Europe’s Dirty Secret (PDF);
The EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), the region’s main policy tool to
combat climate change, is not working and should be reconsidered due to its high operating costs and poor results of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, a UK-based think tank said on Thursday.
“The EU ETS is costing a lot, but it isn’t working,” Hugo Robinson, an analyst with Open Europe, said in a statement released together with a new study, Europe’s Dirty Secret: Why the EU Emissions Trading Scheme isn’t working.
Open Europe, an independent think tank set up by UK business leaders, reckons the 27-member bloc needs to embrace radical reforms based on economic liberalization, with greater transparency and more accountability.
The cap-and-trade market for carbon dioxide emissions was launched in 2005, covering about 12,000 installations from emissions-intensive industries, such as energy, steel and glass.
The market’s first trading period, from 2005 through 2007, has seen the benchmark carbon contract for delivery in December 2007 drop below €0.10 – due to too many emissions permits handed out to installations participating in the scheme.
EU officials have insisted the first trading period has been a test phase, while the EU commission has tightened its allowance policy for the 2008-2012 second trading period. Officials are currently reviewing how to improve the market going forward.
“Everybody knows that phase one was a learning period with teething problems,” a spokeswoman at the EU commission told Point Carbon. “We have full confidence in the second phase and we are preparing the review of the system (for the third phase) to iron out existing problems,” she said, adding that the Open Europe report appeared to be “politically motivated.”
Still, Open Europe sees new problems ahead, while some problems have not been resolved.
“New problems are emerging in the second phase. Member states have opted to buy in vast numbers of what are essentially carbon offsets from developing countries, rather than make real reductions in emissions. But the offsets are often not reducing emissions, or are even subsidising polluters,” he said.
“This approach does nothing for our energy security and it doesn’t appear to be doing much good for the environment. It has also become clear that some member states are clearly using the complexity of the system to provide covert industrial subsidies to polluting industries,” Robinson said.
[A] ground-breaking study has now called into question the effectiveness of using trees to “offset” emissions, suggesting that their ability to “lock-up” carbon dioxide has been greatly exaggerated.
Forests have long been seen as an effective way of absorbing the greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are thought to trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, causing global warming.
Celebrities, including the Rolling Stones and Leonardo DiCaprio, the film actor, have signed up to schemes to plant trees to offset their own emissions.
However, the new research found that trees bathed in extra carbon dioxide grew more tissue, but did not necessarily store significant extra quantities of carbon. Instead, the tree’s capacity to absorb the gas depended on water and nutrient levels.
The news will come as a blow to the carbon-offsetting industry, which has expanded rapidly as individuals and companies try to atone for their carbon dioxide emissions by paying companies to plant trees for them.
[…]
But Ru Hartwell, the director of Treeflights, an offsetting company planting trees in Wales and Peru, said: “There are problems with tree planting but it is only one way in which we are going to get on top of the problems of global warming. I have complete faith that tree planting is positive and we should not just chuck away our spades and do nothing.”
I’ve a better idea. Let’s just ban rock concerts, speaking tours, and movies and move the Madonnas, Gores and DiCaprios of the planet into 800 sq.ft. bungalows.
