Risk Spillovers across the Energy and Carbon Markets and Hedging Strategies for Carbon Risk

This study examines the risk spillovers between energy futures prices and Europe-based carbon futures contracts. We use a Markov regime-switching dynamic correlation, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (MSDCC- GARCH) model in order to capture the time variations and structural breaks in the spillovers. We further evaluate the optimal weights, hedging effectiveness, and dynamic hedging strategies for the MS-DCC-GARCH model based on both the regime dependent and regime independent optimal hedge ratios. We finally complement our analysis by examining the in- and out-of sample hedging performances for alternative strategies. Our results mainly show significant volatility and time-varying risk transmission from energy markets to carbon market. We also find that spot and futures segments of the emission markets exhibit time-varying correlations and volatile hedging effectiveness. These results have important investment and policy implications.