Tag Archives: alternative
UK To Vote Against 2030 EU Renewable Target – Davey
Wednesday, 29 May 2013 UK to vote against 2030 EU renewable target – Davey The UK government is likely to oppose an EU renewables target for 2030 which is considered “inflexible and unnecessary”, energy secretary Ed Davey said. He made the comment after the European Parliament on Monday extended a deadline for the submission of amendments to a proposal to intervene in the carbon market. “Whilst we strongly support renewables to 2020 and beyond, the uncertainties at this time are too large to set hard numbers in a binding EU Renewables target, which we do not believe would be cost effective or fit well with our electricity market reforms,” Davey said. Britain would, however, will continue to support a 40% cut in the emissions 2030 target, from 1990 levels, and would even endorse increasing that target to 50% -– if the UN was to adopt an ambitious global reduction in emissions target by 2015. The EU currently has a 2020 target to both cut emissions by 20% and increase renewables by the same amount. The European Parliament on Monday extended a deadline for the submission of amendments to a proposal to intervene in the carbon market by six hours, giving MEPs six hours more time to submit amendments to the proposal on backloading. The proposal, tabled by the European Commission, is intended to provide a short-term boost to carbon prices on the EU ETS by delaying the release of 900m allowances until the end of the decade. The extension of the vote was intended to support efforts of independent observers to broker a potential compromise on the proposal, which the parliament rejected in April. Ultimately, the backloading proposal is set to be voted on in the Parliament’s environment committee on 19 June. Read more: http://gastopowerjou…y#ixzz2Uh9j9k9P Continue reading
China Unveils Details Of Pilot Carbon-Trading Programme
Nation’s first trading scheme in the southern city of Shenzhen will cover 638 companies when it begins next month Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 May 2013 16.38 BST China has unveiled details of its first pilot carbon-trading programme, which will begin next month in the southern city of Shenzhen. The trading scheme will cover 638 companies responsible for 38% of the city’s total emissions, the Shenzhen branch of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on Wednesday. The scheme will eventually expand to include transportation, manufacturing and construction companies. Shenzhen is one of seven designated areas in which the central government plans to roll out experimental carbon trading programmes before 2014. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter and burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world’s countries combined. Li Yan, Greenpeace east Asia’s climate and energy campaign manager, said that the pilot programmes will inform the central government on how to motivate local authorities to adopt low-carbon policies. The push to reduce carbon emissions coincides with the newly installed leadership’s effort to tackle the country’s dire air pollution problem, which has emerged as a source of widespread anger and frustration in recent months. “Having a mid-term strategy, and trying to prepare years ahead, is actually in line with China’s interests and its political and social priorities,” she said. On Monday, the Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald reported that the NDRC has discussed implementing a national system to control the intensity and volume of carbon emissions by 2020. The agency expects China to reach its carbon emissions peak by 2025, five years earlier than many recent estimates, according to unnamed sources quoted in the article. At a recent climate change meeting, the agency “announced that it’s currently researching and calculating a timetable for the greenhouse gas emissions peak, and will vigorously strive to implement a total emissions control scheme during the ’13th five-year plan’ period (from 2016-2020),” the paper quoted a NDRC official, also unnamed, as saying. “The NDRC is looking for a national cap, but nobody knows exactly when that is going to happen,” said Wu Changhua, greater China director of the Climate Group. “There’s still a lot of work to be done.” The EU’s carbon trading scheme, the world’s largest, has suffered repeated setbacks in recent months. In April, MEPs voted against a proposed reform aimed to raise the price of carbon, which has been diluted by an overabundance of permits. Read the full article at: http://www.guardian….n#ixzz2Uh94cM8l Continue reading
World Bank Reduces UN Offset Supply Forecast as Price Slumps
By Alessandro Vitelli May 29, 2013 The World Bank revised down its projection for the supply of United Nations carbon offsets in the eight years through 2020 by 30 percent, after a collapse in prices deterred projects that generate the credits. Supply of UN Certified Emission Reductions and Emission Reduction Units will be about 1.9 billion metric tons in the period, the lender said in a report released today, revising down an estimate of 2.7 billion made a year earlier. Demand will be about 1.6 billion tons, creating a surplus of 300 million, the World Bank said, without providing a comparable figure. Front-year CER futures plunged 99 percent from their peak in July 2008 to a record 20 euro cents ($0.26) a ton last month as regulators in the European Union struggled to tackle a glut of emissions permits in the bloc’s market. The December contract rose 2.6 percent to 40 euro cents at 2:32 p.m. on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. “The price of primary CERs is lower than the cost of issuance for many projects,” Alex Kossoy, a senior finance specialist at the World Bank, said today at a press conference in Barcelona. “Without substantial change it’s doubtful many projects will continue to pursue issuance of credits.” Project Slump Carbon offsets allow buyers to acquire emissions-reduction credits more cheaply than it would cost to reduce pollution at home. The EU’s emissions market allowed power stations and factories to use offsets equivalent to about 14 percent of their total greenhouse-gas output in the five years through 2012. The UN credits are created by projects in developing countries, such as Vietnam, or economies in transition, including Russia. The number of offset projects seeking approval by the UN’s regulator, the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board, slumped to 17 in February 2013, compared with 256 at the same time last year, the report showed. In March, the number was 18 compared with 278 in 2012. “Some analysts forecast an 80 percent year-on-year reduction in the number of projects submitted for validation in 2013 compared with 2012,” the World Bank said. Most of the demand for UN offsets will come from companies participating in the European Union Emissions Trading System and EU member countries looking to meet caps on discharges under the Kyoto Protocol. Several countries that had previously bought offsets as part of their commitment to the first period of the Kyoto Protocol that ended last year, haven’t signed on to a second Kyoto period, curtailing their demand for credits. ‘Political Commitment’ “A high-level political commitment from a large number of developed countries will be needed to encourage new investment” in offset projects, Kossoy said. The report doesn’t calculate the value or size of the global market as it has done in previous years. Instead, it represents a “one-stop shop” for details and analysis of all current and new emissions-trading systems and carbon taxes around the world, according to Kossoy. “Current market conditions invalidate any attempt and interest to undertake the same qualitative and transaction-based analysis,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Alessandro Vitelli in London at avitelli1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net Continue reading
