If anyone is looking for locations of the “green finance bubble” warned of in the EIR Special Report: permits to pollute in the EU Emissions Trading System have jumped by 50% in price since October, reaching $41/ton of CO2 on March 12. Joe Biden’s first Executive Order as President, issued Jan. 20, set a “social price” of $51/ton and promised to raise that “social cost” quickly to $100-125, showing how government actions are interjected to set targets in carbon-trading markets for speculators. In effect, they are driving up the volume of funds which producing companies of all kinds have to pay financial speculators to “offset their pollution.” Hedge funds are playing a larger and larger role in this market, which covers power plants, industrial plants and airlines – but is being expanded by Brussels later this year to other sectors.
The European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) was established in 2005 and rapidly became riddled with speculation and fraud, exposed vigorously even by environmentalist groups like Friends of the Earth, which called for straight carbon taxes instead. The 2008 crash wiped out most of that speculative bubble, but it is now being force-fed by the “green finance” policies of the City of London and Wall Street banks and fund managers.
Dan Jorgensen, the Climate Minister of Denmark, said in an interview published by Bloomberg on March 10 that the bloc is “looking into probably the need for an adjustment of the ETS for several reasons and one of the things we definitely need to look into is the investment structures and whether or not they are dangerous.” What he clearly meant was that he was calling on the European Commission to investigate the impact of speculators on the system. But although he may understand the speculation is as dangerous as any bubble, Jorgensen obviously lovers the Green Deal more. “All in all,” he said, “a high price on carbon is very beneficial for the green transformation of Europe and the ETS in my opinion probably is one of the most effective tools we have in Europe because it is a common European policy instrument, which means we compare on equal terms.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-10/eu-must-look-at-carbon-market-speculation-denmark-says
