{"title":"The puzzle of Carbon Allowance spread","authors":"Michele Azzone, Roberto Baviera, Pietro Manzoni","doi":"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108459","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A growing number of contributions in the literature have identified a puzzle in the European carbon allowance (EUA) market. Specifically, a persistent cost-of-carry spread (C-spread) over the risk-free rate has been observed. We are the first to explain the anomalous C-spread with the credit spread of the corporates involved in the emission trading scheme. We obtain statistical evidence that the C-spread is cointegrated with both this credit spread and the risk-free interest rate. This finding has a relevant policy implication: the most effective solution to solve the market anomaly is including the EUA in the list of European Central Bank eligible collateral for refinancing operations. This change in the ECB monetary policy operations would greatly benefit the carbon market and the EU green transition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11665,"journal":{"name":"Energy Economics","volume":"146 ","pages":"Article 108459"},"PeriodicalIF":13.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Energy Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098832500283X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A growing number of contributions in the literature have identified a puzzle in the European carbon allowance (EUA) market. Specifically, a persistent cost-of-carry spread (C-spread) over the risk-free rate has been observed. We are the first to explain the anomalous C-spread with the credit spread of the corporates involved in the emission trading scheme. We obtain statistical evidence that the C-spread is cointegrated with both this credit spread and the risk-free interest rate. This finding has a relevant policy implication: the most effective solution to solve the market anomaly is including the EUA in the list of European Central Bank eligible collateral for refinancing operations. This change in the ECB monetary policy operations would greatly benefit the carbon market and the EU green transition.
期刊介绍:
Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.