Britain’s tax authority will introduce reverse value-added tax (VAT) charges relating to carbon emissions trading from November 1, replacing a zero tax rate implemented last year to prevent fraud. Read more…
The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) is a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme that aims to improve energy efficiency and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by qualifying UK businesses and public sector bodies. Unlike other emissions trading schemes, including the EU ETS, the CRC targets organisations rather than sites or installations. Read more…
Despite China’s total carbon emission, which shows China is a major CO2 emitter, its per-capita emissions in 2007 were only 4.6 tons, less than 25 percent of the United States and only half of the EU. Read more…
Energy companies supplied 1.6 billion litres of biofuels in the second year of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), accounting for 3.3% of the UK’s total road transport fuel, according to provisional figures released by the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) today (July 15). Read more…
The market for carbon emission permit brokers is facing increasing difficulties due to a dip in clients and the recession. Read more…
While the Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion picked up the ‘Green Car of the Year’ award at the prestigious What Car? Green Awards 2010 (see story), the winners of the first LowCVP Low Carbon Champions awards were also announced. Read more…
Certified Emissions Reduction Units (CERs) for the destruction of HFC-23 represent over 1/2 of the CDM credits issued to date. The CDM’s HFC-23 projects pay 65-75 times more for HFC-23 destruction than the manufacturers pay. A revision request submitted by CDM Watch to the CDM Executive Board provides overwhelming evidence that manufacturers are gaming the CDM system and undermining carbon markets by producing potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) just so they can get paid to destroy them. The revision request called for an immediate overhaul in the rules governing the number of credits being issued and removal of the perverse financial incentives that currently exist.
Yesterday, the Methodologies Panel agreed that many of the claims in the revision request could cause perverse incentives, i.e. plants producing dramatically more HFC-23 per ton of HCFC-22 than technically feasible, plants producing HCFC-22 only if they are receiving CDM credits, and that the CDM credits may be causing unnecessary production of HCFC-22. The Panel said that further investigation is required to “identify situations” resulting in excessive issuance of carbon credits and how “to improve the methodology.”
“If the UN CDM Executive Board wants to reinstall the integrity of the mechanism it has no other choice than to put the current crediting methodology on hold with immediate effect and cease issuance of all credits for the destruction of HFC-23 until the Panel has fully investigated the issue and revised the crediting methodology,” said Eva Filzmoser Director of CDM Watch.
“It is clear that the CDM’s current HFC-23 program is financing and working against its own goal of producing reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for offsets. This type of abuse is gambling with our planet’s ecology,” said Mark W. Roberts of the Environmental Investigation Agency. “The world cannot afford this corrupted type of carbon trading; squandering climate money is bad enough, but in this case many of the alleged benefits are simply a charade that actually increases the problem of global warming.”
Subsidising the purchase of wood for incineration and encouraging demand for UK sourced wood for large-scale power generators could result in an increase in carbon emissions and harm other sectors, according to the wood panel industry. Read more…
A Danish climate scientist has published a paper criticising carbon sequestration – the idea of dealing with CO2 emissions by stuffing the greenhouse gas away into underground or deep-sea storage where it can’t affect the atmosphere. Read more…
Sperm whale faeces may help oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air, scientists say. Read more…