Germany to host emissions trade meeting

29 March 2004

WASHINGTON – The new field of carbon emissions trading, estimated to reach USD 10 billion (EUR 82 billion) globally by 2005, will get its own trade fair, at a time when greenhouse gas emissions are rising despite efforts made to reduce them.

The “Carbon Expo” trade fair, running 9-11 June in Cologne will be the first such event in the rapidly growing field of emissions trading, one of its sponsors, the World Bank said.

A recent report showed greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming were on the rise, with carbon dioxide emissions rising 11 per cent in the decade since the United Nations treaty on climate change had been ratified.

Carbon dioxide emissions were expected to grow another 50 percent by 2020, the Washington-based World Resources Institute said.

“We are quickly moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible,” warned Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI’s climate programme. “Unless we act now, the world will be locked in to temperatures that would cause irreparable harm.”

He said net emissions must be brought to zero to stabilize the atmospheric chemistry.

The emerging emissions trade system allows air polluters in industrialized countries to buy “emission rights” from projects that reduce emissions in developing economies. Under the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions, signatories must reduce carbon emissions by up to 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

“The World Bank is working to ensure that poor countries get a sizable chunk of that market… in exchange for development dollars, technological know-how and clean technologies for sustainable development,” the bank said in a statement.

The fair will provide an interface for providers of new technology and potential emission traders to do business.

A number of public-private partnerships have been “pivotal” to developing the carbon trading market, the World Bank said. It set up the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) in 2000, a group of six governments and 17 companies that buy emission rights from projects that use renewable energy such as wind, small hydro and biomass energy technology.

A non-profit association, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), will represent the technical side at the fair – with leading industrial companies, suppliers of inspection services, brokerage firms and financial services. IETA is a co-sponsor of the fair, along with the Cologne trade fair company, Koelnmesse.

So far, 121 countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. US President George Bush, shortly after taking office in 2001, withdrew the United States from the commitments by the Clinton administration.

DPA
Subject: German news