25 August 2015, BBC, Carbon credits undercut climate change actions says report. The vast majority of carbon credits generated by Russia and Ukraine did not represent cuts in emissions, according to a new study. The authors say that offsets created under a UN scheme “significantly undermined” efforts to tackle climate change. The credits may have increased emissions by 600 million tonnes. In some projects, chemicals known to warm the climate were created and then destroyed to claim cash. As a result of political horse trading at UN negotiations on climate change, countries like Russia and the Ukraine were allowed to create carbon credits from activities like curbing coal waste fires, or restricting gas emissions from petroleum production. Under the UN scheme, called Joint Implementation, they then were able to sell those credits to the European Union’s carbon market. Companies bought the offsets rather than making their own more expensive, emissions cuts. But this study, from the Stockholm Environment Institute, says the vast majority of Russian and Ukrainian credits were in fact, “hot air” – no actual emissions were reduced. Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
25 August 2015, The Conversation,There’s another way to combat climate change — but let’s not call it geoengineering. No matter how much we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it will not be enough to keep global warming below 2C – the internationally agreed “safe” limit. This fact has been implied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and confirmed again recently by international research. Does this mean we should give up? Not at all. There is a plan B to keep warming below dangerous levels: helping the planet to take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In his new book Atmosphere of Hope, Tim Flannery, Climate Councillor and Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (and co-author of this article), argues that these strategies will be necessary to combat climate change, but cannot substitute completely for reducing emissions. Read More here
21 August 015, Climate News Network, China’s carbon count is not as high as feared. The use of poor-quality coal in Chinese power plants means that the carbon dioxide emissions of the world’s biggest polluter are 10% less than previously thought. Calculations on how much carbon dioxide China produces have been wrong for more than 10 years because the official bodies that calculate it have assumed the country’s power stations burn high-quality coal. In fact, the world’s biggest polluter uses coal with a lower carbon content than power stations in Europe and the US, and so produces less carbon dioxide per tonne − around 14% less according to experts from 18 research institutions. Getting the total quantities of CO2 emitted by each country correct is crucial if the world is going to reach agreement on tackling dangerous climate change at the UN conference in Parisin December. One of the stumbling blocks to agreements in the past has been politicians’ need to have a fair system of sharing the burden of cuts.Calculating how much pollution each country produces has been largely based on the quantities of fossil fuels burned in electricity and heat production and in motor vehicles. This has not taken into account the fact that the amount of carbon in coal and oil varies according to its quality, and so an average figure has been used, which turns out to be unfair in the case of China. Read More here
21 July 2015, The Conversation, One year on from the carbon price experiment, the rebound in emissions is clear: Just over a year ago, Australia concluded a unique public policy experiment. For the preceding two years and two weeks, it had put a price on a range of greenhouse gas emitting activities, most significantly power generation. Now, 12 months since the price was removed, is a good time to assess the results of the experiment. The immediate effect of the carbon price was to increase the costs faced by most electricity generators, by an amount that varied between individual power stations depending on that station’s emissions intensity (the emissions per unit of electricity). These costs were then passed on in higher prices to consumers.
Simple economics suggests that two effects should have followed. First, less emissions-intensive generators should have been able to increase their market share, resulting in an overall reduction in the average emissions intensity of electricity. Second, higher prices should have led consumers to reduce their consumption, cutting the total demand for electricity. When the price was removed, both of these effects should have been reversed. Let’s look at what happened in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which is the wholesale electricity market in every state and territory except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
My analysis, using detailed NEM operational data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) finds that emissions intensity, which was increasing until shortly before June 2012, fell continuously (see graph below) for most of the two years to June 2014. Since then, it has increased consistently. All these changes were caused by changes in the market shares the different types of generation, just as expected. Read More here