1 Good Gas, Bad Gas By Marianne Lavelle National Geographic; December, 2012 Burn natural gas and it warms your house. But let it leak, from fracked wells or the melting Arctic, and it warms the whole planet. The last rays of sun filter through the snow-covered spruces along the shore of Goldstream Lake, just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Out on the lake Katey Walter Anthony stares at the black ice beneath her feet and at the white bubbles trapped inside it. Large and small, in layer upon layer, they spread out in every direction, like stars in the night sky. Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, grabs a heavy ice pick and wraps the rope handle around her wrist. A graduate student holds a lighted match above a large bubble; Walter Anthony plunges the pick into it. Gas rushing from the hole ignites with a whoomp that staggers her. “My job’s the worst, because usually you catch on fire,” she says, smiling. In the gathering twilight she and her team ignite one bubble after another. The flames confirm that the bubbles are methane, the main component of natural gas. By counting and measuring them, Walter Anthony is trying to gauge how much methane is rising from Goldstream Lake— and from the millions of similar lakes that now occupy nearly a third of the Arctic region. The Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the planet in recent decades, and as the permafrost has melted, old lakes have grown and new ones have formed. Methane bubbles from their muddy depths in a way that is hard to quantify—until the first clear ice of fall captures a snapshot of the emissions from an entire lake. Sometimes as Walter Anthony walks that ice, in Alaska, Greenland, or Siberia, a stamp of her boot is enough to release an audible sigh. Some lakes, she says, have “hot spots” where the methane bubbling is so strong that ice never forms, leaving open holes big enough to spot from an airplane. “It could be 10 or 30 liters of methane per day from one little hole, and it does that all year,” she says. “And then you realize there are hundreds of spots like that and millions of lakes.” By venting methane into the atmosphere, the lakes are amplifying the global warming that created them: Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is the main one, because the atmosphere holds 200 times as much of it. But a given amount of methane traps at least 25 times as much heat—unless you burn it first. Then it enters the atmosphere as CO₂. That’s the other side of this Jekyll-and-Hyde story: A lot of methane is being burned these days. In the past decade the technology called hydraulic fracturing, “fracking” for short, has enabled drillers in the United States to extract natural gas from deeply buried shales they couldn’t tap before. Natural gas supplies have surged; prices have plummeted. Fracking is now spreading around the world, and it’s controversial. The gas boom has degraded landscapes and polluted water. But it has also had environmental benefits. Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal. In part because American power plants have been switching from coal to cheap gas, U.S. emissions of CO₂ from fossil fuels fell last year, even as the world set another record. The catch is, methane emissions are rising. What’s coming out of Arctic lakes is troubling, Walter Anthony says, because some of it seems to be coming not from bottom mud but from deeper geologic reservoirs that had hitherto been securely capped by permafrost—and that contain hundreds of times more methane than is in the atmosphere now. Still, most methane emissions today come from lower latitudes, and most are related more directly to human activities. A growing amount seems to be leaking, for instance, from gas wells and pipelines. Just how warm Earth gets this century will hinge in part on how we balance the good and bad of methane—on how much of it we capture and burn, and how much we inadvertently let loose.
Transcript
1
Good Gas Bad Gas By Marianne Lavelle National Geographic December 2012 Burn natural gas and it warms your house But let it leak from fracked wells or the melting Arctic and it warms the whole planet The last rays of sun filter through the snow-covered spruces along the shore of Goldstream Lake just outside Fairbanks Alaska Out on the lake Katey Walter Anthony stares at the black ice beneath her feet and at the white bubbles trapped inside it Large and small in layer upon layer they spread out in every direction like stars in the night sky Walter Anthony an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks grabs a heavy ice pick and wraps the rope handle around her wrist A graduate student holds a lighted match above a large bubble Walter Anthony plunges the pick into it
Gas rushing from the hole ignites with a whoomp that staggers her ldquoMy jobrsquos the worst because usually you catch on firerdquo she says smiling In the gathering twilight she and her team ignite one bubble after another
The flames confirm that the bubbles are methane the main component of natural gas By counting and measuring them Walter Anthony is trying to gauge how much methane is rising from Goldstream Lakemdashand from the millions of similar lakes that now occupy nearly a third of the Arctic region The Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the planet in recent decades and as the permafrost has melted old lakes have grown and new ones have formed Methane bubbles from their muddy depths in a way that is hard to quantifymdashuntil the first clear ice of fall captures a snapshot of the emissions from an entire lake
Sometimes as Walter Anthony walks that ice in Alaska Greenland or Siberia a stamp of her boot is enough to release an audible sigh Some lakes she says have ldquohot spotsrdquo where the methane bubbling is so strong that ice never forms leaving open holes big enough to spot from an airplane ldquoIt could be 10 or 30 liters of methane per day from one little hole and it does that all yearrdquo she says ldquoAnd then you realize there are hundreds of spots like that and millions of lakesrdquo By venting methane into the atmosphere the lakes are amplifying the global warming that created them Methane is a potent greenhouse gas Carbon dioxide is the main one because the atmosphere holds 200 times as much of it But a given amount of methane traps at least 25 times as much heatmdashunless you burn it first Then it enters the atmosphere as CO₂
Thatrsquos the other side of this Jekyll-and-Hyde story A lot of methane is being burned these days In the past decade the technology called hydraulic fracturing ldquofrackingrdquo for short has enabled drillers in the United States to extract natural gas from deeply buried shales they couldnrsquot tap before Natural gas supplies have surged prices have plummeted Fracking is now spreading around the world and itrsquos controversial The gas boom has degraded landscapes and polluted water But it has also had environmental benefits Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal In part because American power plants have been switching from coal to cheap gas US emissions of CO₂ from fossil fuels fell last year even as the world set another record
The catch is methane emissions are rising Whatrsquos coming out of Arctic lakes is troubling Walter Anthony says because some of it seems to be coming not from bottom mud but from deeper geologic reservoirs that had hitherto been securely capped by permafrostmdashand that contain hundreds of times more methane than is in the atmosphere now Still most methane emissions today come from lower latitudes and most are related more directly to human activities A growing amount seems to be leaking for instance from gas wells and pipelines Just how warm Earth gets this century will hinge in part on how we balance the good and bad of methanemdashon how much of it we capture and burn and how much we inadvertently let loose
2
Methane is the simplest hydrocarbonmdasha single carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms It usually forms when larger organic molecules are broken down either by microbes or by heat The microbes produce it when they eat dead plant matter in wet oxygen-poor environments Theyrsquore the source of the methane bubbling up from Goldstream Lake from swamps and marshes all over from human-made rice fields landfills and manure lagoons and from the stomachs of cows and other ruminants Termites emit a lot of methane too
