Charles Dunleavy
Analyst · JPMorgan.
Sure, Bob. First of all, the answer varies by the areas of the world in which you might the seeking to develop a project. We see very active renewable obligation certificates. In the U.K., they call them ROCs, Renewable Obligation Certificates. In Australia, RECs, Renewable Energy Certificates, or green tags and carbon credits more prominently in the United States. I would say that in the European context, the market for carbon credit trading or green tag trading is probably among the most developed. It had been a very liquid market facilitated especially by ease of accessing data about the various traders and owners of positions. It's interesting, I was just reading over the weekend an article about a very serious disruption to the European market for carbon credits, which was caused by a number of hackers who were going in and actually stealing some positions, some carbon credit positions held by certain firms. As a result of that, they're tightening up right now, very considerably, the access to data about that. So I think the market will come back. Right now, it's taken a hit. But this is a very recent development and something that's quite grave. But the market administrators and regulators are right on top of it. I think they'll overcome that and that Europe will regain a very strong position with respect to carbon trading markets. And that certainly helps us in our efforts in Europe, and I think, around the world, where you do have markets such as that, which is more mature. As I said a little bit earlier, I think there has been market trading activity in the U.S. but not as robust as one might find in Europe. Also in Australia, another very important target market for us which I talked about a little bit earlier with Dan, that there is a lot of active trading going on there. And in fact, that's one of the reasons why Woodside Energy invested money in OPT a number of years ago and also did a deal with us, which involved OPT's sale. This is back in around 2002, so it's one of the first actual hard money deals done with respect to the forward selling of any carbon credits. We sold a call to Woodside at that time with respect to any kind of carbon credits that we would generate over the years, 2008 to 2012. So we, as a company, have participated very early on with the market even though in the early 2000s, it was also a very young market at the time. So it varies by area of the world. Certainly, the market is growing and expanding and getting, I think, a lot more traction. It is an important part of our customers' consideration of our systems and other companies in the renewable energy sector.