Carbon Markets Association

CMIA Media

EU Slashes Emission Caps on Utilities, Factories

Bloomberg December 17, 2008
by Jonathan Stearns

The European Union approved tighter emission caps on energy and manufacturing companies as of 2013, bolstering the world's biggest greenhouse-gas market in a bid to spur the U.S. and China to help fight climate change.

The European Parliament voted to reduce annual carbon- dioxide allowances for electricity, steel, paper and other industries now in the EU emissions-trading system by 11 percent on average in 2013-2020 from 2008-2012. The EU assembly also endorsed adding the aluminum and chemical industries to the system, which requires companies that exceed their emission quotas to buy permits from businesses that emit less.

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Will the Carbon Crunch see off the Credit Crunch?

November 2008
by CMIA President, Abyd Karmali

The UN's climate change conference in Bali was hailed as a "huge step forward" over the weekend after an eleventh hour compromise deal saw both developed and developing countries sign up to a roadmap for achieving a global climate agreement by the end of 2009. The Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, said the deal represented "an historic breakthrough" that for the first time saw all the world's nations agreeing to negotiate a deal to tackle dangerous climate change.

Thousands of government officials, industry lobbyists, environmental campaigners and observers are arriving on the Indonesian island of Bali for two weeks of talks starting Monday that are aimed at breathing new life into the troubled 15-year-old global climate treaty. A heightened sense of urgency surrounds the meeting in light of a report issued last month by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which detailed the potentially devastating effects of global warming in the panel's strongest language yet.

The United Nations should create a new body to make sure nations create laws to limit output of greenhouse gases starting in 2013, said a London group that represents emission traders and environmental services.

UN officials supervising the effort should establish the group during two weeks of talks starting Dec. 3 to help ensure negotiations take no longer than two years, said Adam Nathan, spokesman for the Carbon Markets Association. The trade group has about 50 members including banks Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Inc., as well as law firm Norton Rose LLP.

'It is vitally important that ministers meeting in Bali do not let the date for a new global agreement slip beyond 2009, as this will send a weak signal to the carbon markets,'' Nathan said today in an e-mailed statement. Delegates to the UN-sponsored conference in Bali , Indonesia , next month will aim to persuade the U.S. to join a new accord after the Kyoto emissions treaty ends. Delegates may push China and the U.S. , the top greenhouse-gas emitters, to join an international regime of CO2 and trading permits among polluters to put a cost on global warming.

Industrialized nations need to curb emissions by at least 25 percent and as much as 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels to stabilize the world's climate, according to conclusions at a UN meeting in Vienna in August. 'Any material delay in the negotiations puts at risk the billions of dollars of capital ready to be deployed for low- carbon technologies,'' said Abyd Karmali, managing director at investment bank Merrill Lynch and another CMA spokesman.

A global deal is better than bilateral agreements, such as between the European Union and California, because a plan covering all nations would likely result in less fragmentation and less complexity, the statement said.

"Many of our members are international organisations and the group needed to represent that," said Adam Nathan, the recently appointed director of communications and policy at the CMA.