Most of the natural gas we tap for fuel however was formed not by microbes but by heat and pressure deep undergroundmdashas oil and coal were and often in the same places In coal mines methane is an explosion hazard in oil fields it was long considered a nuisance to be burned off or worse vented directly into the atmosphere Liquid oil was more valuable as fuel and much easier to transport to markets Then pipelines built during the postndashWorld War II construction boom made gas more transportable The energy industry began to exploit massive natural gas reservoirs in places like Russia Qatar and Iran
The United States produces the bulk of its own gas but US production peaked in 1973 By 2005 the country seemed to be running short and the industry was building expensive new tanker terminals to import liquefied natural gas The fracking boom changed that Since 2005 gas production from deep shales has increased more than tenfold it now accounts for more than a third of total production which last year surpassed the 1973 record Within a decade according to a Department of Energy (DOE) forecast the US will become a net exporter of gas
Estimates of how much gas is locked up in shales and how long the boom can last have varied widely In 2011 DOE put the amount of ldquounproved resourcesrdquo of shale gas at 827 trillion cubic feet in 2012 it cut that estimate by more than 40 percent Production from fracked wells has declined faster than DOE analysts had expected So some critics believe the boom is a bubble that will soon burst But DOE still projects that US gas production will rise rapidly and that shale gas will make up half the total by 2035
And deep shales are not the last methane source DOE and the industry are trying to figure out how to tap the largest one of allmdashthe methane hydrates that lie frozen under vast areas of seafloor and Arctic permafrost Worldwide hydrates may contain more energy than all other fossil fuels combined Theyrsquore usually snow-white and look like ice but theyrsquore strange stuff and extracting the methane is tricky Each molecule is trapped in a cage of water molecules thatrsquos stable only at high pressure and low temperatures change either just a bit and the cage crumbles The escaping methane balloons in volume by a factor of 164
Oil companies working on continental margins have to take care that extracting oil through an overlying hydrate layer does not disrupt it and perhaps damage the well Climate scientists worry that global warming could destabilize hydrate layers on land or at sea triggering a massive methane release that would amplify the warming A few scientists take seriously a catastrophic scenario in which the release happens rapidly within a human lifetime and the planetrsquos temperature spikes
The atmospheric methane concentration has risen nearly 160 percent since preindustrial times to 18 parts per million For a few years from 1999 to about 2006 it seemed to level off Some researchers credit Asian rice farmers who began draining their paddies during the growing season to conserve watermdashwhich reduced methane emissions as well Another theory credits the oil industry which started capturing and selling methane it used to simply vent Since 2006 though atmospheric methane has been rising again Many observers believe itrsquos no coincidence that the number of wells punched into deep shales has been soaring too
3
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India there is a new status symbol on proud display An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations a must-have dowry item
It is cheaper than a car and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run All are potent agents of global warming
Air-conditioning sales are growing 20 percent a year in China and India as middle classes grow units become more affordable and temperatures rise with climate change The potential cooling demands of upwardly mobile Mumbai India alone have been estimated to be a quarter of those of the United States
Air-conditioning gases are regulated primarily though a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol created to protect the ozone layer It has reduced damage to that vital shield which blocks cancer-causing ultraviolet rays by mandating the use of progressively more benign gases The oldest CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer have been largely eliminated from use and the newest ones used widely in industrialized nations have little or no effect on it
But these gases have an impact the ozone treaty largely ignores Pound for pound they contribute to global warming thousands of times more than does carbon dioxide the standard greenhouse gas
The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050
So the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another ldquoThere is precious little time to do something to actrdquo said Stephen O Andersen the co-chairman of the treatyrsquos technical and economic advisory panel
The numbers are all moving in the wrong direction
Atmospheric concentrations of the gases that replaced CFCs known as HCFCs which are mildly damaging to the ozone are still rising rapidly at a time when many scientists anticipated they should have been falling as the treaty is phasing them out The levels of these gases the mainstay of booming air-conditioning sectors in the developing world have more than doubled in the past two decades to record highs according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
And concentrations of the newer ozone-friendly gases are also rising meteorically because industrialized countries began switching to them a decade ago New room air-conditioners in the United States now use an HFC coolant called 410a labeled ldquoenvironmentally friendlyrdquo because it spares the ozone But its warming effect is 2100 times that of carbon dioxide And the treaty cannot control the rise of these coolants because it regulates only ozone-depleting gases
4
The treaty timetable requires dozens of developing countries including China and India to also begin switching next year from HCFCs to gases with less impact on the ozone But the United States and other wealthy nations are prodding them to choose ones that do not warm the planet This week in Rio de Janeiro Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is attending the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development also known as Rio+20 where proposals to gradually eliminate HFCs for their warming effect are on the provisional agenda
But she faces resistance because the United States is essentially telling the other nations to do what it has not to leapfrog this generation of coolants The trouble is there are currently no readily available commercial ozone-friendly alternatives for air-conditioners that do not also have a strong warming effect mdash though there are many on the horizon
Nearly all chemical and air-conditioning companies mdash including DuPont the American chemical giant and Daikin one of Japanrsquos leading appliance manufacturers mdash have developed air-conditioning appliances and gases that do not contribute to global warming Companies have even erected factories to produce them
But these products require regulatory approvals before they can be sold and the development of new safety standards because the gases in them are often flammable or toxic And with profits booming from current cooling systems and no effective regulation of HFCs there is little incentive for countries or companies to move the new designs to market
ldquoThere are no good solutions right now mdash thatrsquos why countries are grappling tapping in the darkrdquo said Rajendra Shende the recently retired head of the Paris-based United Nations ozone program who now runs the Terre Policy Center in Pune India
An Unanticipated Problem
The 25-year-old Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever essentially eliminating the use of CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer Under its terms wealthier countries shift away from each harmful gas first and developing countries follow a decade or more later so that replacement technologies can be perfected and fall in price
Concentrations of CFC-12 which had been growing rapidly since the 1960s have tapered off since 2003 thanks to the treatyrsquos strict phaseout schedule In 2006 NASA scientists concluded that the ozone layer was on the mend
