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European cap-and-trade market takes a nose dive
The European Union’s cap-and-trade system took a huge hit on Thursday, with carbon prices plummeting a record 40 percent after a panel rejected a plan to delay emission permit sales to alleviate the overabundance of permits already in the system.
“The market is panicking, really,” Daniel Rossetto, managing director of Climate Mundial, told Bloomberg, adding that traders fear that Europe’s carbon emissions market won’t continue past 2020.
An excess of carbon emission permits in the 54 billion euro trading system drove the price down 91 percent from its record high in April 2006. Carbon permit prices sank to a record low of 2.81 euros ($3.75) per metric ton immediately after the panel rejected the EU plan. However, prices slightly rebounded to 4.33 euros per metric ton.
“This should be the final wake-up call,” said EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard in a statement. “Something has to be done urgently. I can therefore only appeal to the governments and the European Parliament to act responsibly.”
The Financial Times reports that the carbon market has seen two record-low prices within the last four days, causing some analysts to say carbon permits are “worthless.”
The European Commission wanted to temporarily delay the sale of 900 million permits to alleviate the current overabundance. Analysts say this move would have boosted prices, but not high enough to provide sufficient incentives for utilities to switch to cleaner energy sources, reports the Guardian.
However, the plan was met with resistance from various governments, industries, and lawmakers.
Joachim Pfeiffer, economy spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, said the plan was “absurd” and would impose higher costs on German industry.Reuters reports that the bank Societe Generale cut its EU carbon price forecast from 2013 to 2015 by 30 percent, due to prices plunging to record lows.
“Negative news and events relating to the EU [Emissions Trading System] continue to pile up and come from all sides. So it is not at all surprising that EUA prices have fallen and have continued to be quite volatile,” they said. “The EU ETS has become a one-way market, spiraling down.”
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Related articles
- EU Carbon Permits ‘Worthless’ Without Change of Rules, UBS Says (bloomberg.com)
- Carbon price under EU emissions Trading System hits all-time low (seeker401.wordpress.com)
- EU Carbon Market Is at Risk of Total Collapse, Lawmaker Says (bloomberg.com)
- EU’s carbon market suffers after parliamentary vote (reuters.com)
- EU carbon price crashes to record low (aftermathnews.wordpress.com)
- EU carbon price crashes to record low (junkscience.com)
Occupiers Have A Mascot, Robin Hood. Too Bad He Is Opposed To Their Rhetoric.
by Casey Hendrickson
I suppose it was inevitable. Eventually, people ignorant to the circumstances they are protesting were bound to extend their ignorance to a new mascot. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d expected them to take up the Robin Hood fallacy.
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.
‘Take from the rich, give to the poor,’ is the often misused mantra of Robin Hood. However, Robin Hood was not about wealth redistribution at all. This proposal to demand a tax in Robin Hood’s name is the very definition of irony. Robin Hood wasn’t an occupier, he was a tea partier.
Robin Hood’s beef wasn’t with the wealthy. It was with the abusive government over-taxation policy. It was the Sheriff’s unfair taxation to fund government programs he opposed. Robin Hood has often been depicted as an aristocrat who had his wealth wrongly stripped from him. He would oppose the occupiers at every turn.
Demanding a tax in his name is the exact opposite of what he stood for. Robin Hood would have thrown tea into the harbor. Robin Hood would have been there at the beginning of the tea party movement. Echoing what our founders and the tea partiers after them stood for … less taxation and getting the government out of our lives. Not the pillaging of the fruits of one’s labor.
Robin Hood is not one of the fictional 99% … Robin Hood is one of the 53%.
Related articles
- Occupiers’ new mascot: Anti-tax crusader Robin Hood (michellemalkin.com)
- The Robin Hood Tax – What is it? Who’s Behind it? Who’s Against it? (blogs.confused.com)
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- Occupiers’ new mascot: Anti-tax crusader Robin Hood (michellemalkin.com)
Gazprom to Get Tax Break for Oil Exported from Arctic Offshore Field
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s biggest company by market value, may get a 10-year tax exemption for crude oil exported from its offshore Prirazlomnoye development in the Arctic where production is set to start next year.
The government is waiting for Gazprom to provide economic forecasts before granting the break, said two government officials, who declined to be identified before the exemption is approved. The project will probably not be able to turn a profit without the tax relief, they said.
Prirazlomnoye is Russia’s first major offshore oil project in the Arctic. The project has received a temporary exemption from the mineral extraction tax.
Production drilling on the offshore project is planned for about the first quarter of next year, with output planned to peak at about 6 million to 6.5 million metric tons a year in 2019. The project’s platform and 40 wells may cost $7 billion in total, Nikolay Kabanov, a Gazprom deputy department head, said in St. Petersburg on Sept. 13.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov didn’t immediately answer calls to his mobile phone.
By Alena Chechel and Stephen Bierman (Bloomberg)
Related articles
- Russia: Rosneft Gets Clearance to Buy More Offshore Assets in the Arctic (mb50.wordpress.com)
- Gazprom Keeps on Spending (europebiz.wordpress.com)
- Shale gas should make the world a cleaner, safer place (mb50.wordpress.com)
- Arctic Oil Geopolitics (spectrum.ieee.org)
- Turkey ends western supply gas contract (rt.com)