Sunday, November 7, 2010

Chicago Climate Exchange to shut down: Good news for the USA

Source: Reuters



The United States' only national carbon trading scheme could be shut down within months because of stalled emissions trading laws in Congress, the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday quoted a senior exchange official as saying.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) operates what it calls a voluntary but legally binding greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in which companies have to meet annual reduction targets, or a cap. Those below the targets can sell surplus allowances or bank them.

But Jeff Sprecher, chief executive of the InternationalExchange and CCX's owner, told the Financial Times that participants in the CCX's cap-and-trade scheme wanted to pull out.

"The bulk of the users have said to us that they really don't want to continue to trade voluntarily in the absence of any credit for their work by the current administration," the newspaper quoted him as saying.