Carbon Finance 2009

Over the past two days I've been in attendance at the annual Carbon Finance conference here in London.

The meetings were held at an incredibly fascinating time. Many of you have undoubtedly heard of the Kyoto Protocol, a protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty which seeks the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Of course, some of you in the US may be unfamiliar with the specifics of the protocol because the United States, a state responsible for over 36% of emissions in 1990, did not ratify the protocol. The following map puts the United States' absence in the appropriate context.

Green: Yes, Gray: Undecided, Red: No

The conference centered on the fast-approaching summit in Copenhagen, where our collective path after Kyoto's end date of 2012 will be debated. In the meantime, the EU has instituted a cap-and-trade program for carbon and operates a fully-functioning commodity market in carbon emission allowances. The United States Congress has, of late, made some strides (passing the Kerry-Boxer bill in the Senate and the Waxmen-Markey bill in the House) but much remains to be done.

Delegates at the conference came from governments around the world, as well as from NGOs and private industry. While there were many scientists, economists, policy experts, and entrepreneurs from the United States, there were zero representatives of our government.