But that sense of victory has been eclipsed by the potentially disastrous growth in emissions from the newer air-conditioning gases While a healthier ozone layer itself leads to some warming far more warming results from the tendency of these coolant gases to reflect back heat radiating off the Earth
When the treaty set its rules in the mid-1980s global warming was poorly understood the cooling industry was anchored in the West and demand for cooling was minuscule in developing nations
That has clearly changed Jayshree Punjabi a 40-year-old from Surat was shopping for an air-conditioner at Vijay Sales in Mumbai on a recent afternoon She bought her first one 10 years ago and now has three ldquoNow almost every home in Surat has more than onerdquo she said ldquoThe children see them on television and demand themrdquo
5
Refrigeration is also essential for these countriesrsquo shifting food supplies ldquoWhen I was a kid in Delhi veggies came from vendors on the street now they all come from the supermarketrdquo said Atul Bagai an Indian citizen who is the United Nations ozone programrsquos coordinator for South Asia
In 2011 55 percent of new air-conditioning units were sold in the Asia Pacific region and the industryrsquos production has moved there Last year China built more than 70 percent of the worldrsquos household air-conditioners for domestic use and export The most common coolant gas is HCFC-22 In 2010 China produced about seven times the amount of that gas as the United States
With inexpensive HCFC-22 from Asia flooding the market efforts to curb or eliminate its use have been undercut even in the United States For example although American law now forbids the sale of new air-conditioners containing HCFC stores have started selling empty components that can be filled with the cheap gas after installation enabling its continued use
An Alert on Ocean Acidity By John Collins Rudolf New York Times December 8 2010
Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the worlds oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people according to a new United Nations report
Roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the combustion of fossil fuels enters the oceans and as the gas dissolves in seawater it changes into carbonic acid One result has been a rapid alteration in ocean chemistry that is already affecting marine organisms
The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution At current emission rates ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century the report states
Marine life and coral reefs have already shown vulnerability to rising levels of acidity and the changes expected in coming decades are severe enough that they could have a serious impact on the ability of people around the world to harvest needed protein from the seas according to Carol Turley senior scientist at Britains National Oceanography Center and the lead author of the report
We need to start thinking about the risk to food security Dr Turley said in a statement
The report also warns that the rise in ocean acidity poses a severe threat to coral reefs which are already under stress from pollution and the warming of oceans -- a concern shared by a growing number of marine scientists
Acidification could conceivably wipe out most of the worlds already ailing coral reefs within a generation or two said John Veron former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in an essay posted this week on the Web site Yale Environment 360
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
2
Methane is the simplest hydrocarbonmdasha single carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms It usually forms when larger organic molecules are broken down either by microbes or by heat The microbes produce it when they eat dead plant matter in wet oxygen-poor environments Theyrsquore the source of the methane bubbling up from Goldstream Lake from swamps and marshes all over from human-made rice fields landfills and manure lagoons and from the stomachs of cows and other ruminants Termites emit a lot of methane too
Most of the natural gas we tap for fuel however was formed not by microbes but by heat and pressure deep undergroundmdashas oil and coal were and often in the same places In coal mines methane is an explosion hazard in oil fields it was long considered a nuisance to be burned off or worse vented directly into the atmosphere Liquid oil was more valuable as fuel and much easier to transport to markets Then pipelines built during the postndashWorld War II construction boom made gas more transportable The energy industry began to exploit massive natural gas reservoirs in places like Russia Qatar and Iran
The United States produces the bulk of its own gas but US production peaked in 1973 By 2005 the country seemed to be running short and the industry was building expensive new tanker terminals to import liquefied natural gas The fracking boom changed that Since 2005 gas production from deep shales has increased more than tenfold it now accounts for more than a third of total production which last year surpassed the 1973 record Within a decade according to a Department of Energy (DOE) forecast the US will become a net exporter of gas
Estimates of how much gas is locked up in shales and how long the boom can last have varied widely In 2011 DOE put the amount of ldquounproved resourcesrdquo of shale gas at 827 trillion cubic feet in 2012 it cut that estimate by more than 40 percent Production from fracked wells has declined faster than DOE analysts had expected So some critics believe the boom is a bubble that will soon burst But DOE still projects that US gas production will rise rapidly and that shale gas will make up half the total by 2035
And deep shales are not the last methane source DOE and the industry are trying to figure out how to tap the largest one of allmdashthe methane hydrates that lie frozen under vast areas of seafloor and Arctic permafrost Worldwide hydrates may contain more energy than all other fossil fuels combined Theyrsquore usually snow-white and look like ice but theyrsquore strange stuff and extracting the methane is tricky Each molecule is trapped in a cage of water molecules thatrsquos stable only at high pressure and low temperatures change either just a bit and the cage crumbles The escaping methane balloons in volume by a factor of 164
Oil companies working on continental margins have to take care that extracting oil through an overlying hydrate layer does not disrupt it and perhaps damage the well Climate scientists worry that global warming could destabilize hydrate layers on land or at sea triggering a massive methane release that would amplify the warming A few scientists take seriously a catastrophic scenario in which the release happens rapidly within a human lifetime and the planetrsquos temperature spikes
The atmospheric methane concentration has risen nearly 160 percent since preindustrial times to 18 parts per million For a few years from 1999 to about 2006 it seemed to level off Some researchers credit Asian rice farmers who began draining their paddies during the growing season to conserve watermdashwhich reduced methane emissions as well Another theory credits the oil industry which started capturing and selling methane it used to simply vent Since 2006 though atmospheric methane has been rising again Many observers believe itrsquos no coincidence that the number of wells punched into deep shales has been soaring too
3
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India there is a new status symbol on proud display An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations a must-have dowry item
It is cheaper than a car and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run All are potent agents of global warming
Air-conditioning sales are growing 20 percent a year in China and India as middle classes grow units become more affordable and temperatures rise with climate change The potential cooling demands of upwardly mobile Mumbai India alone have been estimated to be a quarter of those of the United States
Air-conditioning gases are regulated primarily though a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol created to protect the ozone layer It has reduced damage to that vital shield which blocks cancer-causing ultraviolet rays by mandating the use of progressively more benign gases The oldest CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer have been largely eliminated from use and the newest ones used widely in industrialized nations have little or no effect on it
