ENVIRONOVA SUSTAINABILITY NEWS September 2007 New Zealand introduce carbon trading scheme. 21/9/2007 New Zealand have introduced the region's first national carbon trading scheme based on cap and trade principals. They have stated they will avoid the problems seen in the first stages of the European trading scheme by not giving free permit allocations to existing industries. Permits will be allocated on the basis of required emmisions reduction targets. The price for permits will be set by the market with industries having to by permits to emmit if they cannot reduce their emmisions through new low carbon technologies. The first industry to join the scheme will be Forestry followed by transport, stationery energy (electricity generation) and finally agriculture. The NZ climate change ministry has also included ambitious targets in its greenhouse mitigation strategy. 90% of electricity is tagreted to be generated from renewable sources by 2025. New Zealand has significant hydropower, geothermal and wind resources. Internationally there are increasing concerns that carbon cap and trade principally profit polluters, however New Zealand hopes to get around such concerns through improved scheme design.
Indonesian forests partnership to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions. 15/9/2007 (Quotation from federal Department of Environment & Heritage news release) Greenhouse gas emissions will be cut by around 700 million tonnes over 30 years under a $100 million agreement signed between the governments of Australia and Indonesia. The Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership was announced by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, and the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull. It is the largest greenhouse abatement project to flow so far from the Australian Government's Global Initiative on Forests and Climate, and an example of Australia's practical and cooperative international approach to addressing climate change. The Partnership
aims to preserve 70,000 hectares of peat land forests in Indonesia's
Kalimantan region, re-flood 200,000 hectares of dried peat land and
plant up to100 million new trees on rehabilitated peat land for
conservation purposes. It has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases
by a greater amount than Australia's total annual emissions.
http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/env/2007/pubs/mr09sep207.pdf
Cities for Climate Protection scoring greenhouse gas reduction goals. 14/9/2007 The International Cities for Climate Protection program (CCP) has over 600 city, town, and locality governments signed up to a 5 stage greenhouse gas reduction program. In Australia 160 local governments have signed on. Last years greenhouse gas reductions from them totaled 2.9 million tonnes. This is a sharp improvement in greenhouse reduction rate, mainly because more councils have joined the program in the last 2-3 years. As a whole, CCP in Australia has mitigated 8.8 million tonnes since it began in 1997. Local city and town governments leading greenhouse reduction programs will form a vital part of the overall international greehouse gas reduction strategy. See more on CCP at www.iclei.org
Tim Flannery's top 5 rapid climate change response options. 4/9/2007 Technological solutions will be very important in the wider move to an internationally agreed & equitable emissions reduction strategies. If pricing or taxing of carbon emmisions is properly carried out, the cost of such technological measures will be covered. If carbon is inadequately priced, or there is inequity in the market, adequate technological responses will not be able to be mounted in time to aviod dangerous climate change and various climate 'tipping points'. Australian of the year for 2007, Tim Flannery has made significant inroads in convincing business, government and the community of the crucial interface between climate change science and policy responses. He believes that we will need to remove large quantities of CO2 that are already in the atmosphere to avoid dangerous climate change. Flannery outlined his top 5 rapid emmission reductions strategy in an article in the Australian "The Bulletin" Magazine in February of this year. They are especially focused on the role Australia can play: 1. Establishing the efficacy of, then a rapid shift to, geothermal and solar-thermal technologies for heavy industrial processes (minerals processing and extraction). 2. Reorganisation of national rail and power grids to take advantage of geothermal resources, and development of a major new city in central Australia that will act as the national hub. 3. Much higher efficiency standards for all electrical and oil-burning technology, widespread implementation of solar hot water, photovoltaics and wind near major cities. 4. Foster pyrolysis-based technologies in Australia. These technologies convert crop waste into fuel and charcoal (which can be used to enhance soil fertility and store carbon long-term). Using this technology and natural gas, we should be independent of foreign oil imports by 2025. This will involve the development of much infrastructure in rural Australia. 5. A new deal for our Pacific neighbours, by which we pay them to sequester carbon in tropical forests. A project with central principles of accountability, fostering prosperity at the village level, and fostering peace. The tropics can sequester virtually all the carbon released by humans since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We can probably cancel out all the CO2 we have released in the past century by 2050, and lead the world on a path to sustainability. Courtesy The Bulletin Magazine.
Per capita approach for greenhouse gas reduction policy ~ Editorial Opinion. Rob Paterson 6/9/2007 Scientists generally agree that we are already locked into significant levels of future human-induced climate change. Many changes are now occuring faster than anticipated. The increasingly rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet is one example. It is clear that effective emissions reductions trajectories are needed to avoid even greater levels of future 'built in' climate change. Unfortunately as global growth and industrialisation continues, real emmisions reductions have seemed a distant hope. To achieve success, equitable emmisions mitigation strategies will need to be developed so that all nations will want to comply. The current UNFCC / Kyoto process is part of the way to developing such a response. Global business interests are now worrying less about the cost paying for emmiting greenhouse gases and worrying much more about the impact climate change will have on their future business. They are therefore increasingly ready to accept strategies they would not have considered in the past. There has been a steep rise in the number of Business & Land owner Climate Change Alliances and Coalitions. Some now realise that a profoundly different approach may be necessary. An equitable approach which ties the right to dump greenhouse gases to the number of people in each country is appearing as an obvious answer. Some business & policy makers are now seriously investigating the ideas of 'global equity' campaigners. An example of which is Sir Aubrey Mayer & the 'Contraction and Convergence' model from which numerous other models options are developing. Obviously resistance to such ideas is greater from high resource-use countries and "old" energy intense industries. Footprint models show that if all global citizens were to live lifestyles of those in developed countries such as the US & Australia, three to six planets worth of resources would be required. Resource use intensity in already developed countries will have to become at least 3 or 4 times more efficient. Promotion of appropriate development paths for less developed nations will also become crucial. The Advertising lead consumption culture is working against this move to resource efficiency. It is exhibiting itself as "shopping mallisation" of countries such as Indonesia as well as increasingly consumptive cultures in already developed nations. The debate on how to acheive an equitable "carbon descent" and useful development will necessarily be a long and involved one!
Congress and Senate Set to pass better US Energy and Climate Bills. 4/9/2007 Washington: Congress and Senate negotiators are about to go into negotiation in what is known as 'conference committee' over important climate and energy bill proposals. The climate change and oil dependency debate has changed markedly since 2005 when nearly all climate protective and energy efficiency measures were scuttled by the republican congress. Now there is much greater concern among the US public, business and government. There is also much greater awareness of the task at hand especially considering major state government initiatives in California and other states as well as major lawsuits over vehicle emissions. Hurricane Katrina has also played on feelings that climate change was too risky to ignore. So far the Senate has approved improvement in fuel economy standards to improve average mileage of cars and trucks from 25 miles per gallon today to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. These savings has the pottential to save 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. On the other hand the Congress bill on Climate requires utilities to generate 15 percent of their power from a combination and renewables or equivalent emissions reductions from increased energy efficiency. Analysts are hopeful that there will be increased concensus between the houses and climate and energy security will benefit from better decisions than in 2005.
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