Carbon trading down under

An ongoing carbon market in New Zealand and a proposed one in Australia...

The NZ ETS: carbon pricing in the neighbourhood, by Basil Sharp and Nan Jiang.
"Participants in the New Zealand ETS surrender emission units that match their annual emission levels. A New Zealand Unit (NZU) is the primary domestic unit of trade. To meet obligations under the scheme, participants can surrender free units, if they have any, at the rate of 1 for every 2 tonnes emitted. Otherwise, participants have to either pay the fixed price option, or purchase NZUs or other Kyoto compliant units."

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Australia Proposes Carbon Trading Plan, Again

"Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced a plan on Sunday that would tax the carbon dioxide emissions of the country’s 500 worst polluters and create the second-biggest emissions trading program in the world, after the European Union’s.
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For the 500 companies — which would include mining giants with operations in Australia like BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata — the government has set a price of 23 Australian dollars, or $24.70, for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted starting July 1 of next year, rising 2.5 percent annually before shifting in 2015 to a market-driven trading program.

"A similar proposal by Ms. Gillard’s predecessor, Kevin Rudd, was largely blamed for having led to his political downfall."
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"When the European Union initiated its carbon-trading program in 2005, many polluters passed on the cost of the free permits they were given to consumers, creating large corporate profits. That is unlikely to happen in Australia, said Mr. Jordan of Deutsche Bank.

“Australian policy makers learned the lesson from Europe that there’s a risk if you hand out too many free permits and you hand them out to the wrong sectors, that you get emitters both passing on the cost of carbon but also pocketing the value of those permits,” he said."