Energy and carbon markets regulation: what is at stake?

Workshop organised by Carbon Markets and Prices Research Initiative
and Florence School of Regulation

Florence, May 12-13 2011
Refectory
Badia Fiesolana
Via dei Roccettini 9
50014 Fiesole

After almost 15 years of Energy market liberalization, many concerns have been raised throughout Europe regarding various subjects, among them the existence of market power on wholesale power markets, price determination on retails sides and security of supply both in the near and long term. The European carbon market is younger, since it has been launched in 2005, but has already experienced numerous malfunctioning in the recent years, including VAT fraud, theft of CO2 allowances and recycling of Kyoto credits.

In pubic opinion and some political circles, these concerns and dysfunctioning have sometimes led to a questioning of energy market liberalization and the existence of the CO2 market. Actually, the stake lies more in rethinking the underlying market design of these policies and improving their regulation. This workshop aims to balance the benefits and risks of the liberalization in the energy sector, to point out the weaknesses of the European carbon market and the potential to solve them and to highlight the mains stakes of these markets for the future. The third session will feature a special address by Jos Delbeke (EC, Director General for Climate Action) and Michel Prada (French Ministry of Finance, author of the report “Regulating the carbon market”) and will deal with the regulation of the third phase of the European carbon market in the context of energy market liberalization.