Isra-Mart srl:European Union Cracks Down on Carbon Trading Scheme

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Isra-Mart srl news:

The European Commission is now planning to clamp down on a £1.6 billion carbon trading scheme. The use of carbon permits from industrial gas projects in China could be banned because of their total lack of environmental integrity, according to the climate change commissioner Connie Hedegaard.

Billions of euros worth of the very controversial permits were used between 2008 and 2009 in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme. In this scheme, companies must exchange pollution permits for any emissions produced. The emission trading scheme allows some of these permits to be bought in from developing countries.

The most popular of these so-called offsets comes from projects that destroy the greenhouse gas HFC-23. This is a byproduct of the manufacturing of the refrigerant gas HCFC-22. Back in June, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency said that many Chinese chemical companies were manufacturing HCFC-22 primarily to earn money from destroying HFC-23. This has said to be five times the value of the refrigerant gas that plants are ostensibly set up to create.

Hedegaard said that there are too many examples of projects with industrial gases, primarily HFC-23. If people dig into it a bit they can find there is a total lack of environmental integrity. She also added that she was not opposed to offsetting in principle as a way of efficiently cutting carbon and helping development in poor nations. However, the problem has to be made clear to everyone.

In 2008 – 2009, 134 million, or the same as about 84 percent, of offsets used in the European Union emissions trading scheme were from industrial gas projects in China and India, according to data from the carbon trading think tank Sandbag. Buying this amount of permits in this scheme would cost about £1.6 billion at today’s prices.