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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. The support was provided as part of a series of special Millennium grants made by the Foundation to catalyze and support concepts or institutions of lasting 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 L. Sandor and colleagues to examine whether a cap-and-trade market was feasible in the United States to facilitate significant greenhouse gas reductions.

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. Dr. Sandor, with his colleague Dr. Michael Walsh and others, developed a core set of 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, these 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 today has 400 members from a broad range of industries and the public sector as well as offset projects worldwide.

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-designated contract market that offers standardized and cleared futures and options contracts on emission allowances and other environmental products.