Control of Green House Gas Emission and Carbon Credits system

Carbon credits is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide or the mass of another greenhouse gas with a carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide.

First of all we have to see right from the climate changes and the precautionary action that all UN nations have taken.

We all know very well about the Green House Gases (GHGs), in fact you might have got tired up listening this word. This is one of such words that radically attracted the attention of media and mass. The GHGs in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs and ozone. GHGs in the atmosphere, absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range so increases the temperature on earth. Without them, Earth's surface would average about 33 °C colder, which is about 59 °F below the present average of 14 °C (57 °F).

Anthropogenic emissions causes incremental rise in the GHGs

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (taken as the year 1750), 41% of increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was observed. Similarly the tropospheric concentration of methane is increased about 170%, Nitrous oxide increased to 20%. Most of these increments are caused by direct and indirect involvement of industrialization and increase the atmosphere's ability to trap infrared energy and thus affect the climate. The rate at which it is accumulating in the troposphere is very much apprehensive. For example, the mole fraction of carbon dioxide has increased from 280 ppm by about 36% to 395 ppm, or 115 ppm over modern pre-industrial levels. The first 50 ppm increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973. However the next 50 ppm increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006. Today, the stock of carbon in the atmosphere increases by more than 3 million tonnes per annum (0.04%) compared with the existing stock. This increase is the result of human activities by burning fossil fuels, deforestation and forest degradation in tropical and boreal regions. There should be some monitoring authority to design and implicate the controlling measures for the GHGs emission.

The concept of carbon credits came into existence as a result of increasing awareness of the need for controlling emissions. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has observed that:

Policies that provide a real or implicit price of carbon could create incentives for producers and consumers to significantly invest in low-GHG products, technologies and processes. Such policies could include economic instruments, government funding and regulation,

Further to bring in action, sincere attempts were made to design action plans.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The objective of the treaty is to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system"

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded and established legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2010 Cancún agreements state that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level. The next Conference of the Parties is scheduled to held at Peru, in December, 2014.

Since we are nearing to have COP in the near future, we need to introspect about our ideology of the carbon credit system, carbon trading, does it really mitigating the drastic climate changes, or it is simply an another trade exchange business.

The concept of GHGs emission mitigation is now linked to economics. In simple words, if a country or a company is having permission to emit certain amount and by the virtue of the mitigation practices, if the same company produces less than their permit, it gains some credits. These credits can be sold to other companies who cannot mitigate or needs extra permission. This is how the carbon trading working.

The trading mechanism has been formalized under Kyoto protocol and an International agreement happened between 170 countries. In turn, these countries set quotas on the emissions of installations run by local business and other organizations, generically termed 'operators'. Countries manage this through their national registries, which are required to be validated and monitored for compliance by the UNFCCC.

By permitting allowances to be bought and sold, an operator can seek out the most cost-effective way of reducing its emissions, either by investing in 'cleaner' machinery and practices or by purchasing emissions from another operator who already has excess 'capacity'.

Since 2005, the Kyoto mechanism has been adopted for CO₂ trading by all the countries within the European Union under its European Trading Scheme (EU ETS) with the European Commission as its validating authority. From 2008, EU participants must link with the other developed countries who ratified Annex I of the protocol, and trade the six most significant anthropogenic greenhouse gases. In the United States, which has not ratified Kyoto, and Australia, whose ratification came into force in March 2008, similar schemes are being considered.

European Climate Exchange (ECX) is formed . About 98 per cent of the carbon-emissions trading in Europe is done ECX office situated in City of London. More than 25 million tons of carbon traded daily. In 2006 the market was worth £80 billion worldwide, and it’s set to grow rapidly year-by-year. Now this has slowly moved towards commercial aspect than conservation aspect.

Please read my next post about the capitalism system or colonialism.