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Michael J. Walsh, Ph.D.
Michael J. Walsh is an Executive Vice President of Chicago Climate Exchange, the world's first and North America's only active, voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six greenhouse gases, with offset projects in North America and worldwide. CCX’s affiliated companies European Climate Exchange and Chicago Climate Futures Exchange host markets for futures products based on European Union carbon dioxide emission allowances and U.S. sulfur dioxide emission allowances. Walsh also serves on the Board of Directors of the Montreal Climate Exchange.
In his prior position with Environmental Financial Products (the predecessor company to CCX), Mr. Walsh arranged several international carbon credit transactions and served as liaison and lead writer for a series of five technical papers on international emissions trading prepared for the Government of Canada. As a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mr. Walsh provided instructional seminars on emissions trading for industry and government officials from several eastern European countries. He has been a speaker at United Nations climate conferences at Geneva, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Bonn and The Hague, and has been a keynote speaker at industry conferences and educational workshops around the world, including events in Budapest, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Sydney.
Mr. Walsh also previously served as a Senior Economist with the Chicago Board of Trade where he directed the Chicago Board of Trade’s efforts to develop exchange-based environmental markets. Walsh designed and managed annual auctions of sulfur dioxide emission allowances conducted as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acid rain reduction program. Mr. Walsh has delivered Congressional testimony and provided dozens of presentations to state public utility commissions, national regulatory conferences and industry seminars. As the lead CBOT energy market analyst, he covered electricity market deregulation and evaluated the feasibility of electricity futures contracts. Mr. Walsh also directed, in conjunction with a team of industry and public sector leaders, establishment of the CBOT Recyclable Materials Exchange, an electronic marketplace backed by product standards, grading procedures and dispute resolution services. Walsh represented the CBOT in matters involving several U.S. government agencies including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Prior to his position with the Chicago Board of Trade, Mr. Walsh was a Financial Economist in the Office of Tax Policy in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that position he conducted industry studies of economic depreciation rates and co-authored a comprehensive review of the history of tax depreciation policy. Walsh has also served as a consultant to the Michigan Treasury Department and the West Virginia Tax Study Commission.
Mr. Walsh served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Florida Air Emissions Trading Commission, and served on the Executive Board of the Southern Research Institute’s Environmental Technology Verification initiative. He has written extensively on the economics of energy efficiency and the implementation of efficiency programs, and has published articles in the National Tax Journal, Energy Economics, The Journal of Futures Markets, Derivatives Quarterly, Analyse’ Financier, and Environmental Quality Management. He has been an occasional referee for several scholarly journals including the Journal of Public Economics.
Mr. Walsh has been on the faculties of the University of Notre Dame and the Illinois Institute of Technology, and has lectured at Princeton, Northwestern, Colorado, Illinois and Johns Hopkins (Bologna).
Walsh holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and Political Science from Illinois State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Michigan State University.
Publications and Presentations
Michael J. Wash, "Can Emission Trading of Carbon Dioxide Bootstrap the Transition?", The Carbon Dioxide Dilemma-Promising Technologies and Policies, pp. 107-116. Proceedings of a Symposium, National Academy of Engineering National Research Council. April 23-24, 2002.
Richard L. Sandor, Michael J. Walsh and Rafael L. Marques, "Greenhouse-Gas-Trading Markets", The Royal Society, June 2002.
Richard L. Sandor and Michael J. Walsh, "Kyoto or Not: Opportunities in Carbon Trading Are Here." Environmental Quality Management. Spring 2001
Michael J. Walsh, ?Maximizing Financial Support for Biodiversity in the Emerging Kyoto Protocol Markets?, The Science of the Total Environment 240, pp. 145-146. 1999.
Michael J. Walsh, "Growing in the Market: Recent Developments in Agricultural Sector Carbon Trading", Agricultural Practices and Policies for Carbon Sequestration in Soil". Proceedings from a Symposium held at the Ohio State University, July 1999.
"Harnessing the Carbon Credits Market to Maximize Capital Flows to Clean Development in Emerging Companies", Posted at the On-line Conference Energy Resource 2000 (www.energyresource2000), May 2000.
Lead Author, "Final Report, Options And Recommendations, Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation Transaction Process", Prepared for Working Group 2 (Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism) of Canada's International Flexibility Mechanisms Issue Table (with Winnipeg Commodity Exchange and Cowan Research). April 29, 1999
Lead Author, "International Emissions Trading (IET) Design Options, Principal Methodological Issues", prepared for the Canadian Issue Table Process, Kyoto Mechanisms Table, Working Group 1 (IET), (with Winnipeg Commodity Exchange and Cowan Research). April 28, 1999
Richard L. Sandor and Michael J. Walsh, "Market Architecture, Quality Control and Performance Risk: Can the Commodity and Capital Markets Inform the Design of the Clean Development Mechanism?". Proceedings from theU.S.-Brazil Aspen Forum. University of Colorado, Denver. February 1999.
"A Market Approach to Cutting Environmental Protection Costs", in Baumol, W.J. and Blinder, A.S., Economics, Principles and Policy, seventh edition, Dryden Press, London, 1997.
"Impediments To Markets For SO2 Emission Allowances", (with V.C. Ramesh and K. Ghosh), Transactions on Power Systems, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 344-349, February 1996.
"Potential for Derivative Instruments on Sulfur Dioxide Emission Reduction Credits", Derivatives Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-8, Fall 1994.
"Environmental Futures: Preliminary Thoughts on the Market For Sulfur Dioxide Emission Allowances" (with Richard Sandor) in Advanced Strategies in Financial Risk Management, Robert J. Schwartz, ed., Prentice Hall, 1993.
"Des contrats erme au service de l'environement", (with Richard Sandor), Analyse Financier, Mars 1993, pp. 72-84.
"Dual Trading and Futures Market Liquidity: An Analysis of Three Chicago Board of Trade Contract Markets" (with Stephen J. Dinehart), The Journal of Futures Markets, Vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 519-537 (1991).
"Additional Evidence on the Border Tax Effect: The Case of the West Virginia Sales Tax" (with Jonathan Jones), National Tax Journal, 1990.
"Energy Tax Credits and Housing Improvement", Energy Economics, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 274-284, October, 1989.
"History of U.S. Tax Depreciation Policy" (with Lowell Dworin and David Brazell), U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis, 1989.