Archive

  • Corralling the cowboys

    01 February 2009

    As voluntary carbon market participants brace themselves for the effect of the global slowdown, Christopher Cundy reports on how the market's earlier problems are being addressed

  • Registeries - ticked off?

    01 February 2009

    If 2008 was the year when voluntary carbon standards established themselves, then 2009 should be the year for their registries.

  • Price pressure

    01 February 2009

    America's progression towards mandatory carbon emissions trading looks set to continue to support prices in its voluntary carbon market – but things look bleaker elsewhere, finds Thomas Marcello

  • Counting the cost of offsetting

    01 February 2009

    Times are tough, but offsetting emissions can still make economic as well as environmental sense. Bill Burtis explains how organisations should approach offsetting

  • When is a REC not an offset?

    01 February 2009

    Renewable energy certificates (RECs, green tags or green certificates) represent the quantified non-emissions of a clean form of energy – as measured by how many tonnes of a regulated pollutant would have been emitted in creating that energy from a non-clean form. Those non-emissions are called 'environmental attributes'.

  • Offsets and Olympics

    01 February 2009

    British Columbia is blazing a trail with its government's pledge to go carbon neutral, and in the development of carbon offset standards. Barbara Hendrickson, Marty Venalainen and Rosanne Van Schie explain

  • CAIR reinstatement revives emissions markets

    01 February 2009

    US emission markets were brought back to life after judges agreed to a limited reprieve of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). Allowance prices jumped as speculators and utilities entered the market, but bearish fundamentals have since brought them back down to earth.

  • Zurich unveils carbon capture and storage insurance

    22 January 2009

    Zurich Financial Services has launched insurance products to cover capturing and storing carbon underground, in a bid to address a major barrier to the uptake of the technology.

  • Bush administration abandons plans to loosen NSR

    01 December 2008

    The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has dropped a proposal that would have allowed some existing power plants to expand without installing new pollution controls, surprising environmentalists who have battled for years against the planned rule change.

  • A chill wind blowing

    01 December 2008

    The renewable energy sector was late to feel the cold hand of the credit crisis – but financiers and REC traders are braced for a chillier 2009. Jess McCabe talks to the renewable energy winners of Environmental Finance's Market Survey