But these gases have an impact the ozone treaty largely ignores Pound for pound they contribute to global warming thousands of times more than does carbon dioxide the standard greenhouse gas
The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050
So the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another ldquoThere is precious little time to do something to actrdquo said Stephen O Andersen the co-chairman of the treatyrsquos technical and economic advisory panel
The numbers are all moving in the wrong direction
Atmospheric concentrations of the gases that replaced CFCs known as HCFCs which are mildly damaging to the ozone are still rising rapidly at a time when many scientists anticipated they should have been falling as the treaty is phasing them out The levels of these gases the mainstay of booming air-conditioning sectors in the developing world have more than doubled in the past two decades to record highs according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
And concentrations of the newer ozone-friendly gases are also rising meteorically because industrialized countries began switching to them a decade ago New room air-conditioners in the United States now use an HFC coolant called 410a labeled ldquoenvironmentally friendlyrdquo because it spares the ozone But its warming effect is 2100 times that of carbon dioxide And the treaty cannot control the rise of these coolants because it regulates only ozone-depleting gases
4
The treaty timetable requires dozens of developing countries including China and India to also begin switching next year from HCFCs to gases with less impact on the ozone But the United States and other wealthy nations are prodding them to choose ones that do not warm the planet This week in Rio de Janeiro Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is attending the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development also known as Rio+20 where proposals to gradually eliminate HFCs for their warming effect are on the provisional agenda
But she faces resistance because the United States is essentially telling the other nations to do what it has not to leapfrog this generation of coolants The trouble is there are currently no readily available commercial ozone-friendly alternatives for air-conditioners that do not also have a strong warming effect mdash though there are many on the horizon
Nearly all chemical and air-conditioning companies mdash including DuPont the American chemical giant and Daikin one of Japanrsquos leading appliance manufacturers mdash have developed air-conditioning appliances and gases that do not contribute to global warming Companies have even erected factories to produce them
But these products require regulatory approvals before they can be sold and the development of new safety standards because the gases in them are often flammable or toxic And with profits booming from current cooling systems and no effective regulation of HFCs there is little incentive for countries or companies to move the new designs to market
ldquoThere are no good solutions right now mdash thatrsquos why countries are grappling tapping in the darkrdquo said Rajendra Shende the recently retired head of the Paris-based United Nations ozone program who now runs the Terre Policy Center in Pune India
An Unanticipated Problem
The 25-year-old Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever essentially eliminating the use of CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer Under its terms wealthier countries shift away from each harmful gas first and developing countries follow a decade or more later so that replacement technologies can be perfected and fall in price
Concentrations of CFC-12 which had been growing rapidly since the 1960s have tapered off since 2003 thanks to the treatyrsquos strict phaseout schedule In 2006 NASA scientists concluded that the ozone layer was on the mend
But that sense of victory has been eclipsed by the potentially disastrous growth in emissions from the newer air-conditioning gases While a healthier ozone layer itself leads to some warming far more warming results from the tendency of these coolant gases to reflect back heat radiating off the Earth
When the treaty set its rules in the mid-1980s global warming was poorly understood the cooling industry was anchored in the West and demand for cooling was minuscule in developing nations
That has clearly changed Jayshree Punjabi a 40-year-old from Surat was shopping for an air-conditioner at Vijay Sales in Mumbai on a recent afternoon She bought her first one 10 years ago and now has three ldquoNow almost every home in Surat has more than onerdquo she said ldquoThe children see them on television and demand themrdquo
5
Refrigeration is also essential for these countriesrsquo shifting food supplies ldquoWhen I was a kid in Delhi veggies came from vendors on the street now they all come from the supermarketrdquo said Atul Bagai an Indian citizen who is the United Nations ozone programrsquos coordinator for South Asia
In 2011 55 percent of new air-conditioning units were sold in the Asia Pacific region and the industryrsquos production has moved there Last year China built more than 70 percent of the worldrsquos household air-conditioners for domestic use and export The most common coolant gas is HCFC-22 In 2010 China produced about seven times the amount of that gas as the United States
With inexpensive HCFC-22 from Asia flooding the market efforts to curb or eliminate its use have been undercut even in the United States For example although American law now forbids the sale of new air-conditioners containing HCFC stores have started selling empty components that can be filled with the cheap gas after installation enabling its continued use
An Alert on Ocean Acidity By John Collins Rudolf New York Times December 8 2010
Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the worlds oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people according to a new United Nations report
Roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the combustion of fossil fuels enters the oceans and as the gas dissolves in seawater it changes into carbonic acid One result has been a rapid alteration in ocean chemistry that is already affecting marine organisms
The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution At current emission rates ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century the report states
Marine life and coral reefs have already shown vulnerability to rising levels of acidity and the changes expected in coming decades are severe enough that they could have a serious impact on the ability of people around the world to harvest needed protein from the seas according to Carol Turley senior scientist at Britains National Oceanography Center and the lead author of the report
We need to start thinking about the risk to food security Dr Turley said in a statement
The report also warns that the rise in ocean acidity poses a severe threat to coral reefs which are already under stress from pollution and the warming of oceans -- a concern shared by a growing number of marine scientists
Acidification could conceivably wipe out most of the worlds already ailing coral reefs within a generation or two said John Veron former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in an essay posted this week on the Web site Yale Environment 360
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
3
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India there is a new status symbol on proud display An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations a must-have dowry item
It is cheaper than a car and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run All are potent agents of global warming
Air-conditioning sales are growing 20 percent a year in China and India as middle classes grow units become more affordable and temperatures rise with climate change The potential cooling demands of upwardly mobile Mumbai India alone have been estimated to be a quarter of those of the United States
Air-conditioning gases are regulated primarily though a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol created to protect the ozone layer It has reduced damage to that vital shield which blocks cancer-causing ultraviolet rays by mandating the use of progressively more benign gases The oldest CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer have been largely eliminated from use and the newest ones used widely in industrialized nations have little or no effect on it
