Europe Suggests Revisions to Carbon Trading

Europe Suggests Revisions to Carbon Trading Scheme by Reuters

The European Union’s executive commission has proposed banning by 2013 the most common types of carbon offsets, mostly from India and China, to help restore credibility to the disputed system.

The move comes ahead of the climate talks next week in Cancún, Mexico.

Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme places caps on carbon gases emitted by industry but, under a separate system run by the United Nations, allows companies to offset emissions by paying for carbon cuts in developing countries, as a cheaper alternative to cutting their own.

The executive commission said that 80 percent of the disputed hydrofluorocarbon credits and 60 percent of the nitrous oxide credits came from China, and most of the rest came from India. The commission wants to stop exploitation of the system by project developers who are suspected of adjusting refrigerant plants to produce more of potent greenhouse gas hydrofluorocarbon 23 as a waste byproduct and then destroying it to claim the carbon offsets.

It proposed that from Jan. 1, 2013, the trading scheme should exclude offset credits from hydrofluorocarbon 23 and nitrous oxide credits from adipic acid production.

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