Smoke alarm: EU shows carbon trading is not cutting emissions - Guardian

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Smoke alarm: EU shows carbon trading is not cutting emissions


Some US states want their own 'cap and trade'
scheme but the evidence is proving that permits are
so generous they fail to curb industry

David Gow in Brussels
Tuesday April 3, 2007
The Guardian

Brussels lambasted the US and Australia yesterday for their
inaction in cutting carbon dioxide emissions and stressed
Europe's leading role in the battle against global warming. "Only
EU leadership can break this impasse on a global agreement
(post-Kyoto) to overcome climate change," Stavros Dimas, the
EU's environment commissioner, told scientists from the UN's
intergovernmental panel on climate change. The body is due to
publish a report this week in Brussels on the impact of global
warming.

What Mr Dimas knew - but did not tell the scientists, apparently
- is that the EU's programme for cutting carbon, its two-year-old
emissions trading scheme (ETS), remains in disarray.

-snip-

Only a handful of countries shored up the market by issuing
fewer emissions quotas than industry wanted. These included:
Britain - where Drax, Europe's biggest coal-fired power plant,
emitted 5m tonnes more than its 15.5m tonnes permit -
Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. The trading mechanism is
designed to create scarcity, forcing up the price of carbon and
prompting industries such as steel and power generation to
invest in cleaner, greener technologies, such as renewable,
carbon-free energy and, eventually, carbon capture and storage.
So far, it is manifestly not working as planned.

-snip-

Mr Dimas's officials readily admit that the first phase of the
scheme has been a botched experiment because of the
generous over-allocation of permits. But they now insist that the
second phase will be much more successful because of tighter
controls on quotas. Many EU governments have significantly
reduced the number of carbon permits they will grant to
polluters. Poland has cut its permit total by 26% and Latvia and
Lithuania by half.

-snip-

Read more: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2048918,00.html

[greenman3610]

1. so, back to the drawing board

its our job to create the grass roots demand
for tough carbon caps here and around the world.
this consensus is evolving faster than any one
could have predicted a year ago.

[GliderGuider]

2. This demonstrates perfectly the fundamental problem with cap-and-trade

Someone has to decide on the caps. And that someone is going to be vulnerable, whether to pressure, to inducement, to bad information or simply to preconceived notions. We will need much more draconian governments before such a system - cap-and-trade, carbon taxes or pure rationing of fossil fuels - might be effective. The combination of elected governments and lobbies won't get the job done.

[razzleberry]

3. the 'won't cost anything' pretense, needs to be dropped

Europeans needs to grow up and realize that
carbon reductions will entail sacrifice