Al Gore didn't create the internet but it would seem he has created quite a money-maker! Phoney crisis pays right into his big pockets!!!

Glenda Korporaal | December 05, 2007
A FUTURES market in carbon emissions trading could be worth several hundred billion dollars, ASX emerging markets general manager Anthony Collins says.

Mr Collins said the Australian Securities Exchange could be ready to launch a futures market for carbon emission permits "within weeks" of the federal Government passing the enabling legislation, expected late next year.

The ASX is making a strong pitch to the Government for a key role in the emissions trading scheme to get under way in 2010.

If the enabling legislation is passed late next year, the ASX could offer a new futures contract on emission permits early in 2009.

Mr Collins said he expected that carbon emission permits to be allocated and auctioned over the first 10 years of any Australian scheme could be worth about $105 billion.

He estimated that it would take three to five years for such a futures market to fully develop.

Mr Collins said the Government's move to sign the Kyoto Protocol this week would speed the development of a carbon emissions trading scheme in Australia.

"It means that things will move faster from here on.

"(Signing Kyoto) also means that there are likely to be linkages for the scheme.

"There would be fewer linkages for a stand-alone scheme."

Mr Collins said any futures market in carbon emission permits could not begin until the design of the scheme was "locked down in legislation".

He said that once that happened, a futures market could be operational within weeks.

Mr Collins said one of the lessons of the European Union's carbon trading scheme, which began in January 2005, was the importance of linking the official government-backed emission trading register with a settlement service such as Austraclear.

"The government registries (for trading permits) will need to interface with the financial market for settlement to take place," he said.

"The EU built stand-alone registries which were not interfaced with the financial markets.

"So when it came to the settlement of spot transactions, the development of the spot and forward markets were impaired as payment would occur a month later."

Mr Collins estimated that there could be $10-11 billion worth of emission trading permits issued annually in Australia once the scheme got going, valuing the market at more than $100 billion in its first 10 years of operation.

He said this was based on the assumption of a price of $25 a tonne for carbon emissions.

This was a conservative estimate, considering the EU scheme was now priced in the high twenties a tonne for carbon emissions.

But he said there would eventually be much more liquidity in the futures market than the underlying spot market.

"The liquidity will graduate to the forward market," he said.

"A futures market will play a very important role in this," he said.

"It will provide the price discovery and risk transfer mechanisms needed to transform Australia into a carbon conscious economy."

Mr Collins said the estimated $105 billion scale of the emissions trading permit market over its first 10 years was almost double the size of the $60 billion market in Commonwealth Government debt in Australia.

Mr Collins said the experience with successful futures markets "suggests that liquidity equating to multiples of the underlying market will take three to five years to develop".

"So if the forward market starts in 2009, the critical liquidity needed to transfer risk will be there by the time we get to the post-Kyoto period when our emission reduction targets are likely to be more challenging," Mr Collins said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 43,00.html