But these gases have an impact the ozone treaty largely ignores Pound for pound they contribute to global warming thousands of times more than does carbon dioxide the standard greenhouse gas
The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050
So the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another ldquoThere is precious little time to do something to actrdquo said Stephen O Andersen the co-chairman of the treatyrsquos technical and economic advisory panel
The numbers are all moving in the wrong direction
Atmospheric concentrations of the gases that replaced CFCs known as HCFCs which are mildly damaging to the ozone are still rising rapidly at a time when many scientists anticipated they should have been falling as the treaty is phasing them out The levels of these gases the mainstay of booming air-conditioning sectors in the developing world have more than doubled in the past two decades to record highs according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
And concentrations of the newer ozone-friendly gases are also rising meteorically because industrialized countries began switching to them a decade ago New room air-conditioners in the United States now use an HFC coolant called 410a labeled ldquoenvironmentally friendlyrdquo because it spares the ozone But its warming effect is 2100 times that of carbon dioxide And the treaty cannot control the rise of these coolants because it regulates only ozone-depleting gases
4
The treaty timetable requires dozens of developing countries including China and India to also begin switching next year from HCFCs to gases with less impact on the ozone But the United States and other wealthy nations are prodding them to choose ones that do not warm the planet This week in Rio de Janeiro Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is attending the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development also known as Rio+20 where proposals to gradually eliminate HFCs for their warming effect are on the provisional agenda
But she faces resistance because the United States is essentially telling the other nations to do what it has not to leapfrog this generation of coolants The trouble is there are currently no readily available commercial ozone-friendly alternatives for air-conditioners that do not also have a strong warming effect mdash though there are many on the horizon
Nearly all chemical and air-conditioning companies mdash including DuPont the American chemical giant and Daikin one of Japanrsquos leading appliance manufacturers mdash have developed air-conditioning appliances and gases that do not contribute to global warming Companies have even erected factories to produce them
But these products require regulatory approvals before they can be sold and the development of new safety standards because the gases in them are often flammable or toxic And with profits booming from current cooling systems and no effective regulation of HFCs there is little incentive for countries or companies to move the new designs to market
ldquoThere are no good solutions right now mdash thatrsquos why countries are grappling tapping in the darkrdquo said Rajendra Shende the recently retired head of the Paris-based United Nations ozone program who now runs the Terre Policy Center in Pune India
An Unanticipated Problem
The 25-year-old Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever essentially eliminating the use of CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer Under its terms wealthier countries shift away from each harmful gas first and developing countries follow a decade or more later so that replacement technologies can be perfected and fall in price
Concentrations of CFC-12 which had been growing rapidly since the 1960s have tapered off since 2003 thanks to the treatyrsquos strict phaseout schedule In 2006 NASA scientists concluded that the ozone layer was on the mend
But that sense of victory has been eclipsed by the potentially disastrous growth in emissions from the newer air-conditioning gases While a healthier ozone layer itself leads to some warming far more warming results from the tendency of these coolant gases to reflect back heat radiating off the Earth
When the treaty set its rules in the mid-1980s global warming was poorly understood the cooling industry was anchored in the West and demand for cooling was minuscule in developing nations
That has clearly changed Jayshree Punjabi a 40-year-old from Surat was shopping for an air-conditioner at Vijay Sales in Mumbai on a recent afternoon She bought her first one 10 years ago and now has three ldquoNow almost every home in Surat has more than onerdquo she said ldquoThe children see them on television and demand themrdquo
5
Refrigeration is also essential for these countriesrsquo shifting food supplies ldquoWhen I was a kid in Delhi veggies came from vendors on the street now they all come from the supermarketrdquo said Atul Bagai an Indian citizen who is the United Nations ozone programrsquos coordinator for South Asia
In 2011 55 percent of new air-conditioning units were sold in the Asia Pacific region and the industryrsquos production has moved there Last year China built more than 70 percent of the worldrsquos household air-conditioners for domestic use and export The most common coolant gas is HCFC-22 In 2010 China produced about seven times the amount of that gas as the United States
With inexpensive HCFC-22 from Asia flooding the market efforts to curb or eliminate its use have been undercut even in the United States For example although American law now forbids the sale of new air-conditioners containing HCFC stores have started selling empty components that can be filled with the cheap gas after installation enabling its continued use
An Alert on Ocean Acidity By John Collins Rudolf New York Times December 8 2010
Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the worlds oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people according to a new United Nations report
Roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the combustion of fossil fuels enters the oceans and as the gas dissolves in seawater it changes into carbonic acid One result has been a rapid alteration in ocean chemistry that is already affecting marine organisms
The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution At current emission rates ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century the report states
Marine life and coral reefs have already shown vulnerability to rising levels of acidity and the changes expected in coming decades are severe enough that they could have a serious impact on the ability of people around the world to harvest needed protein from the seas according to Carol Turley senior scientist at Britains National Oceanography Center and the lead author of the report
We need to start thinking about the risk to food security Dr Turley said in a statement
The report also warns that the rise in ocean acidity poses a severe threat to coral reefs which are already under stress from pollution and the warming of oceans -- a concern shared by a growing number of marine scientists
Acidification could conceivably wipe out most of the worlds already ailing coral reefs within a generation or two said John Veron former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in an essay posted this week on the Web site Yale Environment 360
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
4
The treaty timetable requires dozens of developing countries including China and India to also begin switching next year from HCFCs to gases with less impact on the ozone But the United States and other wealthy nations are prodding them to choose ones that do not warm the planet This week in Rio de Janeiro Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is attending the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development also known as Rio+20 where proposals to gradually eliminate HFCs for their warming effect are on the provisional agenda
But she faces resistance because the United States is essentially telling the other nations to do what it has not to leapfrog this generation of coolants The trouble is there are currently no readily available commercial ozone-friendly alternatives for air-conditioners that do not also have a strong warming effect mdash though there are many on the horizon
