Carbon trading projected to triple

By the end of this year, the traded volume of CO₂ credits is expected to reach 68 million metric tons, according to the World Bank. The market already produced twice the volume of 2001 trades in the first six months of 2002. The Kyoto Protocol’s ratification is driving this trading, which is thus far mainly private sector transactions in the industrialized world. The traded assets include renewable energy, waste management, land use, and land use management. The World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2000, 34, 456A–457A) has been encouraging trading in developing countries by engineering partnerships between private companies and public institutions in those countries. Still, Ken Newcombe, the World Bank’s Manager of Carbon Finance, says “a major challenge is to encourage private companies to invest more heavily in developing countries for greenhouse gas emissions, especially through projects that benefit the developing world’s poorest countries.” To view State and Trends of the Carbon Market, go to http://prototypecarbonfund.org/docs/StateandTrendsoftheCarbonMarket.pdf.