals with some opponents referring to the idea as “cap and tax.”
While there’s no denying that there will be significant costs involved, there are also numerous benefits, and I’m not just talking about for the environment.
On June 2, Gabelli & Company held a cap and trade symposium in New York that attempted to address some of the opportunities provided by the creation of a cap and trade system and a market for emission credits.
“In putting a price on carbon you create a market for carbon,” observed John Segrich, who heads the Gabelli green research team and is co-portfolio manager for the Gabelli SRI Green Fund. “What some people have concluded is that carbon could potentially be the largest commodity market in the world, and certainly when there’s a market created there’s going to be opportunity.”
Among the speakers at the Gabelli event was Dr. Richard Sandor, CEO of Chicago-based Climate Exchange, which operates the Chicago Climate Exchange and Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, as well as the European Climate Exchange in London, the Montreal Climate Exchange, enVex in Sydney, Australia, and the Tianjin Climate Exchange in China. (Climate Exchange plc, the holding company for the various exchanges has a market capitalization of about $500 million and is listed on the AIM exchange in London.)
A Wealth Creation Opportunity
Although his stated topic was the market for emission credits, Sandor started his remarks by declaring that what he wanted to address was wealth creation. “I want to put forth the proposition to all of you that the value proposition of the 21st century will be yet another commoditization and that is the commoditization of air and water,” he said.
To make his case he pointed to the work of Nobel prize-winning economist Ronald Coase on property rights, which led the FCC to a more efficient method of allocating the electromagnetic spectrum based on property rights. “He basically pointed to the fact that trading can lead to a more efficient solution than simply command and control,” Sandor explained.
Experience in Europe and elsewhere has shown that markets provide greater environmental effectiveness than command-and-control regulation because they turn pollution reduction into marketable assets. In an excellent example of letting market forces work, this system provides real financial benefits for improving environmental performance.
Because cap-and-trade gives pollution reduction a value in the marketplace, the system prompts technological and process innovations that reduce pollution down to or beyond government-mandates levels.
