Climate protection hangs in the balance

The global negotiations on climate change are still on the road, even if they aren’t going anywhere much at the moment. The last round of talks, in Bonn in November, made very little progress, but there was something positive in the mere fact that they agreed to keep the big decision deadlines fixed for November 2000. The Hague will be the venue for that meeting, officially the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-6). The EU helped provide some momentum by declaring in Bonn that it was "willing and ready" to complete ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in time for the ‘Rio +10’ global environment conference (in April 2002). Prospects of the US Senate doing so, on the other hand, have always looked pretty bleak. The Senate said a year ago that it won’t ratify unless the developing countries undertake to limit their own carbon emissions, which they aren’t asked to do under Kyoto.

Meanwhile, 25 leading UK companies want to press on with an emissions trading scheme amongst themselves, timed to become fully operative in April 2001. The Emissions Trading Group, set up by the Confederation of British Industry and the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment, passed its Outline for a UK Emissions Trading Scheme to the government. According to Charles Nicholson of BP Amoco, chairman of the Emissions Trading Technical Committee, "the scheme should keep the UK in the vanguard of international emissions trading and in a good position to get involved in any future scheme". Companies volunteering to take on binding emissions limits (for which they would need a commercial incentive, as provided for under the government’s controversial climate change levy) would be able to trade together to ensure that these limits were met in the most cost-effective way.

The European electricity supply industry associations, Unipede and Eurelectric, have also carried out a simulation exercise, looking at how power firms might meet demand for electricity up to 2012 while reducing emissions. The Paris Bourse set up a virtual stock exchange for them to trade carbon emissions permits. This market duly created price signals, guiding the participating companies in their investments and letting them decide how to deliver compliance in the most cost-effective way.

Emissions Trading Group, 020 7245 8035
Unipede/Eurelectric Climate Change Working Group,
+33 1 40 42 87 09

  • The worst impacts of climate change could be delayed by up to 100 years, if CO2 in the atmosphere can be stabilised at 550ppm. That’s the latest forecast from the Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell (01344 854455). Conversely, the scenario of emissions being stabilised at 750 ppm has dire consequences by the 2080s - although the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario of emissions continuing to rise unchecked is even worse.


18 October 2001