Nearly all chemical and air-conditioning companies mdash including DuPont the American chemical giant and Daikin one of Japanrsquos leading appliance manufacturers mdash have developed air-conditioning appliances and gases that do not contribute to global warming Companies have even erected factories to produce them
But these products require regulatory approvals before they can be sold and the development of new safety standards because the gases in them are often flammable or toxic And with profits booming from current cooling systems and no effective regulation of HFCs there is little incentive for countries or companies to move the new designs to market
ldquoThere are no good solutions right now mdash thatrsquos why countries are grappling tapping in the darkrdquo said Rajendra Shende the recently retired head of the Paris-based United Nations ozone program who now runs the Terre Policy Center in Pune India
An Unanticipated Problem
The 25-year-old Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever essentially eliminating the use of CFC coolants which are highly damaging to the ozone layer Under its terms wealthier countries shift away from each harmful gas first and developing countries follow a decade or more later so that replacement technologies can be perfected and fall in price
Concentrations of CFC-12 which had been growing rapidly since the 1960s have tapered off since 2003 thanks to the treatyrsquos strict phaseout schedule In 2006 NASA scientists concluded that the ozone layer was on the mend
But that sense of victory has been eclipsed by the potentially disastrous growth in emissions from the newer air-conditioning gases While a healthier ozone layer itself leads to some warming far more warming results from the tendency of these coolant gases to reflect back heat radiating off the Earth
When the treaty set its rules in the mid-1980s global warming was poorly understood the cooling industry was anchored in the West and demand for cooling was minuscule in developing nations
That has clearly changed Jayshree Punjabi a 40-year-old from Surat was shopping for an air-conditioner at Vijay Sales in Mumbai on a recent afternoon She bought her first one 10 years ago and now has three ldquoNow almost every home in Surat has more than onerdquo she said ldquoThe children see them on television and demand themrdquo
5
Refrigeration is also essential for these countriesrsquo shifting food supplies ldquoWhen I was a kid in Delhi veggies came from vendors on the street now they all come from the supermarketrdquo said Atul Bagai an Indian citizen who is the United Nations ozone programrsquos coordinator for South Asia
In 2011 55 percent of new air-conditioning units were sold in the Asia Pacific region and the industryrsquos production has moved there Last year China built more than 70 percent of the worldrsquos household air-conditioners for domestic use and export The most common coolant gas is HCFC-22 In 2010 China produced about seven times the amount of that gas as the United States
With inexpensive HCFC-22 from Asia flooding the market efforts to curb or eliminate its use have been undercut even in the United States For example although American law now forbids the sale of new air-conditioners containing HCFC stores have started selling empty components that can be filled with the cheap gas after installation enabling its continued use
An Alert on Ocean Acidity By John Collins Rudolf New York Times December 8 2010
Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the worlds oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people according to a new United Nations report
Roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the combustion of fossil fuels enters the oceans and as the gas dissolves in seawater it changes into carbonic acid One result has been a rapid alteration in ocean chemistry that is already affecting marine organisms
The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution At current emission rates ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century the report states
Marine life and coral reefs have already shown vulnerability to rising levels of acidity and the changes expected in coming decades are severe enough that they could have a serious impact on the ability of people around the world to harvest needed protein from the seas according to Carol Turley senior scientist at Britains National Oceanography Center and the lead author of the report
We need to start thinking about the risk to food security Dr Turley said in a statement
The report also warns that the rise in ocean acidity poses a severe threat to coral reefs which are already under stress from pollution and the warming of oceans -- a concern shared by a growing number of marine scientists
Acidification could conceivably wipe out most of the worlds already ailing coral reefs within a generation or two said John Veron former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in an essay posted this week on the Web site Yale Environment 360
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
5
Refrigeration is also essential for these countriesrsquo shifting food supplies ldquoWhen I was a kid in Delhi veggies came from vendors on the street now they all come from the supermarketrdquo said Atul Bagai an Indian citizen who is the United Nations ozone programrsquos coordinator for South Asia
In 2011 55 percent of new air-conditioning units were sold in the Asia Pacific region and the industryrsquos production has moved there Last year China built more than 70 percent of the worldrsquos household air-conditioners for domestic use and export The most common coolant gas is HCFC-22 In 2010 China produced about seven times the amount of that gas as the United States
With inexpensive HCFC-22 from Asia flooding the market efforts to curb or eliminate its use have been undercut even in the United States For example although American law now forbids the sale of new air-conditioners containing HCFC stores have started selling empty components that can be filled with the cheap gas after installation enabling its continued use
An Alert on Ocean Acidity By John Collins Rudolf New York Times December 8 2010
Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the worlds oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people according to a new United Nations report
Roughly 25 percent of the carbon dioxide generated by the combustion of fossil fuels enters the oceans and as the gas dissolves in seawater it changes into carbonic acid One result has been a rapid alteration in ocean chemistry that is already affecting marine organisms
The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution At current emission rates ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century the report states
Marine life and coral reefs have already shown vulnerability to rising levels of acidity and the changes expected in coming decades are severe enough that they could have a serious impact on the ability of people around the world to harvest needed protein from the seas according to Carol Turley senior scientist at Britains National Oceanography Center and the lead author of the report
We need to start thinking about the risk to food security Dr Turley said in a statement
The report also warns that the rise in ocean acidity poses a severe threat to coral reefs which are already under stress from pollution and the warming of oceans -- a concern shared by a growing number of marine scientists
Acidification could conceivably wipe out most of the worlds already ailing coral reefs within a generation or two said John Veron former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in an essay posted this week on the Web site Yale Environment 360
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
6
The potential consequences of such acidification are nothing less than catastrophic Dr Veron wrote
As acidification continues coral and marine organisms like shellfish will begin to suffer from osteoporosis -- an inability to fix calcium into shells and other structures
No doubt different species of coral coralline algae plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates Dr Veron wrote But as acidification progresses they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis
The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion the article continues What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime and they will stay that way
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally
By David Biello Scientific American Thursday January 12 2012 | 57
