The EU Will Exceed 20% Green Energy Target

A report by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has found that the European Union (EU) will exceed its target of meeting 20% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.

Out of the 27 member states, 25 expect to meet or exceed their national targets, EWEA said, based on its analysis of national action plans submitted by EU governments to the European Commission.

"Taken together, the action plans show that the EU-27 will meet 20.7 percent of its 2020 energy consumption from renewables," said Justin Wilkes, policy director at EWEA.

Spain has said it is expecting to surpass its goal by 2.7% and Germany by 1.6%. Luxembourg and Italy, which are predicted to fall short of their national targets by 2.1% and 0.9%, said they plan to import renewable energy from other countries to make up the shortfall.

This shows the growth in the environmental markets, despite the global downturn of the past few years. The carbon credit markets will continue to grow as the target dates near.

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Carbon Offset Investors Have Long-Term Confidence

Investors in the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) now have more confidence in the carbon offset market after 2012 after the number of post-2012 carbon credit deals rose in recent weeks.

On Thursday, UK-based project developer Camco International reported for the first time that it had secured options in CERs due to be issued after 2012 because of more interest from buyers and more market transactions taking place.

"The market has evolved. There is a tangible value for post-2012 credits," Yariv Cohen, Camco's chief carbon officer, told Reuters.

In a project development update, Camco said it has contracts for a risked 28.1 million tonnes and holds contractual rights of up to a further risked 27.6 million tonnes.

This week alone saw three post-2012 deals announced.

A consortium agreed to buy 2 million pre-2012 and post-2012 CERs from a Moroccan wind farm project, while Vitol SA bought 8.5 million CERs from carbon asset manager KYOTOenergy Pte, of which 92 percent are expected to be issued after 2012.

German chemical company Lanxess invested 7 million euros ($9.67 million) in an Indian biomass project to earn post-2012 CERs, Point Carbon reported.

In September, French carbon investor CDC Climat set up a subsidiary to manage 60 million euros of investment in carbon assets, including post-2012 credits.

"Demand been up for a quite a while. People are making sure they are positioned properly for 2012," said Simon Glossop, partner at CF Partners.

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International Aviation Companies Agree to Emissions Trading

The European Union claimed victory at an international aviation meeting, saying the participants accepted the EU’s plan to cap emissions by domestic and foreign airlines serving Europe as of 2012.

The European Commission, the 27-nation EU’s executive arm, also said the International Civil Aviation Organization reached a “breakthrough” agreement at its meeting that ended yesterday to curb global aircraft discharges of greenhouse gases beginning in 2020.

Such pollution is blamed for global climate change, which the EU is handling in part by adding airlines to its emissions trading system in less than 15 months.

Emissions from international aviation account for 2% to 3% of global greenhouse gas discharges and their share is expected to rise in the coming decades as the industry grows, according to the EU.

The EU carbon market, started in 2005, is the world’s largest. It covers about 12,000 installations that produce energy or goods ranging from paper to cement. Emitters must have an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide they let off. Those producing more than their allowance have to buy more; those that emit less can sell their surplus.

The bloc is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent this decade from 1990s levels and said it’s ready to deepen the target to 30 percent if other countries follow suit.

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Whaling worsens carbon release, scientists warn

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News, Portland Whales store carbon by the tonne A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes - or a large forest's worth - of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say. Whales store carbon within their huge bodies and when they are killed, much of this carbon can be released. US scientists revealed their estimate of carbon released by whaling at a major ocean sciences meeting in the US. Dr Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine described whales as the "forests of the ocean". Dr Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute calculated the annual carbon-storing capacity of whales as they grew. "Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon," he said. "And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that's removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere." He pointed out that, particularly in the early days of whaling, the animals were a source of lamp oil, which was burned, releasing the carbon directly into the air. "And this marine system is unique because when whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean. "If they die where it's deep enough, it will be [stored] out of the atmosphere perhaps for hundreds of years." Ocean trees In their initial calculations, the team worked out that 100 years of whaling had released an amount of carbon equivalent to burning 130,000 sq km of temperate forests, or to driving 128,000 Humvees continuously for 100 years. The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales Dr Andrew Pershing, University of Maine Guide to the great whales Dr Pershing stressed that this was still a relatively tiny amount when compared to the billions of tonnes produced by human activity every year. But he said that whales played an important role in storing and transporting carbon in the marine ecosystem. Simply leaving large groups of whales to grow, he said, could "sequester" the greenhouse gas, in amounts that were comparable to some of the reforestation schemes that earn and sell carbon credits. He suggested that a similar system of carbon credits could be applied to whales in order to protect and rebuild their stocks. "The idea would be to do a full accounting of how much carbon you could store in a fully populated stock of fish or whales, and allow countries to sell their fish quota as carbon credits," he explained. "You could use those credits as an incentive to reduce the fishing pressure or to promote the conservation of some of these species." Is bigger better? Other scientists said that he had raised an exciting and interesting problem. Professor Daniel Costa, a marine animal researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told BBC News: "So many more groups are looking at the importance of these large animals in the carbon cycle. "And it's one of those things that, when you look at it, you think: ' This is so obvious, why didn't we think of this before?'." Dr Pershing pointed out that whales, with their huge size, were more efficient than smaller animals at storing carbon. He used the analogy of a small dog compared to a large dog. "My wife's 6lb (2.7kg) toy poodle eats one cup of food per day and my dog - a 60lb standard poodle - eats five cups of food per day," he said. "That's only five times as much food but my dog weighs ten times as much." He said that the marine carbon credit idea could be applied to other very large marine animals, including endangered bluefin tuna and white sharks. Dr Pershing said: "These are huge and they are top predators, so unless they're fished they would be likely to take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean [when they die]." The American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences meeting has been taking place this week in Portland, Oregon

Original article can be viewed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8538033.stm

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Coalition hits big business with stealth carbon tax

DECC announces that CRC will no longer return revenue to participants

 

The government today quietly imposed a £1bn-a-year carbon tax on around 4,000 of the largest businesses and public sector bodies in the UK as part of its spending review.

The move was not announced as part of chancellor George Osborne's speech to parliament. Instead, it was left to a statement by the Department of Energy and Climate Change in which it detailed its spending review settlement and confirmed the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) would be reformed so that the Treasury keeps revenue raised through the carbon pricing scheme.

"Revenue raised from the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme will be used to support the public finances (including spending on the environment), rather than recycled to participants," the statement said.

The spending review document confirmed that the move would raise £1bn by 2014/15 to help tackle the deficit.

Under the CRC, companies and public sector bodies that use over 6,000MWh of electricity a year have to participate in the scheme and purchase carbon allowances in line with the amount of energy they use each year.

During the initial phase of the scheme carbon allowances will be priced at £13 for each tonne of carbon that the company is calculated to be responsible for.

The government had intended to "recycle" the revenue raised from the sale of allowances to those organisations participating in the scheme. The level of recycled payments would be determined by the organisation's performance in an energy efficiency league table, with the best performers receiving all the money they spent on allowances plus a bonus and the worst performers receiving only some of the money back.

However, the government has now effectively turned the sale of allowances into a carbon tax, forcing all participants to purchase carbon allowances based on how much energy they use.

The move is likely to be welcomed by environmental groups and some green businesses that have long maintained that the CRC would not have a big enough impact on organisations' energy costs to drive significant improvements in energy efficiency.

It is also in line with the coalition's commitment to increase green taxes.

However, it is bound to be fiercely opposed by some business groups who have already argued that the CRC is too costly and burdensome and will now find them faced with a major hike in energy bills.

Source:

James Murray, BusinessGreen, 20 Oct 2010