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IETA NETWORK CONNECTION
In touch with global carbon markets
Carbon pricing is simple and elegant. Just do it!
That was California Governor Jerry Brown’s call for action as he opened the “Carbon Pricing Delivering Climate Ambition” forum. This was IETA’s main event at the recent Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in California, held jointly with the governments of California and Canada, the European Commission, the World Bank, the Environmental Defense Fund and ICAP. With a crowd of about 400 guests, our forum took stock of the many challenges and opportunities in ‘stepping up’ climate action to greater levels of ambition. Carbon pricing was a major theme across the week, which concluded with a new agreement between California and the European Commission to step up their cooperative work on carbon markets with a view towards better alignment.
GCAS kicked off a busy period of conferences around the world for IETA staff in the lead up to COP24 in December. This year’s negotiations will be an important event for all carbon market stakeholders, as we await the final Paris Agreement ‘rulebook’, due to be signed at Katowice. For some time now, IETA’s International Working Group has been working closely with the negotiators of Article 6 – which outlines the provisions for market mechanisms – to put forward the business point of view. It is our belief that, if these mechanisms are well designed, they will unlock the power of markets for the decarbonisation challenge and help deliver the deeper emissions cuts that are needed. We will continue our consultations with them as they approach ‘decision-time’ at the annual climate conference at the end of the year.
Ahead of COP24, the European Commission is consulting on a new a strategy for long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction. IETA, via our EU Working Group, will be contributing the business voice to this important document, which is due to published at the end November. It will then feed into discussions in the Talanoa Dialogue – an international process to take stock of the collective and individual efforts towards the goals of the Paris Agreement. This is a year-long process, launched by the Fijian Presidency at last year’s UN climate talks, that will culminate in political discussions about raising ambition at Katowice.
While Europe’s long-term climate strategy is being developed, prices in the EU ETS have trended up and reached a 10-year peak, above €25, in early September. It is encouraging to see the market responding to energy fundamentals – such as coal/gas pricing differentials, nuclear availability and weather variations – rather than policy decisions, which have been the major price driver for several years. With the EU ETS reforms approaching in 2019 and beyond, the market looks well placed to deliver emissions reductions at the lowest cost across Europe.
Simon Henry
EU Policy Director
Meet IETA
3 October: Antoine Diemert will be attending ATAG’s 10th annual Global Sustainable Aviation Summit in Geneva
11-12 October: Meet Stefano De Clara and Lisa Spafford in PyeongChang at the Korea Carbon Forum
12 October: Simon Henry will be speaking at an event in Brussels examining the impacts of the clean energy package targets on the EU ETS
12 October: Another event in Brussels on free allocation adjustments in Phase 4 of the EU ETS will be attended by Kordula Mayr
15 October: Meet Kordula Mayr at ICTSD’s event on the IPCC’s 1.5°C report in Brussels
17 October: Katie Sullivan will be attending the Canadian Business Climate Leadership Event in Ottawa
17-18 October: Simon Henry will be at Carbon Forward in London
21-26 October: Katie Sullivan will be attending some of GHGT-14 in Melbourne
22-24 October: Meet Katie Sullivan in Napa at the Argus Biofuels and Carbon Markets Summit
23-24 October: Catch Simon Henry in Doha at the Sustainability Summit 2018
31 October-1 November: Katie Kouchakji will be attending the 2018 Asia Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit in Wellington
6 November: Meet Dirk Forrister, Sophy Greenhalgh and Eva Weightman at the Carbon Markets & Offset Strategies Seminar during Aviation Carbon 2018 in London
IETA Member's Corner
How is 3Degrees involved in the carbon market?
3Degrees has been a pioneer in US environmental markets since its founding in 2002. The company’s Carbon Markets division is the product of its merger with Origin Climate (formerly TerraPass Inc.) and serves both compliance and voluntary markets in North America. 3Degrees has played an instrumental role in bringing to fruition over 50 new US projects, including some of the first projects to produce California Compliance Offsets, as well as the first-ever offset project developed under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The company is also currently developing more than 20 US projects for voluntary customers across multiple industries.
Why did you join IETA?
3Degrees is excited to have joined IETA as our work and vision aligns closely with IETA’s mission to establish market frameworks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At 3Degrees we believe in the power of markets. Our customers understand that pollution has a real cost and that markets offer a real solution.
Mark Mondik
Vice President, Carbon Markets
IETA Publications
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IETA Insights 2018, edition 3 Spotlight on carbon pricing across the Americas |
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