Carbon trade in U.N. climate spotlight
Tropical forests and coal plants may get money to curb greenhouse gases under a boosted carbon market from 2013, if delegates at U.N. climate talks in Poland can defuse criticism of the present scheme.
A U.N.-run carbon offsetting scheme allows countries and companies in the developed world to lay off their greenhouse gas emissions and meet climate targets by funding cuts in developing countries.
Development groups and delegates criticized that scheme on the fringes of the climate talks for helping Africa too little, producing too few emissions cuts, and in some cases claiming to avoid emissions which would not have happened anyway.
Carbon trading also faces wider challenges of plunging carbon prices, as sliding economies and industrial output dent greenhouse gas emissions and demand for offsets.
“Projects that have entered the pipeline will result in $25 billion of capital investment, will boost technology transfer developing countries,” said the U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer on Tuesday, supporting the clean development mechanism (CDM).
Negotiators from about 190 countries are meeting in the western Polish city of Poznan in December 1-12 talks to push agreement on a new climate treaty at the end of next year to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
Lobby groups say carbon offset markets allow emissions cuts beyond industrialized countries most to blame for global warming, by funding projects for example in wind power or improved efficiency in developing nations.
“The wider the search the more likely you’re to come up with emissions cuts that are relatively cheap, and the more likely you are to get people to agree to higher (climate) ambition,” said Henry Derwent, head of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).
But traders and U.N. administrators accept that projects have won approval which did not in fact avoid emissions, for example because a wind farm claimed funding even though it was profitable and would have been built anyway.
RIGHTS
Now carbon traders want new rules to judge projects simply according to whether they beat a carbon standard or benchmark compared with other energy sources such as high-carbon coal in that region or country.
“Can we just look at this as ‘yes, we as a society realize that wind is good for fighting global warming and we will award (that)’,” said Marc Stuart, co-founder of UK-based carbon project developer EcoSecurities.
“If you beat the benchmark you’re in tons (of emissions cuts) under the benchmark,” he told Reuters.
Such scaled-up approaches, for example allowing steel or cement companies to earn carbon offsets if they beat best practice efficiency standards, are under discussion in Poznan.
Also under debate is allowing rich countries to lay off their own emissions by funding projects to trap carbon emissions from coal plants, called carbon capture and storage (CCS).
“There are very strong feelings on both sides,” de Boer said on Tuesday. That applied also to the prospect of using offset projects to help save tropical forests, the destruction of which is blamed for about one fifth of global greenhouse gases.
A key issue is whether the U.N. meeting will specifically account for the rights of indigenous people who live in threatened forests, and so guarantee them funds for “reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD).
Several indigenous peoples groups in Poznan shouted “No rights, no REDD,” on the conference sidelines. REDD stands for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’.
“The indigenous people are profoundly concerned as our basic rights have been violated,” said Marcial Arias Garcia, from Panama and the International Alliance of Indigenous-Tribal People of the World, saying negotiators had removed the word “rights” from a conference draft.
By Gerard Wynn and Gabriela Baczynska
(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Sue Thomas)
9 December 2008
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
Some possibly related stories:
The copyright of this article is owned by the author or publisher indicated. Its availability here constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law as well as in similar "fair dealing" exceptions of the copyright laws of other nations, as part of National Wind Watch's effort to advance understanding of the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development. For more information, click here.
