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First baseball. Now stock market. Looks like New York is taking a clubbing. The Mets were just upset by the Philadelphia Phillies for the National League East title. And the venerable New York Stock Exchange (as well as the other U.S. and world exchanges) was just beat by the Brazilian exchange for the first-to-trade-carbon-credits title.Â
Per a CNN article, Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, sold $18.50 million in carbon credits to Fortis Bank, a Dutch-Belgium entity, on September 26. This was stated to be the first such sale on a regulated stock exchange. Fortis, which is carving out a market for itself as a broker in the energy market, beat out 13 competing bids.
This has been hailed as a significant step in institutionalizing the carbon market. Prior to this auction, companies mostly purchased credits from individuals sellers.Â
Under the Kyoto Treaty – which the U.S. did not sign — companies that generate large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane can buy offsetting credits from projects that remove these pollutants.
As for investing significance, trading on regulated stock exchanges is bound to unleash even more entrepreneurial efforts aimed at removing pollutants from the atmosphere. The carbon credit market is scorching: the market has tripled in dollar value since 2005, per the World Bank.   Â
FYI. After reading this article, I checked to see if Fortis Bank was traded on a U.S. stock exchange as an ADR. It’s not. It’s traded on three German stock exchanges, per Yahoo Finance.
