The government looks ready to ban use of international carbon credits derived from Third World projects that allow major carbon emitters in New Zealand to lower the cost of carbon they face under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The change would stop the country’s transport, electricity, and stationary energy sectors, including aluminium, steel and glass manufacturers, from using carbon emissions credits known as Certified Emission Reductions (CER) credits to offset their carbon emissions from the use or production of natural gas, coal, and transport fuels such as petrol and diesel.
CERs were fingered in the government’s review of the Emissions Trading Scheme as one of the reasons global carbon prices have been weak in recent months, and have languished in New Zealand at just above $14 a tonne, falling briefly below that level last week.
The review panel recommended an urgent ban on the use of CERs under the ETS, and Environment Minister Nick Smith said the government will decide the issue soon after submissions on the review close, on Oct. 30.
The ETS is set at a rate of $25 per tonne and requires the three sectors - electricity generation, transport and stationary energy sectors - to pay for one in every two tonnes emitted during a transition ending in 2013, under currently announced policy.
However, global carbon prices have been well below that in recent months, meaning those sectors are able to buy carbon offsets on the 50% of emissions they still have to pay for at prices far lower than $25 a tonne. The price of CERs is even lower than the prices paid for globally certified New Zealand Units, issued under the ETS.
Worse still, CERs are now recognised to encourage developing countries to invest heavily in industries that are paid to destroy powerful greenhouse gases like HFC-23, a waste gas produced in the manufacture of the refrigerant HFC-22, which is harmful to the ozone layer as well as contributing to climate change, and is supposed to be being phased out.
“The high value for destroying these gases creates perverse incentives in developing countries to manufacture more of them bringing into question the environmental gains,” said Smith.
“The European Union is proposing to ban these units from 2013 and Australia is also proposing a prohibition. The proposal in this discussion paper is that New Zealand not allow these particular types of units either from 1 July 2012 or 1 July 2013.”
“While very few were used in the first surrender period this year, we need to be conscious of changes in the international market and risks into the future,” said Smith.
“The Government is also very conscious of New Zealand being a small market and, if we are alone in accepting these units, our market may be flooded or it may limit our capacity to link with other schemes.”
The persistent differential between CERs and NZUs was now close to 50 cents, “when you price the carry of spot NZUs over December CERs,” said OMF Financial in its weekly commentary on the New Zealand carbon market. “Spot NZUs at $14.30 have carry of 65 cents to May 31, for an effective cost of $14.95, versus December CERs at $14.01 with carry of 44 cents for an effective cost of $14.45,” said OMF.
(BusinessDesk)
5 Comments
Carbon credits exploit third world. How does banishing people from their land, burning and beating them "save the world". ?
Thank God people are waking up to this. The whole concept of trading emission schemes is seriously flawed.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110928/full/477517a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110929
Cue Steven: Oxfam. New York Times, ...all in the pay of big oil? I think not.
"What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce," says Eva Filzmoser, programme director of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based watchdog organization. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. "In the face of these comments it is no wonder that the United States has backed away from emission trading," Filzmoser says.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110928/full/477517a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110929
ETS, wither next, down the memory hole?
There are two parts here - we have to ignore the paid touts of the big business interests, so OMG is irrelevant. Goodbye to your nonsense. That goes for dear wee Gonzo, too, if he pops up.
Then we have the actual physics of the problem. That, indeed, is unaddressable. Tales of sequestration are just that - trial thimblefuls in a sea of real output. So much energy required, that BAU would be a distant pipedream, were it attempted. Not enough forest-able arera on the planet, andforest only does it once.
Then there is the attempt to deal with it - which tellingly, was a fiscal one. If it had been an absolute cap approach, with a sinking lid, we might have seen something . The fiscal attempt tries to keep doing that which was the problem in the first place, at ever increasing rates.
The real problem is the seeming inability of folk to understand that the real is all that counts. If it hadn't been climate change, it would have been something else, and soon. Simply too many people doing too much in too little space. This denial, and the false (fiscal) approach are indicative that we have a terminal cranial problem, as a species. Whichever it was that terminally threatened us, all self-induced, we aren't going to address.
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