Bangkok talks touch on emission reduction targets

www.environmental-finance.com/onlinews/
London, 3 April

Around 1,000 representatives from around the world are in Bangkok this week for a UN meeting to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Ideas put forward by the various delegates so far include the auctioning of Assigned Amount Units (emissions credits granted by the UN to countries under the Kyoto Protocol), radical changes to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and sectoral-based targets.

There has also been much debate about how the burden of reductions needed should be shared, with developing countries such as Venezuela saying that developed countries should shoulder responsibility for 'historical emissions'. Brazil and South Africa have proposed that developed countries look to make actual emissions cuts, while developing nations should look to stabilise emissions growth. Japan has proposed that there should be a move towards sector-based targets, which the EU, New Zealand, China and Canada said should support – but not replace – national targets.

But the EU also suggested that "advanced developing countries" should move from offsetting to sectoral-based reductions, in response to a suggestion by the Japanese representatives that the fundamentals of the CDM need to be re-examined for a new agreement, as at present the projects are hosted by countries without emissions caps. This effectively allows those with binding caps to offset their emissions as opposed to actually reduce them.

The Japanese delegation also called for extending the CDM to include both nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage projects, the latter of which is already under discussion and supported by Australia.

China proposed that the additionality test – whether the project brings about emissions reductions that would not have happened without the CDM – be removed from certain project types. This was despite an earlier comment from the same delegation that the environmental integrity of the mechanism must be preserved.

At an industry event in Copenhagen last month, there was speculation that some late-starting renewable energy CDM projects in China may fail such a test as the prospective revenue from the sale of electricity is large enough to warrant the project happening in the absence of the carbon financing.