China and India probably will beat the U.S. in setting up cap-and-trade programs to control greenhouse-gas emissions, said Richard Sandor, founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
“I find more reception for cap-and-trade in Beijing than I do in this city,” Sandor said today at a carbon markets conference in Washington hosted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “We will see China and India have cap-and-trade systems before America does.”
President Barack Obama failed last year to win approval in Congress for a cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gases from power plants, factories, oil refineries, cars and trucks that scientists have linked to climate change. The program, in which companies would buy and sell a declining number of carbon- dioxide permits, was criticized by Republicans and some Democrats as an energy tax that would hurt the economy.
Sandor, who sold his stake in the Chicago trading hub and London-based Climate Exchange Plc to Intercontinental Exchange Inc. last year, is chairman and chief executive officer of advisory firm Environmental Financial Products LLC.
