The speculative prices of a metric ton of CO2 on the carbon-offset markets in Europe is responsible, at least in the U.K., for directly adding more than 15% to all electric bills, over and above hyperinflationary fluctuations in the prices of carbon fuels, which are constant. The U.K. late January price of wholesale electricity produced with natural gas was a terrible 28 cents/kwh equivalent—and gas-fired electricity tends to set the price for all electricity because it is used to provide the required margin of power capacity for the entire generation/distribution system.
But given the amount of CO2 emitted by a typical gas turbine plant—about 375 kg or 800 pounds per kwh—and the wild speculative price of $113/ton equivalent on Britain’s own U.K. Emissions Trading System carbon market, the speculation is adding the equivalent of roughly 4.3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity sold in the U.K.
