In anticipation of the centralised European registry for the EU ETS the Commission has turned its attention to the legal issues surrounding the traceability of stolen emissions allowances. The approach taken is deferential to the national laws of individual Member States rather than providing a harmonised EU-wide rule. However, the Commission’s proposals have done little [...]

On the 29th September the government submitted its official report to the European Commission on levels of air pollution in the UK for 2010. It makes for pretty grim reading. The report confirms that 40 of the 43 air quality zones in the UK breached the annual limits for nitrogen dioxide. No other EU country has a higher proportion of non-compliant zones. [...]

The EU ETS remains high on the UK Parliament agenda following a recent submission by Barclays Capital calling for an independent and separate regulator for the regime. The submission provides a much needed focus on some of the key peculiarities of the EU ETS which have been known to cause tension in the emissions market. [...]

Indonesia’s flagship Rimba Raya REDD project was registered this year under one of the Voluntary Carbon Standard’s REDD methodologies, aiming to preserve “91,215 hectares of tropical peat swamp forest,” equivalent to an emissions reduction of 104,886,254 tonnes of CO2e over the crediting period of 30 years, according to the registration documents. The project has long been an [...]

As part of the latest budget the UK government announced its intention to introduce a price floor for the emissions market. It is hoped that this move will encourage low carbon investment by disincentivising regulated entities from emitting at current levels. How this proposed unilateral measure will interact with the EU ETS remains to be [...]

Among the Republican Party candidates vying to contest Obama in the 2012 presidential election, there is a recurring theme: the idea that environmental regulation prevents job creation. While only one candidate attacked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Monday’s Tea Party Express debate, Herman Cain’s comment that the agency has “run wild” drew enthusiastic applause. [...]

Debates are underway in the United States as contenders seek the Republican party nomination to challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Last week’s debate was the first for Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose front-runner status appeared to take a slip to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney following controversial remarks on social security. [...]

One of the purported successes of the talks in Cancun last year was the creation of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This year the GCF’s Transitional Committee (TC) was created, with forty members, twenty-five of which are from developing countries. The TC is tasked with no less than designing the GCF itself. It must be [...]

While Ontario’s ambitious feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy is being put to the test by domestic and international opposition, including a challenge from Japan, Japan has just achieved a major breakthrough for its own FIT policy as it continues to recover from the tsunami and nuclear disaster this past March. Both examples will have implications for renewable [...]

Emissions trading continues to court controversy following recent events which have seen Romania, an EU ETS country, suspended from trading its Kyoto Protocol emissions units by the UN. The knock-on effect has been to exclude Romania from the spot market in EU ETS allowances (EUAs) for a predicted period of six months. This incident highlights [...]