The Article
Category: Carbon Markets
Beatrice Ahimbisibwe’s Trees for Tots
An interesting article on how small amounts of money from carbon exchanges can have dramatic impacts in developing countries.
The Article
Our Environmental Finance Information Meter is Struggling
I have noticed that since we restarted our EcoAsset Weblog in May of this year that the amount of meaningful new information on environmental finance seems very thin in comparison to 2008-2009. (Note to self…we also could just have our head in the sand)
It struck me over the weekend that we are much less likely to publish information/article/etc. on environmental finance in 2011 than in 2009. I think several things are going on:
1) The U. S. economy is in difficulty, and this obviously impacts ecofinance.
2) Ecosystem service market efforts, particularly public initiatives, are having a difficult time.
3) Many of the private deals and corporate planning for environmental impacts on business models do not see much media…so it is hard to guess the activity level.
4) A significant amount of political opposition to well established environmental knowledge and action.
5) The our concentration of wealth leaves only the ‘big deals’ possible. The small ‘support needed from the middle class public’ deals flounder because so is the middle class floundering.
What to expect?
Governmentally, don’t expect much…I notice a lot of reorganization at USDA NRCS…hopefully we just manage to ‘keep our thumb in the dike of natural disaster recovery’.
In terms of private and corporate wealth, there is a ton of capital on the sidelines…and a good bit of it is real (look at the cash in lots of corporate balance sheets…corporations with stable durable product/service and capable management). Google becomes more and more an ‘environmental’ company…so will many others…they will find it a logical decision of creating a durable company.
Clean Energy 2030…Google Earth Engine
In 2008 Google.org proposed a plan to reduce dirty energy dependence by 2030. The plan has been updated.
Recently, Google.org has created an app for Google Earth called ‘Google Earth Engine’ using 25 years of satellite image data to be analyzed for forest cover change in tropical forest. There plan is for the data to serve as a basis for REDD carbon market analysis.
I bring these up because – after watching America’s Congressional and Executive bodies make a mess of the discussion on both ‘paying for their already eaten pizza’ as well as future budget discussions – it seems the likelihood of our leadership being ‘leaders’ on meaningful issues is slim. It amazed me that they 1) made a crisis, 2) were unable to rationally discuss solutions, 3) …after three weeks of this ‘fiddling’… passed any budgetary decisions to a ‘commission’.
I defer energy discussions for term limit discussions. Congress should not be a career!
A Slow Start for Forest Carbon Markets
But such carbon credits have found demand only in a small, thinly traded voluntary carbon market, as countries struggle to agree on new, binding emissions cuts under U.N. climate talks.
“There is growing impatience with the multilateral process, not only from practitioners such as myself, but more importantly, from many forest countries,” said Christian del Valle, environmental markets and forestry director at BNP Paribas in London.
“Thus far the multilateral process has not delivered meaningful on-the-ground results, and forests continue to be lost because the only accessible price signal today indicates they are worth more cut down than standing,” he said.
A full U.N. climate deal could create a market through which rich, polluting countries could buy carbon credits, paying for forest protection in the process, just as they pay for clean energy projects now under the Kyoto Protocol’s existing carbon offset market, the Clean Development Mechanism.
So far, the only demand for forest carbon credits has been in the voluntary carbon market, worth $424 million last year, which lacks the binding rules of the Clean Development Mechanism.
Governments like those of Norway, Germany, Britain and the United States have pledged $6.5 billion to help poorer countries develop systems to reduce emissions from deforestation, but that is seen as only a halfway measure. Private-sector involvement will be essential.
Recent studies suggest that between $17 billion and $33 billion per year is needed to achieve a U.N. Environment Program recommendation to halve global emissions from deforestation by 2030.
“We are not going to get the scale of what we need without participation by the private sector,” said Donna Lee, who was the lead U.N. negotiator on REDD for the United States and is now a consultant for the advisory group Climate Focus.
“There is a disconnect between the understanding by countries and negotiators and the private sector of what the private sector needs in order to participate in REDD,” she said.
Don’t ignore climate skeptics – treat them differently
A valuable perspective on the politics of climate change
The Cost of Carbon
The peer-reviewed report finds that the true social cost of carbon is in fact more uncertain than the government’s $21 per ton estimate. The entire range of new estimates arrived at in the report, reaching as high as $893 per ton in 2010 and $1,550 in 2050, are all well above the government’s estimate, bringing into question prior analyses of the benefits of reducing emissions.
Comparing prior research on the cost of reducing emissions with the report’s new findings on the social cost of carbon, the report concludes that it is highly likely it is costing us more to do nothing about climate change than it would to adopt mitigation measures.
Debunking the myth that clean energy and carbon reduction policies aren’t good for ratepayers
Two Troubling Issues
In trying to develop our business plan for a Rhode Island Farmland Fund, I’ve been interrupted today by two friends….with news from other friends…that reinforce two of my biggest cultural anxieties. The first is an excerpt from John Phipps whom I consider a voice of reason in the industrial agriculture community. He is speaking about the current debate on the national debt ceiling:
I think many assume there is a script somewhere and the actors are just peaking the dramatic tension. I do not. I think we are being led by badly misinformed, power-motivated politicians who would just as soon push the economy back into recession on the gamble it would be blamed on their opponent.
Because we really don’t know how this failure would play out, there seems to be a curious sense of “Let’s find out!” floating around DC-wannabees. After all, if it goes very badly there will be plenty of mud to be splashed on everyone, and perhaps more of it will stick to the other guy. If you are currently out of power, there could be a “What do we have to lose?” mentality.
The other was an email from Peter Gengler with a link to an article on global warming driven by the thought of Bill McKibben:
McKibben speaks about the need for radical action on carbon emissions.
Richard Pace 