“The global carbon market more than doubled in 2007 over 2006 to $64 billion, the World Bank said in a report issued on Wednesday. The centrepiece, the EU emissions trading scheme doubled in value to $50 billion compared with a year earlier, it said.” [Reuters]
The Financial Times adds that “transactions under the EU ETS nearly doubled, as did the value of carbon permits sold by the scheme. Last year, 2.1bn EU permits changed hands, against 1.1bn in 2006. The total value of trades was Dollars 50bn, against Dollars 24bn the previous year.
Under the EU ETS, companies in energy-intensive industries are issued with permits to produce carbon dioxide: if they want to emit more than their quota, they must buy permits from companies with spare permits.
But there was a slowdown in the rate of growth of the rest of the emissions market, which is mainly made up of sales of carbon credits under the United Nation's Kyoto protocol.”[Financial Times]
“‘Countries in Africa ... emerged in the carbon market and offered buyers an opportunity to diversify their China-overweight portfolios,’ the World Bank report said, citing Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria as the main movers in 2007."African countries are arriving a bit later than other countries, but there are more and more projects," said Joelle Chassard, manager for the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit, which runs several funds that invest in CDM [Clean Development Mechanism] projects. "At the moment, about 17 percent of our operations are in Africa."
Although CDM activity in Africa grew significantly last year, investors still see more room for improvement.” [Reuters]
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