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History


The institution that is today the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) began with a grant in 2000 from the Joyce Foundation, a leading philanthropy based in Chicago known for its innovative approach to public policy issues, which supported the inception, creation, feasibility and design of CCX. The support was provided as part of a series of special Millennium grants made by the Foundation to catalyze, support and reinforce ideas, concepts or institutions of lasting intergenerational significance.

An initial grant of $347,000 was made to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University to provide technical support to Dr. Richard Sandor and colleagues to examine whether a cap-and-trade market was feasible in the U.S. to facilitate significant greenhouse gas reductions, using a voluntary regional Midwest model from which national and international lessons might be drawn.

A second grant of $760,000 was provided in 2001 to proceed with a design phase, which ran through 2002 and involved more than one hundred professionals in the corporate, public, non-governmental and academic sectors, who worked with Dr. Sandor, his colleague, Dr. Michael Walsh, and others to develop a core set of rules, protocols and design elements that would underpin and shape a pilot reduction and trading design.

In 2003, CCX launched trading operations, with the following 13 Charter Members:

  • American Electric Power
  • Baxter International Inc.
  • City of Chicago
  • DuPont
  • Ford Motor Co.
  • International Paper
  • Manitoba Hydro Corp.
  • MeadWestvaco Corp.
  • Motorola Inc.
  • STMicroelectronics
  • Stora Enso North America
  • Temple-Inland Inc.
  • Waste Management Inc.

Through their CCX membership, the above organizations were first in the world to make legally binding commitments to reduce all six greenhouse gases, in the world’s first multinational multi-sector market for reducing and trading greenhouse gases.

CCX is a U.S. corporation, and today remains the only emissions reduction and trading system for all six greenhouse gases and the only operational cap and trade system in North America. CCX has nearly 300 Members from all sectors and Offset Projects worldwide. See full Member list.

In 2005, CCX launched the European Climate Exchange (ECX), now the dominant exchange operating in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. CCX also launched the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE), a CFTC-regulated futures exchange that offers standardized and cleared futures and options contracts on emission allowances and other environmental products, the world's first environmental derivatives exchange. Since 2006, CCX, ECX and CCFE have been owned by Climate Exchange Plc (LSE: CLE.L), a publicly traded company listed on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange.  Richard Sandor is Chairman of Climate Exchange Plc.