GreenTrading™: Managing Financial Risk for the Environment in Asia

Abstract

The energy business is already globalized and multinational as large energy companies operate in more than two hundred countries. This globalized business coupled with the spread of information across borders through media such as the Internet, CNN, and television have significantly changed public perception about the environment. In effect, pollution cannot be exported across borders any more as a new, globally conscious environmentalism has been created over the past decade. This global environmentalism is even more true of greenhouse gas emissions, which affect the entire planet. With carbon content increasing in the atmosphere at 4 ppm per year, the fear is that inaction will only lead to ecological disaster. Thus, the potential for web-based emissions trading is beginning as the web is borderless and international trading platforms are global. However, before this changes, we need to review where we are today and the emissions trading experience that has evolved so far.