(Reuters) - Carbon trading firms remain optimistic about a European market, after a 50 million euros cyberattack, but have given up hope on a U.S. cap and trade scheme, they told an industry conference on Tuesday.

Perhaps indicative of the problems facing carbon markets, attendance was well down on previous years at the Point Carbon conference, at nearly 800, compared with 1,700 in 2008.

The reputation of carbon markets has faced headwinds following the hacking in January of electronic emissions permits from a European scheme, the hub of global trade, as well as dimming expectations of a federal U.S. market.

In addition, hopes are fading that the world will agree on an extension after 2012 to the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding emissions targets for industrialized nations and so drives demand for international carbon offsets.

"It did not impact trading volumes as much as it damaged credibility and that is the big problem," said Stig Schjolset, a senior analyst at Point Carbon, of the thefts.

"But that problem can be solved."

A European Union official said on Tuesday that its executive Commission was working on boosting security.

The thefts were a jolt to the market which recently suffered a 5 billion euros ($6.91 billion) tax fraud, as well as a scandal involving the re-sale of used carbon credits and a phishing scam.

"It's very, very clear that emissions trading has lost a bit of momentum," said Ruben Benders, head of carbon markets at the trading firm Mabanaft.

Nevertheless, carbon market practioners felt the European scheme, which was launched in 2005, was still solid, said Point Carbon's Endre Tvinnereim.

Nearly half of around 3,000 respondents to a Point Carbon survey thought the scheme was operating efficiently, he said, on the poll in January and February after the scandal broke.

SAG

Emissions trading operates in two ways: a so-called cap and trade approach, which issues a fixed quota of emissions permits or allowances to polluters, as in the European scheme.

Under another, offsetting approach, project developers sell carbon offsets to polluters in cap and trade schemes, for example by building wind farms and thereby cutting emissions in developing countries.

Hope for a federal U.S. cap and trade scheme is fading.

"For the first time since we started this survey (more than five years ago) more people did not expect federal cap and trade in the U.S. than the ones who did," said Tvinnereim.

A scheme last year stalled in the Senate before a swing to the Republicans in mid-term elections all but ended hopes for a market in President Barack Obama's present administration.

In addition, fewer respondents than last year expected schemes in Australia, Japan and Canada, but expectations were raised for South Korea, China and Brazil, while California will launch a cap and trade scheme next year. While a majority of carbon market participants expected the world to agree an extension to the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, that appears contrary to most experts.

"It might be wishful thinking," said Schjolset.

"The (U.N.-backed) negotiations are very complex and the outcome is uncertain. We don't think Kyoto will continue. We think that carbon prices will go up this year."

Expectations in the survey were for an average global carbon price of about 30 euros in 2020, roughly double European prices now, and unchanged from expectations in last year's survey. (Writing by Gerard Wynn and Ivana Sekularac; editing by Keiron Henderson)

© Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

Source: Reuters

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The subheading of Sunday’s The Jakarta Post editorial (Nov. 28, 2010) was “Is there hope on the horizon?”, which perfectly reflects the current state of global climate change discourse.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change has occurred 16 consecutive times. Never in history have countries from all over the world — large and small, developed and less developed — been so unified in recognizing the threat posed by climate change as a common challenge during the latest COP in Cancun, Mexico. But, the world was still unable to make an agreement on truly global climate action.

The current global approach to climate action is still to some extent trapped in “reductionism”, meaning the earth’s carbon-cycling capacity is treated like a tradable commodity on the global market. This clearly shows there is a problem with global leadership.

To deal with the climate challenge, the world needs a new kind of leadership, one that is capable of eliminating a wide array of frictions, like those between rich, emerging, and poor nations that have different carbon agendas; between national growth aspirations and individual rights; and between those with hedonistic and those with modest lifestyles.

At the global and local levels climate change is not a uniform process, especially in terms of causes and impacts. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by country, sector or individual varies. Likewise, different countries or segments of the population in a country experience different impacts from climate change depending on their geographical position and specific traits.

One way to measure an individual, organization or nation’s contribution to climate change is by calculating its carbon footprint. As the commonly accepted basic definition, the carbon footprint is a certain amount of gaseous emissions that are associated with human production and consumption and are related to climate change.

Recently, Hertwich and Peters in Environmental Science and Technology (volume 43, 2009) presented a new way of calculating carbon footprints in terms of tons of CO2 per person based on a single, trade-linked model of the global economy. Based on their calculations, we can see there is great variation in per capita GHGs footprints between countries in the world.

The per capita carbon footprint of East and Southeast Asian countries reveals huge gaps. Each person in Hong Kong releases 14 times more carbon than someone in Indonesia or the Philippines, while Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have about half the per capita carbon footprint than Hong Kong.

More strikingly, looking closer at contributing sectors, the population of Hong Kong spends 28 percent of their carbon footprint just on clothes.

Less developed countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines consume more carbon for food, almost twice those of their more developed counterparts in East Asia like Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

On the contrary, more developed East Asian countries spend two to five times more of their carbon footprint on manufactured products than the less developed counterparts in Southeast Asia.