Humanity has done little to address climate change Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010 The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020 Fortunately theres an alternativemdashcurbing the other greenhouse gases
Specifically in the case of rapid action to slow catastrophic climate change the best alternatives appear to be methane and black carbon (otherwise known as soot) A new economic and scientific analysis published in Science on January 13 of the benefits of cutting these two greenhouse gases finds the benefits to be manifoldmdashfrom human health to increased agricultural yields
Even better by analyzing some 400 potential soot- and methane-emission control measures the international team of researchers found that just 14 deliver nearly 90 percent of the potential benefits Bonus the 14 steps also restrain global warming by roughly 05 degree Celsius by 2050 according to computer modeling
Thats because both methane and black carbon only remain in the atmosphere for a short time compared with CO2 As atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said of such efforts to reduce atmospheric soot a few years ago If the world pays attention and puts resources to it we will see an effect immediately Im talking weeks at most a few months not decades or centuries
The 14 measures that would immediately slow global warming are
mdashEliminate methane releases from coal minesmdashparticularly in Chinamdashby capturing it and burning it mdashEliminate the venting or accidental release of methane co-produced by oil drilling (and of course gas drilling itself) particularly in Africa the Middle East and Russia mdashCapture gas from landfills in the US and China as well as promote recycling and composting of biodegradable trash mdashOccasionally aerate flooded rice paddies to prevent the growth of methane-producing microbes mdashStop leaks from natural gas pipelines particularly in Russia
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
7
mdashUse bio-digestersmdashvessels in which microbes break down manure into gasmdashto cut methane from livestock globally mdashUpdate wastewater treatment plants to capture methane mdashFilter the soot produced by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel in vehicles and attempt to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles entirely mdashReplace indoor cooking and heating fires with clean-burning cook stoves fired either by wood manure or other biomass or even better methane mdashReplace traditional brick kilns with more advanced firing methods mdashReplace traditional ovens for turning coal to coke with modern technologies mdashBan the open burning of crop stubble and other agricultural waste
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700000 and 47 million premature deaths (largely from smoky unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground-level ozone otherwise known as smog which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil China India the US and elsewhere) In addition the economic analysis suggests that many of these measures provide more value in benefits than they cost to implement
Finally the really good news is that every single one of the required technologies already exist and are being used in various parts of the world For example Senegal has switched virtually its entire population from traditional stoves to modern ones so it can be done climate scientist Drew Shindell of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies lead author of the study wrote in an e-mail It is simply a matter of global adoption or as the United Nations Environment Programme put it in a similar analysis last year much wider and more rapid implementation is required to achieve the full benefits
In addition to saving lives stopping soot may also preserve endangered ecosystems such as the mountain glaciers of the Himalayas and Karakoram or Arctic sea ice In fact the computer modeling suggests cutting black carbon could forestall as much as two thirds of the warming in the Arcticmdashthe fastest warming region of the globemdashover the next 30 years Even more significantly (from the human perspective) eliminating the atmospheric smut known as the Asian brown cloud could help maintain the monsoon patterns that bring water to India while reducing drought risk in places like the Sahel
This doesnt mean that humanity would not have to deal with CO2 emissionsmdashand would not be storing up future trouble by continuing to emit at our present pacemdashbut it would buy time and perhaps even more importantly significantly reduce the chances of catastrophic climate change Adding in cuts in yet more non-CO2 greenhouse gasesmdashlike the hydrofluorocarbons currently being phased out under the terms of the Montreal Protocol to eliminate the ozone holemdashwill also help These are things to do in addition to but not instead of reducing CO2 emissions Shindell emphasized
So why isnt this happening already First and foremost it ismdashin some parts of the world at least But short-term cost considerations institutional structures and even societal priorities can stand in the way For example limited budgets might keep a municipality from installing methane capture at the local landfill in the US Or an oil company might refrain from investing in similar methane capture at its wells because it can make more money investing in opening a new field instead In poor places it really can be a lack of the upfront costs Shindell added Theres also the not insignificant challenge of implementing such solutions globallymdashotherwise known as the problem of scalemdashas well as overcoming the reasons of engaging in traditional practices such as burning the residue in agricultural fields to increase fertility in the first place
But theres a more fundamental reason for the inertia according to the researchers who note that the benefits would not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs That also explains our inaction on climate change generally Or as Shindell noted Its not trivial to get this donemdasheven if its beneficial for society as a whole
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
8
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
RANJIT NAGAR India mdash When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change it established what seemed a sensible system
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere The more dangerous the gas the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide but could earn more than 11000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect The credits could be sold on international markets earning tens of millions of dollars a year
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high mdash a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty but the effort has been a struggle
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases That means critics say that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage
The United Nations and the European Union through new rules and an outright ban are trying to undo this unintended bonanza But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky even risky
China and India where most of the 19 factories are have been resisting mightily The manufacturers have grown accustomed to an income stream that in some years accounted for half their profits The windfall has enhanced their power and influence As a result many environmental experts fear that if manufacturers are not paid to destroy the waste gas they will simply resume releasing it into the atmosphere
A battle is brewing Disgusted with the payments the European Union has announced that as of next year it will no longer accept the so-called waste gas credits from companies in its carbon trading system mdash by far the largest in the world mdash essentially declaring them counterfeit currency That is expected to erode their value but no one is sure by how much
ldquoConsumers in Europe want to know that if theyrsquore paying for carbon credits they will have good environmental effects mdash and these donrsquotrdquo Connie Hedegaard the European commissioner for climate action said in an interview
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
9
Likewise the United Nations is reducing the number of credits the coolant companies can collect in future contracts But critics say the revised payment schedule is still excessive and will have little immediate effect since the subsidy is governed by long-term contracts many of which do not expire for years
