Green Options

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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.

A climate change summit is taking place March 31st-April 4 in Bangkok. Representatives of over 170 countries are meeting to get a draft accord in place for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. The deadline to reach a new protocol has been set for a December 2009 meeting in Denmark.

An interim summit held in Japan mid March convened representatives of the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitting countries responsible for 80% of the world’s pollution. It appeared that little progress was made. But all countries including the US agreed in Bali that they’d participate in the negotiations to the Kyoto’s successor and that promise was upheld two weeks ago. What was termed a “principle of common but differentiated responsibility” was accepted as a framework for negotiations. In other words, the new pact will bind all countries to various actions.

Got some bad news for all those countries trying to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol: aiming for carbon dioxide emissions reductions of 25, 50, even 75 percent in the coming decades ain’t gonna cut it.

The only way to stabilize Earth’s climate, according to new research, is to cut carbon emissions to zero … and to do it quick.

Climate [...]

In an article that ran earlier this month, I learned the Swedish government has announced that Sweden is beating emissions targets as laid out by the Kyoto Protocol.

“Sweden was allowed to increase its emissions by more than four percent.

[But] emissions have decreased by nearly nine percent so [overall] that means Sweden has reduced its emissions by 12.7 percent, more than agreed under the Kyoto Protocol,” said the political advisor Hannes Borg.

Last month was a busy time for the voluntary carbon standard (VCS). Admittedly, it’s not a phrase that rolls smoothly off the tongue.

Like corporate social responsibility (CSR), you find yourself semi-exhausted before the next sentence.

You sense inherent good in each of these phrases – sure – but just want them to make sense in a realer world.

And so to the VCS.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is big business. In 2006, there was a huge surge in this market resulting in a 200% growth.

Big brands were, and are, getting into carbon offsetting in a big way. Google, Nike, Coca Cola, Yahoo! – all are now part of this market.

I don’t think it at all beneficial at this stage to analyse their reasons for announcing green credentials. Whether it really is genuine CSR or in each case a PR exercise is redundant. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re doing it.

So, yes, multinationals are offsetting their carbon within the voluntary sector. Good.

But what’s drawing them to the market? Two reasons.

Talking with an elected official about how to get climate change legislation with teeth on the books conjures up the quote from Otto von Bismarck: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

That’s how I felt, anyway, after getting off the phone following a conference call between Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and environmental bloggers today. Kerry demonstrates a full and deep understanding of the challenges

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