Should energy efficiency be found only in cars?

Say “carbon pricing” or “cap and trade” and you are likely to be run over with invective in this country.

But that does not mean that the world is standing still. Carbon, in the form of CO2, is priced at present at Euros 22 per ton, and trending upwards. I know of a Spanish company, with an office in Panama, that sells small co-generation energy plants, and smart garbage dumps to developing South American municipalities and governments, and finances the customer by taking over the emission credits earned with the new technologies; then turns around to sell them to electric utilities in Poland.

There is a growing international market for “clean development mechanisms” that enables developing markets around the world to adopt low-emission (carbon footprint) technologies in a variety of fields. Whatever the outcome of the Cancún climate conference, it is not expected that this market is going to slow down. The international financial community is actively investing in carbon trading markets. Point Carbon, a Thomson-Reuters company, has just published a report forecasting the continuing growth of demand for emission rights. It also reports that Poland has just sold four million units to the Japanese Government. The demand from Eastern European electrical companies is the main engine for continuing growth of this market.

A report by Ernst and Young, the international management consultants, based on interviews with more than 700 executives, points to a continuity of investment in sustainability processes.

A new website, Shippingefficiency.org, tracks the energy efficiency of more than 65,000 ships the world over. Shipping, as an industry, emits more CO2 than Germany, but is unregulated. The website will make information available to enable shippers to choose the most energy efficient vessels, or some Port Authorities may ban the most contaminating ships from docking. Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, supports such increased market transparency, that could lead to penalize the most contaminating practices of the industry.

The US Congress may want carbon pricing to go away, but the rest of the world is not listening. And money is being made elsewhere.