A Carbon Rush at the World Bank

A Carbon Rush at the World Bank
Foreign Policy in Focus

As the Kyoto Protocol comes into force this month, a carbon rush is gaining steam in the financial industry. Investors predict that the carbon trade could become one of the largest markets in the world with a trading volume of $60 - $250 billion by 2008 and some unlikely actors are gearing up to profit from this new, invisible market. Foremost among them is the World Bank.

The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized country signatories to reduce their emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels during the 2008-12 commitment period. However, the scientific community has determined that, to avoid dangerous climate change, greenhouse gas emissions reductions of over 60% below 1990 levels were necessary by 2000, rendering the commitments made at Kyoto insufficient. Moreover, some of the largest emitters--the United States and Australia --are not even participating in the protocol. And the Kyoto agreement is weakened further by the fact that virtually all of the emissions reductions required of industrialized nations can be achieved by trading carbon credits between nations, thus avoiding real reductions. For example, since Russia has already met and exceeded the Kyoto targets due to its economic collapse following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet-era ghost emissions are now for sale to the highest bidder, creating the illusion of reductions where none have occurred.

Why is there so much support for carbon trading? Well, there is plenty of money to be made. The average citizen won’t make any; instead, the very same corporations who fuel the problem--the large oil, gas, and coal companies--are among those who will profit from this trade in invisible gases. For instance, just last month, Danish power utility Energi E2 sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of the rights it had been granted free by its government to Shell Oil Company after mild temperatures kept the utility's carbon emissions below expected levels. No such free rights have been granted to ordinary Danish citizens, however.

One institution that is well versed in this complicated market is the World Bank. It was eight years ago that confidential documents1 were leaked to the Institute for Policy Studies from within the bank revealing the early internal debates and plans regarding the World Bank’s involvement in carbon trading.

... [T]he World Bank saw opportunity. One leaked document exposed World Bank plans to profit handsomely by charging a 5% commission on carbon transactions in a self-appointed role as a broker between Northern and Southern governments and industries. (The commission--which the bank now claims is merely to cover costs--will be closer to 8-10%.) With a potential market in CO 2 that could reach $2 billion by 2005, the World Bank noted in the leaked memo, it could quickly earn $100 million in one year--and that was just for starters.