In the light of the financial and economic crisis, the EU has further developed and tightened its regulation of the financial market in Europe. This process has also had an impact on the actors in the European carbon market and their trading strategies. This final report brings together the results of three separate analyses:
- a legal analysis of the various changes in EU financial market regulation, and their potential impact on European carbon market actors;
- an empirical analysis of the actors in the European carbon market, based, inter alia, on an evaluation of 400 ETS-related companies and their memberships in the leading carbon exchanges, as well as their accounts in the European Emissions Trading Registry; and
- the evaluation of a survey among operators of German-based installations that are covered by EU emissions trading, to find out about their respective trading strategies, their preferred channels to access the carbon market, and their expectations for future developments.
The different components of the project add up to the picture that only very few market actors use the carbon market in all its complexity and diversity. In contrast, a large part of the actors pursues a very limited, pragmatic trading strategy. Also for this reason, the changes resulting from the tightening of European financial market regulation will ultimately only affect a small proportion of market players on the European carbon market – which, however, accounts for the bulk of the trading volume.