Russia plans to start trading its greenhouse emission quotas in 2008. They will start this once they have met all eligibility requirements needed to start with the Kyoto mechanisms, a senior Russian official said on Friday.
The point of the new Kyoto Protocol mechanism, termed “Joint Implementation”, will allow industrialized countries to buy rights to emit greenhouse gases and use them to help stay within their Kyoto emissions caps by the year 2012.
It works by allowing countries that are busting their caps, like Japan, Spain and Italy, to fund projects which can cut emissions in their countries to be well within their limits, like most former communist states. This will allow the countries to count the costs solely.
“I believe we can obtain a status of a country complying with Kyoto protocol requirements in early 2008,” Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Sharonov told foreign investors and bankers, adding a Kyoto monitoring mission would visit Russia in July.
Sharonov said Russia aimed to sell quotas for 300 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent to European Union countries. He said 29 projects had been submitted for review to the Kyoto Protocol secretariat already.
Sharonov estimated the European Union’s demand at 250-350 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2008-2012 while Russia is likely to have spare quotas for 3 billion metric tons despite strong economic growth.
Projects in Russia which could prove lucrative for investors include burning methane, a potent greenhouse gas, or plugging leaky gas pipelines, also cutting methane emissions.
As Always, Keep it Green
No comments:
Post a Comment