As other developed countries, the US will have an absolute economy-wide emission cap for greenhouse gases. This cap will be set compared to a year of verified emissions in the past according to a new international climate agreement. Different baseline years for these verified past emissions such as 1990, 2000 and 2005 have been proposed. This means that the future emission cap will be expressed as a reduction in GHG emissions compared to this baseline year. So what happens in this case if you purchase on a voluntary basis carbon offsets?

Case 1: Your project is truly additional and would not have happened without additional carbon financing:

• Thanks, you are taking measures to reduce GHG emissions, however the future US emission cap will not be any lower because of you. This means: you have given away an economic gift to entities which will be affected by the cap and trade as thanks to you they will not need to reduce their emissions as much…. Economic effect: transfer of value – Environmental effect:at best none (assuming you are not diverting the money for real emission reductions)

Case2: Your project is not additional… this means that it would have happened anyway whether with or without this additional carbon financing. Just looking at the prices per tonne of carbon at the CCX, I have a really hard believing such a small change in the profitability of your project will make a difference. You might end up with a return rat on your investment of 7.1% instead of 7%.

THE CALL FOR A “VOLUNTARY EFFORT ADDITIONAL FRINGE”.

The only way of circumventing this problem is to create a federal office which ensures that voluntary measures and efforts are truly additional and are not just a gift from an honest individual entity to the whole rest of the US economy.
In the case of emission offsets, this should take the form of the tightening from the emission cap by the destruction of emission allowance that would otherwise have been released (either in a form of a free allowance or an auctioned allowance.
In the case of renewable electricity, this would take the form of either 1)an increase of “Renewable Electricity Certificate” utilities need to own 2) the retirement of an existing certificate 3) The generation of renewable electricity without the addition of such a certificate on the market.

In short: this is the equivalent of burning your dollar bills which increase the value of the dollar bills in the rest of the economy as their relative value increase.

THE NEED FOR A LOW CARBON DEVELOPMENT HELP

Whether we like it or not, most investments in energy infrastructures are calculated over a period of 20 to 40 years. This means that there is a urgency in avoiding the “carbon lock in” or investments in low efficient in carbon intensive solutions in developed countries. A carbon heavy investment now becomes a liability to future generations. There is right now a need to help these countries to avoid this carbon heavy path.
Such a green development help should however be additional to the national commitment and NOT replace it.

Furthermore, such an emission reduction help should not be used by companies as a compliance tool for cap and trade system:

• The sole interest of a private run company is the legal compliance (in emission markets) at the lowest possible price, no matter what the quality of the offset is.

• There is a need for developed countries to be the pioneers of a low carbon economy in the world as these countries are still the trendsetters.

By the way, international offsets in the Kyoto process were originally seen as an additional effort from developed countries, not as a tool to comply with the own domestic target.

Would also agree that it is silly for the capital to be burning coal. You don’t need the greenhouse gas argument, just the PM 2.5 and other listed pollutants is bad enough. Coal fired heating plants don’t belong in densely populated areas.

Wht they really need is a gasifier that runs on all the paper and other waste the capital generates. turn a turbine to make power and then use the waste steam for both heating and cooling and then you can have something that runs 80% efficient or so!

Heard the snow forecasts for tomorrow. Was Gore planning to show up?

Regarding Congressional offices, perhaps they should, if they haven’t already, start to print less paper. The times that I have written my Senate folk, I have received in response printouts of the legislation in question. Thanks, an email or phone call would have sufficed. Looking back, though, a copy of the Contract with America has served me well as a reminder of what I’m fighting against.

After reading the linked Wash Post article the absurdity of the endless talk about “carbon credits” is much highlighted.

The existing heating plant is already in place so much of the plumbing for a cogeneration facility is already paid for, so a real hardware improvement is staring Congress in the face.

But it is a lot more fun for politicians to fiddle with regulations and taxes while coal burns.

And cheers for Joe Romm’s mom for her “pin a rose on them” comment, that seems to recognize the true value of some of this gamesmanship.