The study, supported by Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, provides an overview of the performance of developed countries under the pre-2020 climate regime. It is a first-of-its-kind research in a developing
Expanding the number of carbon credit projects under the United Nations clean development mechanism and streamlining its regulation are key priorities for the coming year, said Rajesh Kumar Sethi, the
Disagreements between rich and developing countries came into the open today as the world's top 20 greenhouse gas emitters worked to lay the groundwork for a new deal on climate change.
Water is life: The impact of water shortage is being felt all over the world, in the industrialised as well as developing countries.
India could lead the world in renewable energy technologies as part of a solution to the climate change crisis, said the former United States Vice-President, Al Gore.
Japan will consider a scheme for trading greenhouse gas emissions, the government said on Friday, a week after a powerful business lobby and the trade ministry softened their strong opposition. In a report of new steps aimed at slashing its greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Kyoto protocol, the government also proposed deeper but voluntary cuts for industry, adding to existing measures such as preserving forests and purchasing emissions rights from abroad. The plan, revealed as Japan prepares to host a climate-focussed G8 summit of industrialised nations in July, will be opened for public comment before it is officially adopted by the end of March. A cap-and-trade system with mandatory emissions limits, long opposed by the Japan Business Federation, was mentioned in the plan as a topic for consideration in the near future, as were environmental taxes and the introduction of daylight saving time. Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita warned other cabinet ministers that they might later be asked to cooperate with further cuts, an official said. As the host of the conference that produced the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is anxious to improve its own emissions record, at present well adrift of its goal of an average 6 percent cut on 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. That means slashing emissions to 1.186 billion tonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, although Japan actually emitted an estimated 1.359 billion tonnes in the year that ended in March 2006. As it prepares to host G8 on the northern island of Hokkaido in July, Japan has been attempting to take a leading role in climate change, including by planning a major environmental conference ahead of the main summit, media reports have said. The top UN climate change official said earlier this month it would be a disadvantage if Japan were to stay out of an otherwise universal cap-and-trade system in the future. The business lobby's chairman, Fujio Mitarai, was reported this month as softening his opposition to cap-and-trade, while the trade ministry said it was seriously studying such an approach. (Reporting by Isabel Reynolds and Chisa Fujioka; Editing by Mike Miller) REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Japan will propose to other countries that numerical goals be set for the introduction of energy-saving equipment in each of their industrial sectors as a ratio to overall production equipment. The proposal aimed at cutting greenhouse gases will call for establishing a method to compute the quantities of reduced emissions if the goals set by each nation for each sector, such as steel and electric power generation, are met, government officials said. Adding up the computed quantities of reduced emissions will help each country achieve its overall national cutback targets, the officials said. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari will brief his counterparts from the Group of 20 countries on the proposal at a three-day meeting on climate change getting under way March 14 in Chiba. Given that Japanese industry has already made great progress in introducing energy-saving equipment, the Japanese approach would become the global benchmark if the G20 countries adopt the proposal, the officials said. At a meeting in January of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda proposed adding up the quantities of greenhouse gases to be cut in each industrial sector to accomplish overall national cutback targets as a method of combating climate change starting in 2013. The Kyoto Protocol on global warming expires in 2012. The European Union has been calling for obliging various countries to commit to overall national reduction quantities in a post-Kyoto Protocol framework. But the Japanese proposal, which puts emphasis on energy saving, would allow countries to pursue both economic growth and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, Amari said. Against this backdrop, the Japanese proposal would make it easier to secure consent from India and China, two major emitters bent on putting more priority on economic growth. More specifically, the proposal calls for designating energy-saving technology and production methods that are highly efficient in curbing greenhouse gas emissions in key industrial sectors. In the steel industry, for example, some 10 types of equipment will be selected for their ability to recover heat and greenhouse gases from steel plants.
It Is not immediately obvious what role financial markets can play in addressing climate change. Climate change happens slowly and has a global impact on the physical environment, whereas financial markets react to news in fractions of a second and are almost liberated from specific physical locations. the low energy intensity of the financial sector means that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would have little impact on the physical operations of financial markets and institutions. March 2008
Germany continues to invest in brown coal mining, despite ambitious climate targets. Requirements for carbon capture and storage could eventually make the fuel unprofitable. March 2008
The Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol met in Bali in December 2007. 1 After some high-stakes poker about emission reduction frameworks and the role of emerging economies, participants settled on a road map for negotiating a new climate agreement by the end of 2009. The Bali meeting also managed to achieve progress on a number of important issues relating to the Adaptation Fund, avoidance of deforestation through REDD, technology transfer, and CDM.
Entrepreneurs and big polluters can now profit from greenhouse gas emissions cuts by investing in Russia. On January 29, the Russian government set down the much-needed rules for the development
