Madness upon madness

Another battle was being fought on Thursday over the future of offsetting.

There is a proposal that carbon capture and storage should be included in the Clean Development Mechanism – the scheme through which rich countries 'offset' their emissions.

If it happened, this would mean a coal power station in the UK, which lets all its emissions go into the atmosphere, could pay for a coal power station in a developing country to capture and store its carbon dioxide emissions.

India and Jamaica pointed out that carbon capture and storage does not yet exist on any large power station anywhere in the world.

Grenada mentioned that captured carbon dioxide can be used to get more oil out of the ground, only increasing emissions.

Brazil said that carbon capture and storage leaves a huge liability of carbon dioxide under the Earth, which governments will need to be responsible for, but it is private companies who will benefit from the offset money.

Thinking that rich countries can tackle climate change by maintaining their addiction to fossil fuels, whilst offsetting their emissions, is crazy. It would be madness upon madness to allow a technology which has not yet been shown to work into the offsetting scheme.

So who was supporting it?

Saudi Arabia, Australia and the EU all patronizingly argued that it would be “good for developing countries”.

Developing countries said no thanks.


PS. A coal power station in Madhya Pradesh, India, is to be partly funded by selling carbon offsets. No carbon capture involved, just a more efficient station than older power plants that have previously been built in India.

From 2011, European polluters will be able to pay the Indian power station £40 million a year so that they can keep emitting. The EU will claim it has thereby reduced emissions by 3 million tonnes a year.

I wonder if Eon will be first in the queue to offset Kingsnorth coal power station with a… coal power station?

***Update*** On Wednesday 10 November, the negotiations agreed that no decision could be made on whether or not to include CCS in the CDM. Negotiations will continue at the next jamboree.