China is in the midst of launching seven carbon markets, the largest of which will open next month in Guangdong, the country’s most populous province. The carbon markets are a key element of China’s plan to cut carbon emissions by up to 45 percent per unit of GDP by 2020.
Carbon credits are created by emissions controls and by other manufacturing practices and they can be sold to other facilities to offset emissions that cannot be economically reduced. These are attractive when a facility cannot meet a new regulation, and is near the end of its useful life, making it uneconomic to install expensive new emissions controls. Carbon credits
For a long time the European Union has been leading against climate change. Part of this leadership was its emission trading scheme (ETS), a cap and trade scheme that was designed to cut industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
As I noted back in 2009, the emissions trading
The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held hearings on climate change yesterday. Ostensibly the hearing was a chance to showcase the state of the science. In reality, it showcased a Republican anti-science ignorance and a complete lack of innovation.
The hearing was convened at the request
A carbon cap-and-trade program launched by 10 eastern states in 2008 has generated $780 million in revenues, with more than half of those earnings funding energy efficiency programs.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, says that $404 million generated by selling permits to utilities to emit
The Chinese government will impose regional emissions targets as part of a national drive to cut the economy’s carbon intensity by 2020, according to a report. While China is studying the potential of a domestic carbon market to achieve its carbon targets, a working group will also be established to develop targets and policies
(Reuters) – California on Thursday approved rules for a multibillion-dollar carbon market, in what proponents hope and detractors fear will be a turning point for the United States toward building a national program to address global warming.
After Congress failed to pass a climate change law last year, California is the
Seven years after opening, North America’s only national market trading all six greenhouse gases will close its doors at the end of this year.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a voluntary but legally binding system where
Author and scholar Michael Levi says in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that the odds of signing a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December are extremely small and argues that policymakers and environmental advocates should rethink their expectations for the summit.
Levi, a senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, contends that the conventional treaty model – which focuses on high-level agreements on emissions caps and carbon trading schemes – is fundamentally flawed because emissions caps are largely unverifiable and unenforceable. Short of bullying with punitive sanctions, nothing can be done if caps are exceeded.