Green Options » CERs

Inspired Economist: Pick of the Week

Reenita Malhotra — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:58:50 +0000

This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

Reports of the demise of the U.S. dollar may be premature. But when some of the world’s most powerful investors are warning of the currency’s decline, investors take notice. More on this story here.

There are many cynics out there that critique and question the future of sustainable products and businesses. It’s easy to side with them, mostly because it’s difficult to understand what comprises a “sustainable” product which in turn creates a domino chain of skepticism about achievability. The industry is in self-defining mode and most of us lack the degrees in chemistry, biology, natural sciences or any other course of study that might support our inclination to trust what marketers tell us is “safe” and what is not. More on this story here.

Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, has grown quickly in recent decades - at the expense of its estuaries, environmentalist advocates say. More on this story here.

U.N.-Managed Carbon Offsets Called “Global Shell Game”

Carol Gulyas — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:14:02 +0000

As part of the Kyoto protocol, Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) were created to help developing countries lower carbon emissions while continuing development. The program is administered by the United Nations and is supposed to work like this:

Company A must meet targets requiring lower carbon emissions, but it is expensive to do so in its own country, so it invests in Company B in, let’s say, China. Company B is supposed to use these investments (CDMs) to develop energy sources with lower carbon emissions, such as solar, wind, etc. The world wins when this mechanism creates fewer worldwide carbon emissions. Patrick McCully, Executive Director of International Rivers, is sharply criticizing this program because he has found evidence of polluters gaming the system. His article in Renewable Energy World is long and informative, but I’ll summarize here:

Coal and oil companies and destructive dam builders, and even some wind and solar companies, are using the CDMs as an income generator for projects that they would have built anyway, even without the CDMs. (Only projects that would have NOT been built without the CDMs are considered eligible. This “additionality” has been impossible to monitor.)

But it gets worse. (Now stay with me as I introduce another acronym.) CDMs qualify as CERs, or “Certified Emission Reduction” credits, and companies who pollute can use them to achieve their carbon emission reduction targets. McCully’s point is that CDMs + CERs = carbon disaster, because some companies may make more money creating pollution and then taking CERs to mitigate it than by simply not polluting. He uses an extreme example to illustrate:

Image credit: Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations measured at Mauna Loa Observatory.

NYMEX’ New Green Exchange Experiences Flying First Week

Angelique van Engelen — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:46:47 +0000

The Green Exchange was launched with bells and whistles a few months back. Last week the exchange traded for the first time and activity and volume it surpassed all expectations.

The Green Exchange is part of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). During its first week, the equivalent of 1.59 million tons of carbon was traded. That volume makes the Green Exchange “the most successful launch of exchange-traded carbon contracts,” according to a report in the SunHerald.