In the aftermath of the Durban conference analysts have been turning their attention to the continued role of Kyoto Protocol emissions credits in the EU ETS. To date this trading mechanism has provided the biggest market for Kyoto credits, but the position is set to change drastically from 2013 onwards due to significant restrictions on [...]

The outcome of the UN conference in Durban has been more positive than initially indicated by the complexity of the negotiations. It is particularly laudable that a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been secured. This result translates into a continued existence of the international emissions trading mechanism. [...]

The Durban conference on climate change ended on a much better note than many expected, but continued to delay the toughest questions for at least three years. The final outcome of the conference, COP-17, is a two-page, breakthrough document called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” [...]

The end of the Durban conference is approaching, and in all likelihood, the end of the Kyoto Protocol along with it. Developments in the last few days indicate the outcome is more likely to confirm a global disagreement, rather than agreement, over the idea of a second Kyoto commitment period, or “Kyoto II,” for all countries, both developed and developing. [...]

With the Durban climate change negotiations barely a week old, key countries are drawing their “red line” positions in the sand. On one side of the line, where the Group of 77 (G77) + China and other developing countries firmly sit, is a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol that continues binding targets for current country signatories after the first period expires at the end of 2012 (excluding Canada, which has announced that it is pulling out of the treaty altogether). On the other is a European Union plan for a new global agreement with binding targets for all countries beginning in 2015 and in force by 2020. [...]

On Monday, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada “will not make a second commitment to Kyoto.” In addition, Canada will no longer take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and may begin to formally withdraw from the agreement next month. In place of the Protocol, Canada’s goal is for “a new international agreement, eventually binding, which would include all the major developed and developing emitters.” [...]

Heading into Durban and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as the Seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP-17), the G77 remains committed to its long-standing position of achieving a legally binding agreement. Given the ongoing stalemate between developed and developing countries, however, many media accounts say they are unlikely to achieve it anytime soon [...]

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits have been receiving plenty of bad press, with the latest being reports of human rights abuses committed in Honduras over the ownership of credit-producing land. This is particularly serious as the CDM has been set up to feed into the EU ETS, which means that CDM credits find their way [...]

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. [...]