Carbon Retirement is a good alternative to normal offsetting but I would sound a note of caution about the state of the market – because of banking, it is now perfectly possible for the price to remain firm but for there still to be many companies in the scheme with over allocations. In fact in the UK for the next five years, the only sector which needs to reduce is the power sector. We need to clear out over allocations – then in the future we can all buy and cancel permits safe in the knowledge we are not buying hot air.

Best wishes
Bryony

For a long time I’ve followed the debate about how to assign some actual cost to CO2 emissions – to internalize that externality. The two options of carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade have plenty of people on either side with lots of pros and cons.

Recently I’ve heard from more than a few source that it’s not necessarily either-or: both legally and practically you might decide to have some of both. I’m still thinking about how that would play out.

As for buying and retiring some EUAs, I’m intrigued to hear that is now being offered as an alternative to voluntary, largely unregulated “private offsets”

I don’t agree that buying and retiring credits has to open the way for emitters to be gaming the system, nor must it lead to regulators relaxing their targets. The idea is to put some new demand into the market for emission reductions (I want some!) in hard dollar/Euro terms. Emitters need to get the signal that it is worth investing in actual reductions so they will free up credits to sell on the open market. The higher we can keep the market price for credits/permits, the more money can go into making real reductions in order to keep the permits freed up for resale and not sent up the chimney.

My guess: “tax” is politically unfeasible as opposed to “market” which sounds nice but lets big business game the system and find the loopholes.

I saw the same comment at commontragedies that John did above. I don’t see the validity of their point. So long as the allowance caps are set according to actual hard declining emisson level targets, and the “retiring” firms aren’t sourcing their credits at the allocation/auction point, then this is just another actor in the after-market trading. Firms with allowances to sell can sell them to the highest bidder/at market rates. The “retiring firms” are just one of those actors. Good initiative. Tell your friends.

In any case, this is only for people who like offsets, which I don’t. But This is certainly not a “ake carbon offsetting idea.”

The system is the biggest environmental accounting fraud in the history of mankind.

Nobody guarantees that the second phase is any better. In fact, massive evidence of mis-allocations is already emerging (check the infamous Arcelor Mittal case in Wallonia).

So Carbon Retirement takes away allowances of which there are too many. And taking them out of the system forces the EU to hand out more in a next round, or it forces energy companies to charge consumers extra.

The Carbon Retirement concept is entirely flawed. It punishes all European consumers, while the polluting companies participating in the ETS should be the ones to carry the burden.

Sorry, but I hope your view on “solar baseload” is more realistic than your enthusiasm for this fake carbon offsetting idea.

http://commontragedies.wordpress.com/ 2008/ 07/ 16/ on-early-retirement/

The author states that “gaming the system” in this way may end up leading to changes in the cap (if the amount of retired EUA is significant). He makes a valid point.

Personally I think one of the most important issues to solve is getting clean technology into the developing world. When audited correctly carbon offsetting gives an incentive to these countries to reduce emissions, even when they don’t have an emissions cap. This scheme doesn’t seem to address this issue.

Secondly – Maybe this claim is wrong anyways? I thought that European companies were able to buy offsets from CDM and JI projects.

http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/37742

Australia also has plans for a cap-and-trade system. As long as those systems aren’t interlinked, companies like Carbon Retirement can profit from price differences between the systems to find the cheapest carbon credits to retire. He, that’s arbitrage, where are the big banks and hedge funds?