Even raising the possibility of trimming future payments ldquowas politically hardrdquo said Martin Hession the immediate past chairman of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanismrsquos executive board which awards the credits China and India both have representatives on the panel and the new chairman Maosheng Duan is Chinese
Carbon trading has become so essential to companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited which owns a coolant plant in this remote corner of Gujarat State in northwest India that carbon credits are listed as a business on the company Web site Each plant has probably earned on average $20 million to $40 million a year from simply destroying waste gas says David Hanrahan the technical director of IDEAcarbon a leading carbon market consulting firm He says the income is ldquolargely pure profitrdquo
And each plant expects to be paid Some Chinese producers have said that if the payments were to end they would vent gas skyward Such releases are illegal in most developed countries but still permissible in China and India
As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years it relied on a scientific formula Carbon dioxide the most prevalent warming gas released by smokestacks and vehicles is given a value of 1 Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that based on their warming effect and how long they linger Methane is valued at 21 nitrous oxide at 310 HFC-23 the waste gas produced making the worldrsquos most common coolant mdash which is known as HCFC-22 mdash is near the top of the list at 11700
The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits which they are then free to sell on global trading markets Buyers of the credits include power plants that need to offset emissions that exceed European limits countries buying offsets to comply with the Kyoto Protocol mdash an international environmental treaty mdash and some environmentally conscious companies that voluntarily offset their carbon footprint
Since the United Nations program began 46 percent of all credits have been awarded to the 19 coolant factories in Argentina China India Mexico and South Korea Two Russian plants receive carbon credits for destroying HFC-23 under a related United Nations program
ldquoI was a climate negotiator and no one had this in mindrdquo said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council ldquoIt turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it It turned the economics of the business on its headrdquo
Destroying the waste gas is cheap and simple but it is hard to know exactly how much any one company has earned from doing so since the market price for carbon credits has varied considerably with demand mdash from about $9 to nearly $40 per credit mdash and they can be sold at a discount through futures contracts
The production of coolants was so driven by the lure of carbon credits for waste gas that in the first few years more than half of the plants operated only until they had produced the maximum amount of gas eligible for the carbon credit subsidy then shut down until the next year United Nations reports said The plants also used inefficient manufacturing processes to generate as much waste gas as possible said
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
10
Samuel LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency an organization based in Washington that has long spearheaded a campaign against what he called ldquoan incredibly perverse subsidyrdquo
Michael Wara a law professor at Stanford University has calculated that in years when carbon credits were trading at high prices and coolant was dirt-cheap because of the oversupply companies were earning nearly twice as much from the credits as from producing the coolant itself
The United Nations recognizing the temptation for companies to jump into the lucrative business has refused since 2007 to award carbon credits to any new factories destroying the waste gas And last November it announced that in contract renewals factories could claim credits for waste gas equivalent only to 1 percent of their coolant production down from 3 percent The United Nations believes that eliminates the incentive to overproduce said Mr Hession the former Clean Development Mechanism board chairman
Even with these adjustments credits for destroying waste gas this year remain the most common type in the United Nations system which rewards companies for reducing all types of warming emissions Eighteen percent of credits in 2012 will go to the 19 coolant plants compared with 12 percent to 2372 wind power plants and 02 percent for 312 solar projects for the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the clean energy they produce
In India coolant plants received about half of the United Nations carbon credits awarded to companies in that country for destroying their waste gas during the systemrsquos first five years They accrued the power and money to fight efforts to roll back the subsidy
Compared with Indian representatives Chinese diplomats have shown greater willingness at international meetings to consider altering the subsidy for waste gas credits said Stephen O Andersen a former United States Environmental Protection Agency official who is now with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington That is because China has a more centrally controlled economy and because it is developing an industry based on newer coolants ldquoItrsquos easier for them to put the national interest before the interest of one manufacturing sectorrdquo he said
A bigger question is just how much the European Unionrsquos decision to disallow as of next year the waste gas credits in its immense carbon trading system will decrease their value
Banks and companies holding such credits have been rushing to cash them in or sell them And the potential devaluation of the carbon credits has an impact in other industrialized nations since the carbon credit projects involve foreign sponsors and investors who sometimes received carbon credits in exchange for services or financing
A coolant factory in Monterrey Mexico that receives carbon credits is 49 percent owned by Honeywell Goldman Sachs bought many of its carbon credits
Such credits are likely to have some continued value because they can be used in other environmental programs that allow their use like voluntary ones through which companies offset the emissions generated by having a conference or travelers opt to pay a fee to offset the emissions from an airplane flight
Mr LaBudde of the Environmental Investigation Agency who has long campaigned against the subsidy said he hoped that no one would buy these ldquotoxicrdquo credits that ldquohave no place in carbon marketsrdquo and that they would quickly disappear In its latest annual report Gujarat Fluorochemicals acknowledged that its
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
11
carbon credits ldquomay not have a significant marketrdquo starting next year because European companies have previously been their primary buyers
Mr Hanrahan of IDEAcarbon said that the credits could at the very least be sold at a low price to traders who see the possibility for marginal profit in a way similar to the market for junk bonds Even if all the proposals to make the carbon trade far less valuable succeeded the 19 factories certified to generate carbon credits by destroying the waste gas could earn $1 billion from that business over the next eight years according to projections by IDEAcarbon
And even as the economics shift one big environmental question remains Without some form of inducement will companies like Gujarat Fluorochemicals continue to destroy the waste gas HFC-23 Already a small number of coolant factories in China that did not qualify for the United Nations carbon credits freely vent this dangerous chemical And atmospheric levels are rapidly rising
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
12
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
13
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
14
Relief in Every Window but Global Worry Too
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times June 20 2012
An Alert on Ocean Acidity
How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane
Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas
by Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew W Lehren New York Times August 8 2012
