NASDAQ announced today that it is jumping into the emission trading markets, through the acquisition of businesses from the Norwegian power exchange, Nord Pool.

NASDAQ said it will create a commodities unit under the NASDAQ OMX brand through the acquisition.

Increasing interest in emissions trading globally has led to the development of several emissions-trading platforms, emissions-based indexes and index investments, including exchange-traded products.

At least initially, however, NASDAQ has said that trading will be in over-the-counter contracts, not exchange-traded products, for its new emissions platform.

Earlier this year, as part of a broad commodities-themed ETN introduction, Barclays launched an exchange-traded note tracking the carbon market, the iPath Global Carbon ETN (see story here.)

The emissions trading consultant, PointCarbon, has predicted that carbon could become the world's largest commodity.

Merrill Lynch, HSBC, UBS and Dow Jones, in conjunction with the Chicago Climate Exchange, have all launched indexes tracking global emissions, and carbon specifically.

There are several broad-based clean energy ETFs in the market, from PowerShares Wilder Hill Clean Energy (NYSEArca: PBW) and PowerShares Global Clean Energy (PBD), to Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy (NYSEArca: GEX).

According to the World Bank, the global carbon-trading market was valued around $64 billion last year.

Recent Acquisitions

Movement into the emissions market by major U.S. exchanges has been driven by recent acquisition activity. CME Group acquired the Green Exchange in August, as a by-product of its purchase of NYMEX Holdings. NASDAQ OMX acquired Nord Pool's clearing and consultancy businesses as part of the purchase of OMX AB earlier this year.

In terms of performance and investor interest, the iPath carbon ETN (NYSEArca: GRN), only has $7 million in assets, through Oct. 21, according to Morningstar data.

However, the ETN did launch shortly before the larger problems in the credit markets surfaced and drove investors away from ETNs and their unsecured credit profile, more generally. GRN is down 13.05% in the past 3 months, according to Morningstar, which is a little more than half of the loss suffered by the Standard & Poor's 500 Index in the same time period (23.77%).

The broader clean energy plays tied to global stocks, have been beaten up much worse than the carbon ETN, but they have been much more successful in terms of asset gathering.

PBD is down 48% in the past three months; trailing the S&P 500 by a wide margin. PBW is down 45.73% over the past three months, and GEX also down in the same range, 45.14%. PBW has $1 billion in assets, compared with GEX at $309 million, and PBD, at $178 million.