As numerous jurisdictions implement emissions mitigation mechanisms that put a price on carbon, this incisive book explores the emerging emissions markets and their diverse and fragmented nature. It proposes an innovative model for connecting such markets, offering a significantly more successful and expeditious achievement of climate policy objectives.

The world carbon market is growing at a staggering rate with trading volumes into the tens of billions of dollars and approaching a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The growth prospects for business are enormous and the potential positive impacts for greenhouse gas emission reductions, climate policy options, renewable energy investment, development projects and efficiency gains are increasingly apparent.A key part of the market in greenhouse gas emissions is the rapidly growing voluntary carbon market driven by companies, organizations and individuals committed to efficiency, profitability and rapid action on climate change. HSBC, Volvo, Avis, Ricoh and American Express are but a few of the many companies now offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions and becoming 'carbon neutral', fuelling an international voluntary carbon market that is growing exponentially. This groundbreaking business book, written in a fast-paced journalistic style, draws together all the key information on international voluntary carbon markets with commentary from leading practitioners and business people. The voluntary market is complex, fragmented and multi-layered, but it is beginning to consolidate around a few guiding practices and business models from which conclusions can be drawn about market direction and opportunities.The book covers all aspects of voluntary carbon markets around the world: what they are, how they work and, most critically, their business potential to help slow climate change. It is the indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand voluntary carbon markets and capitalize on the opportunities they present for economic and environmental benefit. If you want to be ahead of the curve for the next big thing, you need this book.

Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2010 award. This book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to understanding the opportunities offered by regulated and voluntary carbon markets for tackling climate change. Coverage includes: - An overview of the problem of climate change, with a concise review of the most recent scientific evidence in different fields - A highly accessible introduction to the economic theory and different constitutive elements of a carbon allowances market - Explanation of the Kyoto Protocol and its flexibility mechanisms - Explanation of how the EU Emissions Trading Scheme works in practice - Ongoing developments in regulated carbon markets in the US - Up-to-the-minute coverage of regulated carbon markets in Australia - Developments in New Zealand and Japan - Carbon offsetting and voluntary carbon markets. Combining theoretical aspects with practical applications, this book is for business leaders, financiers, carbon traders, lawyers, bankers, researchers, policy makers and anyone interested in market mechanisms to mitigate climate change. The carbon emissions resulting from the production of this book have been calculated, reduced and offset to render the bookcarbon neutral. Published with CO2 Neutral

The promise of harnessing market forces to combat climate change has been unsettled by low carbon prices, financial losses, and ongoing controversies in global carbon markets. And yet governments around the world remain committed to market-based solutions to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. This book discusses what went wrong with the marketisation of climate change and what this means for the future of action on climate change. The book explores the co-production of capitalism and climate change by developing new understandings of relationships between the appropriation, commodification and capitalisation of nature. The book reveals contradictions in carbon markets for addressing climate change as a socio-ecological, economic and political crisis, and points towards more targeted and democratic policies to combat climate change. This book will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers and campaigners who are interested in climate change and climate policy, and the political economy of capitalism and the environment.

Why the traditional “pledge and review” climate agreements have failed, and how carbon pricing, based on trust and reciprocity, could succeed. After twenty-five years of failure, climate negotiations continue to use a “pledge and review” approach: countries pledge (almost anything), subject to (unenforced) review. This approach ignores everything we know about human cooperation. In this book, leading economists describe an alternate model for climate agreements, drawing on the work of the late Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and others. They show that a “common commitment” scheme is more effective than an “individual commitment” scheme; the latter depends on altruism while the former involves reciprocity (“we will if you will”). The contributors propose that global carbon pricing is the best candidate for a reciprocal common commitment in climate negotiations. Each country would commit to placing charges on carbon emissions sufficient to match an agreed global price formula. The contributors show that carbon pricing would facilitate negotiations and enforcement, improve efficiency and flexibility, and make other climate policies more effective. Additionally, they analyze the failings of the 2015 Paris climate conference. Contributors Richard N. Cooper, Peter Cramton, Ottmar Edenhofer, Christian Gollier, Éloi Laurent, David JC MacKay, William Nordhaus, Axel Ockenfels, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Steven Stoft, Jean Tirole, Martin L. Weitzman

Carbon markets involve complex governance challenges, such as ensuring transparency of emissions, facilitating as well as recording transactions, overseeing market activity and preventing abuse. Conventionally, these have been addressed with a combination of regulatory, procedural and technical structures that impose significant burdens on market participants and administrators while remaining vulnerable to system shocks and illicit practices. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has the potential to address these problems. This volume offers the first book-length exploration of how carbon markets can be governed using DLT, offering conceptual and theoretical analysis, practical case studies, and a roadmap for implementation of a DLT-based architecture in major existing and emerging carbon markets. It surveys existing expertise on distributed ledger technology, provides progress updates from industry professionals, and shows how this technology could offer a cost-effective and sustainable solution to double-counting and other governance concerns identified as major challenges in the implementation of carbon markets.