A cable from the US embassy in Mumbai released by Wikileaks shows how Indian industrialists have been gaming the carbon market to get carbon credits (Wikileaks). The climate consultant Payal Parekh has a very detailed analysis of the cable in his blog (link) and International Rivers also provides additional information (link). The cable is so [...]
Archive for the ‘CDM’ Category
CDM fraud exposed by Wikileaks
Posted in CDM on September 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Clean Development? Not really
Posted in CDM on August 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Meet Chemplast Sanmar, a chemicals manufacturer from Mettur, in southern India. The company has an appalling environmental record, having polluted heavily the surrounding air and water for decades. Villagers complain of breathing problems, rashes and stillbirths, as well as damages to their agricultural crops. While Chemplast assures its compliance with strict environmental standards, the truth [...]
EU bans industrial carbon credits
Posted in CDM on January 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
From the 1st of May, 2013, no carbon credits generated by the destruction of HFCs or N2O emissions will be allowed for usage in the EU Emissions Trading System. In a move to legitimize carbon trading, the European Commission decided that trading on these credits should be prohibited because no one can assure their environmental [...]
The HFC scam
Posted in CDM on December 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
After the approval of the Montreal Protocol (Wikipedia), all ozone-damaging chemicals were banned, but the deadline for compliance was different for developed and developing countries. China, therefore, can still manufacture refrigerant gases that is damaging for the ozone layer, releasing in the process triflouromethane, or HFC-23. From 2005, the year when the Kyoto Protocol was ratified, [...]
Carbon markets awarding huge funds for coal power
Posted in CDM on September 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Recently, the Indian company Adani earned the right to sell carbon credits from burning coal. All it had to do was to convince the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism that, by being awarded carbon credits, it would use a less polluting technology in its new coal-fired power stations in Mundra. Another loophole has [...]
Carbon markets encouraging pollution
Posted in CDM on July 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Emissions trading is usually presented as an instrument that allows emissions reductions to be achieved at a lower cost than other policies. But in offset schemes there is a perverse incentive to increase emissions for some major polluters. In this case, the polluters will be earning money from polluting more than usual. Take the example [...]
Recycling carbon credits
Posted in CDM on March 14, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Let me tell you a story on how clever folks gain huge profits from exploring loopholes in financial markets and get away with it. Hungarian companies used credits from the Clean Development Mechanism to cover their emissions. Now, these credits are worth a bit more than the allowances given to industrialized countries by the Kyoto [...]
Coal power in India financed by carbon trading
Posted in CDM on February 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
There could be no better example to show the madness of carbon markets. In India, Adani Power plans to build several new coal plants, generating 9240 MW and releasing a massive amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. But the company says that 85% of this capacity will be accomplished using more efficient boilers [...]
New book on the political economy of carbon markets
Posted in CDM on December 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi, a Reader in Management and a researcher from Essex University, respectively, launched a free book on the Clean Development Mechanism (link). I’m proud to be one of its contributors and encourage anyone with an interest in climate change to read it.
Agrofuel production to be rewarded with carbon credits
Posted in CDM on October 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
That’s right, they finally got it. After intensive lobbying, the agribusiness managed to get the Clean Develompent Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board to approve an alteration to the methodology applied to biofuel projects. Concretely, they managed to extend the methodology from biofuels produced from waste to biofuels produced from oil seeds planted in “degraded” lands (official [...]
