www.smh.com.au
3 May 2012
South Korea approved a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions as President Lee Myung Bak seeks support from factories and power plants in the fastest-growing producer of greenhouse gases among industrialised democracies. The National Assembly passed a bill to establish a cap-and-trade system in the country by 2015 with the backing of both ruling and opposition parties, according to the assembly's webcast of the main session yesterday.
"The bill is needed to cope with global climate change and, domestically to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas efficiently", Kim Jae Kyung, a member of the ruling New Frontier Party, said in the assembly's plenary session before voting. The bill was passed in a 148 0 vote, with 3 abstentions. President Lee Myung Bak is struggling to sell the plan at home after pledging in December 2009 at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen to cut carbon emissions by 30% from forecast levels by 2020. The country's largest companies said the plan will hurt competitiveness.
Korea's decision follows an agreement at climate talks in December among about 200 countries including the US and China to wait until 2015 to sign a global accord on emission reductions that would take effect as late as 2020. "Korea becomes an early adopter in Asia" of a cap-and-trade program, Kang Hee Chan, a senior researcher at the Korea Environment Institute, said by phone. "Korea joins Australia and China, which plan to introduce the program in 2015".
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