Friday, June 15, 2007
Emission impossible for carbon trading
Short-sighted plans to allow European companies to buy their way out of making reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions are undermining efforts to prevent climate change, a new WWF report shows.
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is among the planet’s biggest and most ambitious projects designed to tackle climate change. While the mechanism of carbon trading is sound in principle, the first phase of the EU scheme (2005 to 2007) has been seriously undermined by weak political decisions. Bigger emitters are able to buy carbon allowances — which effectively allow them to pollute — from companies that have reduced their emissions. However, EU governments handed out far too many allowances to their industries.
For Phase II the European Commission has sought to clamp down on the caps proposed by many Member States. However, this is being weakened by a decision to allow industries to buy massive amounts of credits from projects outside the EU (under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism). This reliance on cheap imported credits means that European industry may not have to reduce its own emissions at all.
"There is a real danger that this will lock the EU in to high carbon investments and soaring emissions for many years to come, wrecking the EU’s emission reduction targets for 2020 and 2030 and making a mockery of Europe’s standing as a world leader in tackling climate change.”
WWF also has serious concerns about the validity of many of these overseas projects. In order to qualify as CDM projects, they have to show that they are “additional”, which means that they would not happen without funding from carbon trading. However there are significant questions about whether this critical principle is being adhered to effectively. If the projects are not additional, then the sale of credits from them leads to an actual increase in carbon emissions.
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The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is among the planet’s biggest and most ambitious projects designed to tackle climate change. While the mechanism of carbon trading is sound in principle, the first phase of the EU scheme (2005 to 2007) has been seriously undermined by weak political decisions. Bigger emitters are able to buy carbon allowances — which effectively allow them to pollute — from companies that have reduced their emissions. However, EU governments handed out far too many allowances to their industries.
For Phase II the European Commission has sought to clamp down on the caps proposed by many Member States. However, this is being weakened by a decision to allow industries to buy massive amounts of credits from projects outside the EU (under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism). This reliance on cheap imported credits means that European industry may not have to reduce its own emissions at all.
"There is a real danger that this will lock the EU in to high carbon investments and soaring emissions for many years to come, wrecking the EU’s emission reduction targets for 2020 and 2030 and making a mockery of Europe’s standing as a world leader in tackling climate change.”
WWF also has serious concerns about the validity of many of these overseas projects. In order to qualify as CDM projects, they have to show that they are “additional”, which means that they would not happen without funding from carbon trading. However there are significant questions about whether this critical principle is being adhered to effectively. If the projects are not additional, then the sale of credits from them leads to an actual increase in carbon emissions.
What do you think of this news item? Start a discussion.
Bookmark with: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
--
Subscribe to SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011) for more free news, articles, diving reports and marine life descriptions - http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html
Labels: environment
# posted by SCUBA News @ 1:13 pm 
