Michael Walsh

President 

M J Walsh & Associates, Inc.

Michael J. Walsh is President of M J Walsh & Associates, Inc., an advisory firm focused on providing innovative solutions for capital markets, energy and environment.

Walsh has been a leader in research, design, development and activation of pioneering market-based mechanisms that advance natural resource conservation and air and water quality. He has served as a principal designer and lead implementer of existing markets for water quality and air pollution reduction, including sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gases. In each of these market development programs an intensive R&D process was accompanied by major outreach and education efforts involving a broad range of stakeholders. Walsh has enjoyed two decades of successful interaction with diverse sectors ranging from agriculture, forestry, water authorities, manufacturing, energy, to academia and governments at all levels.

Walsh was a co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Chicago Climate Exchange, where he directed new product research and development and policy analysis. Walsh played a central role in the implementation of all major Climate Exchange initiatives in the U.S. and internationally, including the leading regulated exchange markets hosted by the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange and the European Climate Exchange. Walsh has served on the Board of Directors of the Montreal Climate Exchange, and has been a keynote speaker at conferences, legislatures and academic institutions throughout the world.

In 2007 Walsh had the honor of serving as Co-Chair of a scientific symposium at Hawaii that commemorated NOAA's 200 year anniversary and 50 years of carbon dioxide measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory, the longest continuous record of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Walsh recently directed a program to activate the first centrally-cleared water quality credit trading program hosted by the State of Pennsylvania. This required design of a clearing mechanism, trading program rulebook, and auctions, feedback and educational processes, and administration of a successful multi-tranche water quality credit auction involving the state infrastructure fund, farmers, and wastewater treatment facilities. Walsh has also been the lead analyst and report author of feasibility studies for water quantity management incentive programs for the Great Lakes, for surface and groundwater resources in New Mexico, and for surface waters of Alberta.

In an earlier position with Environmental Financial Products, Walsh arranged voluntary international transactions involving environmental mitigation projects. He has lead research and implementation projects funded by entities including the Government of Canada, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Agency for International Development.

Walsh has represented his employers in multiple hearings held by the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the National Assembly of Quebec, and has extensive interaction with numerous federal and state governmental and regulatory bodies.

In the early 1990s Walsh served as a Senior Economist with the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) where he directed efforts to develop exchange-based environmental markets. Walsh designed and managed the first three annual auctions of sulfur dioxide emission allowances that were conducted as part of the highly successful U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acid rain reduction program.

Prior to his position with the Chicago Board of Trade, Walsh was a Financial Economist in the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy. Walsh has also served as a consultant to the Michigan Treasury Department and the West Virginia Tax Study Commission. He served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Florida Air Emissions Trading Commission, and on the Executive Board of the Southern Research Institute’s Environmental Technology Verification initiative.

Walsh has been an instructor at the University of Notre Dame and the Illinois Institute of Technology. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and Political Science from Illinois State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Michigan State University.

Go to his website:  M J Walsh & Associates, Inc.