The slow progress of concerted action to deal with climate change clearly shows how socio-economic and political barriers work to hamper problem resolution. Referring to the A-K-T-E-S-P scheme for a better environment outlined by Stephen Trudgill two decades ago: economic (E), social (S) and political (P) barriers cannot be left out, although agreement (A), knowledge (K) and technology (T) have been overcome.

The challenges posed by climate change are significant and demand strong commitment from leadership at all levels of government and society. In addition, since the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, political, social and spiritual challenges is becoming increasingly obvious, Mary Louise Flemming and her colleagues stress the importance of a “shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community”.

The fight against climate change is certainly more of a problem of ethics than merely a technical obstacle. What is needed is a strong public stance by leaders. There are, of course, enormous political constraints at the national and global levels to avoid doing what is best for the planet and to leave a good legacy for the next generation.

While the discourse on climate change has occupied so much space in the local and global arena, solidarity is somewhat neglected. Countries still fail to bring a concept of solidarity to the meeting room.

The deficiency of all global summits on climate change has clearly demonstrated how countries are still absorbed by their own interests rather than seeking a mutual win-win solution.

Climate change, as the most pressing global sustainability challenge, requires a collaborative, global response. Leadership and acceptance of differentiated responsibilities must be at the heart of any future global agreement to reduce the carbon footprint.

Lord Nicholas Stern and Ian Noble endorsed three basic criteria of global action to combat climate change, effectiveness, efficiency and equity. Equity has to become the core of all decision making and the starting point for action. Wealthy countries are responsible for the bulk of past emissions.

As the late Pope John Paul II put it “The challenge ... is to ensure a globalization in solidarity, a globalization without marginalization”. Climate change has confronted the global community with the challenge of building an equitable society. To achieve this, the global community has a duty to ensure solidarity. Further, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized the vast spectrum of solidarity. Ecological crises in our time call for “a solidarity which embraces time and space”.

To achieve sustainability on this earth, a fairer sense of intergenerational solidarity has to be supplemented with a renewed sense of intragenerational solidarity, especially in the relationship between developing countries and highly industrialized countries, or between low and high carbon consuming individuals and countries. Only when the spirit of solidarity prevails will the biggest challenge to human civilization be overcome. (By Budi Widianarko)

The writer is a rector at Soegijapranata Catholic University in Semarang.

Source: The Jakarta Post

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.

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(Reuters) - Saying the health of the planet is at stake, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged 190 nations meeting in Mexico on Tuesday to agree to steps to fight climate change that fall short of a perfect deal.

"We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good," Ban told a first session of environment ministers at the November 29 to December 10 talks in the Caribbean resort of Cancun where rich and poor nations are split over cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

After U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders failed to work out a U.N. climate treaty at a 2009 summit in Copenhagen, Ban repeatedly stressed lower ambitions for the Cancun talks despite calls by some nations for radical action.

Ban told the ministers: "the stability of the global economy, the well-being of your citizens, the health of our planet, all this and more depend on you."

The Cancun talks are seeking a package deal to set up a fund to oversee climate aid, ways to slow deforestation, steps to help poor countries adapt to climate change and a mechanism to share clean technologies such as wind and solar power.

Some developing nations, with Bolivia the most outspoken, have said that far more radical action by the rich is needed now to cut greenhouse gas emissions and deadly floods, droughts, desertification and rising sea levels.

Speaking on behalf of Africa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he was "deeply dismayed" by the loss of momentum since Copenhagen. "Every day of delay is being paid for by the lives of countless numbers of Africans," he said.

CHINA, INDIA

About 1,500 people marched in Cancun in protest the low ambitions of the talks and dumped buckets of animal excrement in the street. Overnight, some protesters threw eggs at riot police and defaced a fast-food restaurant.

Developed and developing countries are most split about the future of the U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40 rich nations to cut emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels in the five-year period 2008-12.

"The Kyoto Protocol issue continues to be very tough. It's not clear whether it's resolvable," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern told a news conference. He said that the Kyoto dispute was distracting time from other parts of the negotiations.

The United States is the only rich nation outside of the Kyoto Protocol after arguing that treaty wrongly omitted targets for 2012 for developing nations and would cause U.S. jobs losses. The U.S. absence is a core part of the problem in designing a new deal.

Japan, Russia and Canada have been adamant that they will not approve an extension to Kyoto when the first period runs out in 2012. They want a new, broader treaty that will also bind the United States and emerging powers like China and India to act.

Asked if Japan might ever agree to extend Kyoto, Akira Yamada of Japan's foreign ministry told Reuters: "Yes. If U.S., China and other major emitters become Annex One countries." Annex One lists rich nations bound by Kyoto.

Many rich countries, suffering weak growth and budget cuts, want emerging economies led by fast-growing China and India to do far more to reflect their growing power, including greater oversight of their curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing states say rich nations have emitted most greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution and must extend Kyoto before poor countries sign up for action. Kyoto underpins carbon markets guiding a shift away from fossil fuels.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said positions were "diametrically opposed" and the future of Kyoto was not due to be decided in Cancun.

