IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/ej37-3-bredin.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why is Spot Carbon so Cheap and Future Carbon so Dear? The Term Structure of Carbon Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Don Bredin and John Parsons

Abstract

This study examines carbon spot and futures price relationships and the dynamics of the carbon term structure in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) between 2005-2014. Using spot and futures prices, we calculate an implied cost of carry. According to received theory, the cost of carry is—with some exceptions—just the opportunity cost of money, so that the term structure of the cost of carry should exactly equal the term structure interest rates. However, we show that spot carbon allowances were originally expensive relative to futures, but since late 2008 the situation reversed and spot carbon allowances have been persistently cheap relative to futures prices. This dramatic shift coincides with the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008 and the ongoing European banking crisis of 2010-2013.

Suggested Citation

  • Don Bredin and John Parsons, 2016. "Why is Spot Carbon so Cheap and Future Carbon so Dear? The Term Structure of Carbon Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej37-3-bredin
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2778
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kalaitzoglou, Iordanis & Ibrahim, Boulis M., 2013. "Does order flow in the European Carbon Futures Market reveal information?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 604-635.
    2. Gregory, Allan W & Hansen, Bruce E, 1996. "Tests for Cointegration in Models with Regime and Trend Shifts," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 58(3), pages 555-560, August.
    3. Johansen, Soren, 2002. "A small sample correction for tests of hypotheses on the cointegrating vectors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 195-221, December.
    4. Diebold, Francis X. & Li, Canlin, 2006. "Forecasting the term structure of government bond yields," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 337-364, February.
    5. Benz, Eva & Trück, Stefan, 2009. "Modeling the price dynamics of CO2 emission allowances," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 4-15, January.
    6. Iordanis Kalaitzoglou & Boulis Maher Ibrahim, 2013. "Does Order Flow in The European Carbon Allowances Market Reveal Information?," Post-Print hal-00859245, HAL.
    7. Julien Chevallier, 2010. "Modelling the convenience yield in carbon prices using daily and realized measures," Working Papers halshs-00463921, HAL.
    8. Gregory, Allan W. & Hansen, Bruce E., 1996. "Residual-based tests for cointegration in models with regime shifts," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 99-126, January.
    9. Stefan Trück & Wolfgang Härdle & Rafal Weron, 2012. "The relationship between spot and futures CO2 emission allowance prices in the EU-ETS," HSC Research Reports HSC/12/02, Hugo Steinhaus Center, Wroclaw University of Technology.
    10. Ellerman,A. Denny & Convery,Frank J. & de Perthuis,Christian With contributions by-Name:Alberola,Emilie With contributions by-Name:Buchner,Barbara K. With contributions by-Name:Delbosc,Anaïs, 2010. "Pricing Carbon," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521196475.
    11. Clò, Stefano & Battles, Susan & Zoppoli, Pietro, 2013. "Policy options to improve the effectiveness of the EU emissions trading system: A multi-criteria analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 477-490.
    12. Chevallier, Julien, 2010. "Modelling risk premia in CO2 allowances spot and futures prices," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 717-729, May.
    13. Szymon Borak & Wolfgang Härdle & Stefan Trück & Rafal Weron, 2006. "Convenience Yields for CO2 Emission Allowance Futures Contracts," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-076, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    14. Bank for International Settlements, 2005. "Zero-coupon yield curves: technical documentation," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 25.
    15. Koch, Nicolas & Fuss, Sabine & Grosjean, Godefroy & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2014. "Causes of the EU ETS price drop: Recession, CDM, renewable policies or a bit of everything?—New evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 676-685.
    16. Soren Johansen, 2002. "A Small Sample Correction for the Test of Cointegrating Rank in the Vector Autoregressive Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1929-1961, September.
    17. Karsten Neuhoff & Anne Schopp & Rodney Boyd & Kateryna Stelmakh & Alexander Vasa, 2012. "Banking of Surplus Emissions Allowances: Does the Volume Matter?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1196, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    18. Robin L. Lumsdaine & David H. Papell, 1997. "Multiple Trend Breaks And The Unit-Root Hypothesis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 212-218, May.
    19. Bredin, Don & Muckley, Cal, 2011. "An emerging equilibrium in the EU emissions trading scheme," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 353-362, March.
    20. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    21. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10174 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Robert S. Pindyck, 2001. "The Dynamics of Commodity Spot and Futures Markets: A Primer," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 1-30.
    23. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4227 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4608 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simon Quemin & Raphael Trotignon, 2018. "Competitive Permit Storage and Market Design: An Application to the EU-ETS," Working Papers 2018.19, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    2. Simon Quemin, 2016. "Intertemporal abatement decisions under ambiguity aversion in a cap and trade," Working Papers 1604, Chaire Economie du climat.
    3. Jianguo Zhou & Xuejing Huo & Xiaolei Xu & Yushuo Li, 2019. "Forecasting the Carbon Price Using Extreme-Point Symmetric Mode Decomposition and Extreme Learning Machine Optimized by the Grey Wolf Optimizer Algorithm," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-22, March.
