Year of the carbon market

With 13 climate change bills currently under discussion in the Democrat-heavy U.S. Congress, 2009 is expected to be a breakthrough year for the U.S. carbon market.

Just weeks after being elected, President-elect Barack Obama, in an address to state governors, committed to pushing for carbon-cap legislation immediately upon entering office. He spoke of establishing annual targets to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Citing the lack of reduction commitments by China—among other things—both the Clinton and Bush administrations walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, the first international carbon reduction treaty. Despite the lack of federal leadership, many cities, states and regions have developed carbon reduction goals— and, in some cases, cap-and-trade schemes of their own. (As of July 2008, 850 U.S. cities in 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, representing over 80 million Americans, had agreed to the terms of the Kyoto Protocol.)

As such, every major global carbon player has set up an office in the United States, and most major U.S. corporations have a carbon czar. To date, most efforts by the world’s largest carbon market traders have been small, but that is changing. “Investing in the United States for carbon players is not about if,” says Neal Dikeman, a partner at Jane Capital and CEO of carbon software company Carbonflow Inc. “The questions are: How much? Where? And when?”

The value of the global carbon market increased 80 percent in 2007, climbing to a value of $40.4 billion, according to European analysis and consulting firm Point Carbon. The firm predicts that by 2020, the United States’ carbon market will represent 67 percent of the global carbon market, which is expected to reach $3.1 trillion by that time.

And U.S. business leaders are gearing up to take part in it. On the heels of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize for his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” 2008 was the year for carbon conferences, seminars (and Webinars) and news stories, all geared at helping today’s business leaders prepare for a carbon-constrained economy.