The emissions market has now been running for six months. Most of the registries have had teething problems and the development of a prompt market has been slow. National Allocation Plans (NAPs) have been argued over and quibbled on, but the fact remains that the price has risen to new highs of €20.75/tonne, and the main cause of this is that gas prices are high and so power players are switching to coal and require more credits in order to generate. As the gas price goes higher they need to burn more and more coal and they need more and credits. Power prices are rising because the dark and spark spread needs to get higher to account for the emissions costs. This perpetual spiral, is happening in the forward market and so the danger of a brown out is reduced because in reality, there is enough generation to meet supply. Gas prices are cheap in the prompt and so traders can buy now and store gas, for the Winter. In short when gas prices start to come down, when players start to sell into this strength the first of the house of cards to be hit will be emissions and then the market will go into some sort of freefall. The market has tested some of these falls, but players have bought into this strength ready for a real fall, it is now a game of chicken which needs careful managing.