    4. Salant, Stephen W., 2015. "What Ails the European Union's Emissions Trading System? Two Diagnoses Calling for Different Treatments," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-30, Resources for the Future.
    5. Bua, Giovanna & Kapp, Daniel & Kuik, Friderike & Lis, Eliza, 2021. "EU emissions allowance prices in the context of the ECB’s climate change action plan," Economic Bulletin Boxes, European Central Bank, vol. 6.
    6. Zhang, Chen & Yang, Yu & Yun, Po, 2020. "Risk measurement of international carbon market based on multiple risk factors heterogeneous dependence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    7. Quemin, Simon & Trotignon, Raphaël, 2021. "Emissions trading with rolling horizons," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Federico Galán-Valdivieso & Elena Villar-Rubio & María-Dolores Huete-Morales, 2018. "The erratic behaviour of the EU ETS on the path towards consolidation and price stability," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 18(5), pages 689-706, October.
    9. Friedrich, Marina & Mauer, Eva-Maria & Pahle, Michael & Tietjen, Oliver, 2020. "From fundamentals to financial assets: the evolution of understanding price formation in the EU ETS," EconStor Preprints 196150, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, revised 2020.
    10. repec:crb:wpaper:2023-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Palao, Fernando & Pardo, Ángel, 2021. "The inconvenience yield of carbon futures," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    12. Yu Yan & Yiming Lei & Yuyang Tang & Xufeng Zhao, 2023. "Ineffectiveness of carbon cap-and-trade market," Energy & Environment, , vol. 34(7), pages 2317-2342, November.
    13. Batten, Jonathan A. & Maddox, Grace E. & Young, Martin R., 2021. "Does weather, or energy prices, affect carbon prices?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Friedrich, Marina & Mauer, Eva-Maria & Pahle, Michael & Tietjen, Oliver, 2020. "From fundamentals to financial assets: the evolution of understanding price formation in the EU ETS," EconStor Preprints 196150, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, revised 2020.
    2. Koop, Gary & Tole, Lise, 2013. "Modeling the relationship between European carbon permits and certified emission reductions," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 166-181.
    3. Sandy Suardi, 2010. "Nonstationarity, cointegration and structural breaks in the Australian term structure of interest rates," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(22), pages 2865-2879.
    4. Levent KORAP & Metin YILDIRIM, 2012. "Testing the Lucas Critique for the Turkish Money Demand Function," Iktisat Isletme ve Finans, Bilgesel Yayincilik, vol. 27(318), pages 57-82.
    5. Chien, Mei-Se & Lee, Chien-Chiang & Hu, Te-Chung & Hu, Hui-Ting, 2015. "Dynamic Asian stock market convergence: Evidence from dynamic cointegration analysis among China and ASEAN-5," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 84-98.
    6. Creti, Anna & Jouvet, Pierre-André & Mignon, Valérie, 2012. "Carbon price drivers: Phase I versus Phase II equilibrium?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 327-334.
    7. Tarlok Singh, 2017. "Are Current Account Deficits in the OECD Countries Sustainable? Robust Evidence from Time-Series Estimators," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 29-64, January.
    8. Carlos Pinho & Mara Madaleno, 2011. "Links between spot and futures allowances: ECX and EEX markets comparison," International Journal of Global Energy Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 35(2/3/4), pages 101-131.
    9. Chevallier, Julien, 2011. "Evaluating the carbon-macroeconomy relationship: Evidence from threshold vector error-correction and Markov-switching VAR models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2634-2656.
    10. Kim, Jeonghyun & Seo, Byeongseon, 2015. "Transaction Costs And Nonlinear Mean Reversion In The Eu Emission Trading Scheme," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 56(2), pages 281-296, December.
    11. Rodríguez-Caballero, Carlos Vladimir & Ventosa-Santaulària, Daniel, 2017. "Energy-growth long-term relationship under structural breaks. Evidence from Canada, 17 Latin American economies and the USA," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 121-134.
    12. Kasman Adnan & Vardar Gülin & Okan Berna & Aksoy Gökçe, 2009. "The Turkish Stock Market Integration with Developed and Emerging Countries' Stock Markets: Evidence from Cointegration Tests with and without Regime Shifts," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 24-49, May.
    13. Maslyuk, Svetlana & Smyth, Russell, 2009. "Cointegration between oil spot and future prices of the same and different grades in the presence of structural change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1687-1693, May.
    14. Lusine Lusinyan & John Thornton, 2011. "Unit roots, structural breaks and cointegration in the UK public finances, 1750-2004," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(20), pages 2583-2592.
    15. Chandran Govindaraju, V.G.R. & Tang, Chor Foon, 2013. "The dynamic links between CO2 emissions, economic growth and coal consumption in China and India," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 310-318.
    16. Vo, D.H. & Nguyen, H.M. & Vo, A.T. & McAleer, M.J., 2019. "CO2 Emissions, Energy Consumption and Economic Growth," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI2019-11, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    17. Vassilis Monastiriotis & Cigdem Borke Tunali, 2020. "The Sustainability of External Imbalances in the European Periphery," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 273-294, April.
    18. Mylonidis, Nikolaos & Kollias, Christos, 2010. "Dynamic European stock market convergence: Evidence from rolling cointegration analysis in the first euro-decade," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 2056-2064, September.
    19. Shawkat Hammoudeh & Amine Lahiani & Duc Khuong Nguyen & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2014. "Asymmetric and nonlinear passthrough of energy prices to CO2 emission allowance prices," Working Papers 2014-82, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    20. Camgöz, Mevlüt & Topal, Mehmet Hanefi, 2022. "Identifying the asymmetric price dynamics of Islamic equities: Implications for international investors," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej37-3-bredin. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.