"Germans have a wonderful word 'yein' which means both 'yes' and 'no' and I think that's the kind of attitude countries are now engaged in," she said.

A U.N. report showed that residents of the Himalayas and other mountain areas face a tough and unpredictable future as global warming melts glaciers and threatens worse floods.

(By Russell Blinch and Christopher Buckley; Writing by Alister Doyle, editing by Christopher Wilson and Philip Barbara)

Source: Reuters

© Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters

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After years of delay, dispute and disappointment, success at 2010’s annual UN climate talks will be measured on whether they make it possible to reach the ultimate goal at next year’s conference. Negotiators from 194 nations go into the annual UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, on Monday with expectations of reaching a new climate accord at any time far lower than they were at Copenhagen a year ago. Reality bit in Denmark over how far the world was from a meaningful agreement on the next round of global action covering the period 2013 to 2020.

A year on, with little progress on the key stumbling blocks, there is still a long way to go. Negotiators and observers have long since given up on the chance of finalising a binding international agreement over the next two weeks in Cancun – a result for which there were such high hopes back in Copenhagen. The aim now is strive to reach that goal in a year’s time at the 2011 conference in South Africa. Even this timeline looks optimistic at the current time, and the success of Cancun will be measured in whether enough progress is made that 2011 becomes realistic.

The key areas to be negotiated are the level of emissions reductions targets and how they are shared between rich and poor countries, funding from rich countries to poor to tackle climate change, mechanisms to transfer clean technology to poorer countries (such as the UN CDM), and a global mechanism to halt deforestation in poor countries, or REDD+. Realistically, progress will require securing separate agreements in some these areas and ditching the principle for now that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed – surely a restraint that would continue doom negotiations for longer. The big sticking point on emissions targets won’t be settled in Cancun.

Developing countries are demanding deeper emissions reduction targets from the developed countries, which are the nations putting most of the excess greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The developing world wants a new, steeper set of targets from developed nations via the Kyoto Protocol, and from the US which is outside Kyoto. Currently, the 2020 pledges in the aspirational Copenhagen Accord struck last year, from the developed world in particular, fall well short of the level needed to limit global warming to +2 degrees Celsius, confirmed in a UN report this week. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says current the level of pledges will lead to a 5 to 9 billion tonne emissions overshoot by 2020. UNEP chief Achim Steiner has called on the 140 nations now signed up to the Copenhagen Accord to lock in their commitments and build on them in Cancun.

The next climate accord also hangs on financing from rich countries to poor countries to help them develop on a sustainable , low-carbon footing and adapt to climate change. At Copenhagen, flows reaching $100 billion a year by 2020 were agreed, with $30 billion in fast-start funding up to the end of 2012.

Before the developed countries commit to stronger targets and stump up the many billions required in climate financing, they want to see the developing world deliver on its own set of binding commitments to reduce emissions, given the rapidly growing carbon footprint of fast-industrialising China and India. There has been reasonable progress on finance question this year. A UN expert advisory group identifying in detail a range of public and private sector sources offers an early blueprint for Cancun.

On the big questions of targets for emissions reductions, however, the dispute between developed and developing countries in general, and the US and China in particular, has progressed very little if at all since Copenhagen. The last UNFCCC negotiation session in the lead up to Cancun underscored the intractability of this issue with the two biggest emitter nations at loggerheads over the same old ground; the US coming good with substantial targets to reduce emissions and China being bound to meaningful curbs on its emissions growth and the transparent international verification of them - the principle of ‘MRV’. These two nations hold the key to the ultimate prize – they must agree on these issues before the world can agree and before a global accord emerges. A resolution is not going to come at Cancun, but progress toward one is vital yet it is hard to see it happening.

The international shipping and aviation sectors are also a battleground, both under increasing pressure to embrace emissions reduction programmes. The UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) hopes a global industry agreement it struck in October will be sanctioned by the UNFCCC. This is doubtful given the commitments to increase fuel efficiency and peak emissions by 2020 are only aspirational goals, not mandatory targets, while hard caps and an emissions trading scheme are only to be ‘considered’.

In shipping, the UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has not managed to yet to pass any mandatory emissions reduction measures but will be seeking to have its mandate as the authority to do so reconfirmed by the UNFCCC. IMO appears on the verge of agreeing energy efficiency standards and there are hopes it will happen in mid 2011.

On forests, an agreement on Reducing Deforestation and Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries, or REDD+, was close to agreement last year in Denmark, possibly only held back by the lack of an overall climate agreement. So an agreement to tackle the loss of forest that is responsible for at least 12 per cent of total world greenhouse emissions every year is one of the more likely success stories that could emerge.

There is still significant devilish detail to be worked out to agree a global REDD programme that is workable – with safeguards for forest communities and indigenous groups; financing mechanisms, and the balance between public funding and carbon markets; and, the significant methodological questions around monitoring, reporting and verification.

Copenhagen well and truly over-promised and under-delivered. So far, Cancun is under-promising. Proponents of strong global climate action can only hope that it now over-delivers.

Source: carbonpositive

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