A slew of new reports bodes well for the future of carbon trading in the United States — beginning with last year’s volume figures on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE). Both saw volumes surge; and perhaps more indicative of the future, membership nearly doubled in the case of CCX from 127 members in January to 237 by year-end, and more than tripled in the case of CCFE from 34 in January to 104 by year-end.
The numbers come as a new report shows that more than half of S&P 500 companies don’t properly evaluate or disclose climate change risk.
The 80-page report (www.calvert.com/pdf/Ceres_Calvert_SandP_500.pdf) was commissioned by Ceres and Calvert from David Gardiner & Associates, and finds, ironically but not surprisingly, that heavy industries have actually done the best job of evaluating the impact of climate change on their operations, while low-emitting industries have tended to ignore the problem.
This comes on the heels of a report from the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority that the financial services sector may have severely underestimated the degree to which climate change will impact it, through added volatility or the simple fact that financial centers like London, New York and Chicago are on the water and that the global trading infrastructure is increasingly spread across geographies even more at risk.
The prognosis: a healthy market for new instruments that can hedge against climate-induced loss, or send the signal that one company is greener than the other.
By Steve Zwick
