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.

Bleary eyed

The delegate from Uganda announced: “These presentations are very good, normally I sleep through them.” I had been fighting (and winning…) the urge to fall asleep as well.

The train from Cologne arrived into Poznan on Tuesday morning. I blame any closing eyelids on the sleeper train rather than the Tuesday afternoon negotiations of a long term vision of how to tackle climate change.

The Brazilian delegation grabbed my attention when they said there should not be any offsetting by rich countries to meet reduction targets.

One of the key faultines of the debate is the need for money from rich countries to help poorer countries cut emissions. Brazil and India both spoke to reiterate that they would be willing to take action on emissions if there was funding and technology available from developed countries.

The EU likes to present itself as the global leader on tackling climate change. At the same time as these meetings in Poznan, EU member states are negotiating a ‘climate and energy’ package in Brussels which could set a target to reduce EU emissions by 30 per cent by 2020, as part of a global deal on tackling climate change.

The UK, supported by other European states, is pushing for half of this target to be met through buying carbon offsets from developing countries, rather than reducing emissions in the EU.

Presenting for the EU, the French delegate showed a graph with rich countries cutting by 30 per cent by 2020, and action by developing countries additional to these cuts. With half of its 30 per cent target to be met through offsetting, this is not what the EU currently intends to do.

Brazil was making clear that money for emission reductions in developing countries needs to be in addition to action in the EU and rich countries, not as a means to allow the rich to keep on polluting.

I suspect this could be the key issue of the negotiations. A final agreement only needs to be made next year in Copenhagen. But the EU needs to at least start engaging honestly with this debate.

League table so far:
Snowflakes: 0
Polish beers: 0
Dumplings: 0