What has been achieved in Durban brings certainty to the carbon markets, at least for now, and the compliance sector now can breathe a sigh of relief to know that it will exist beyond 2013. New projects will now find funding to generate CERs, now that there is no anxiety that there may not be enough time to register them before 31 Dec 2012. This is a good thing.

However what has been done is simply to rubberstamp a moratorium in the validity of the Kyoto protocol until 2017, plus a pledge to work on a new framework (by around 2015) to set emission reduction targets for the world's largest emitters. This takes us on the course of the "business as usual" mentality for another 7+ years, which is bad news for global warming mitigation. We all know that the Kyoto protocol has failed to curb emissions, and on the contrary as the US is not a signatory and it does not set caps on the developing countries (which in the case of India and China carry the lionshare of the growth of CO2 emissions), then we are well set for the best part of another decade of strong growth in GHG emissions worldwide.

The Kyoto protocol is not a meaningful tool for climate change mitigation it is simply a vehicle to give some validity to the compliance carbon market. A lot of good has resulted from this, but the carbon markets being as they are a zero-sum game this will never yield to emission cuts.

Ideally what we needed now was an ambitious timetable of global emissions cuts but it is obvious that the Kyoto protocol has created an inertia and a deeply rooted expectation amongst developing countries that it is the developed world who, being responsible for global warming, must take the lead in emission cut targets and secondly must pay for the decarbonisation of the developing world.

The recent death of rainforest activist Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva demonstrates that the endemic problem of illegal logging is closely linked with local law enforcement corruption, and no amount of activism will remedy this problem unless the federal government in Brazil takes a firm stance on the matter. 

Brazil remains a difficult country to invest in forestry assets and to fund reliable carbon credits programmes because of this problem. Illegal loggers, often backed by violent gangs, are a threat to landowners wishing to establish a long-term investment in forestry assets, whether it is for the purpose of sustainable timber harvesting or carbon credit origination.

President Dilma Rousseff recently announced she is sending an elite force to provide backup for local law enforcement following the recent spat of killings of activists in the provinces of Para and Rondonia, but given the size of the country and the rainforest itself, this is bound to be a drop in the ocean and it will only drive the problem elsewhere, where law enforcement is corrupt or can be corrupted, to turn a blind eye to illegal logging, as has long been the tradition in Brazil.

Send a message to your friends with the Earth Day ecard

Use our ecard to wish Happy Easter to your friends

There needs to be a calm and balanced debate about nuclear energy in the wake the Fukushima accident. Unfortunately there've been too many hasty judgments and premature political decisions can be detrimental to our future decarbonisation.

The accident in the Dai-chi plant involves a second generation nuclear reactor, which has been operating since 1971, and a set of extraordinary circumstances, such as a magnitude 9 earthquake and 10 metre tsunami within short range of the facilities. It's a case of outdated technology, in combination with a poor judgment in the location of the plant itself, and a set of extraordinary natural disasters that are not expected with any frequency.

In spite of the catastrophic combination of these factors, the Fukushima facilities are holding up well, and cooling systems are now reportedly restored. The levels of radiation leaked into the atmosphere are not believed to pose any threat outside the exclusion range, and in particular and most importantly will have no impact on Tokyo.

Nuclear technology has now moved on to fourth-generation reactors, the first of which is planned to be built in China. The increased efficiency and safety of nuclear energy (both operationally and in waste management) is an important factor to take into account before we rush into hasty judgments about the disasters heralded by some if we use this technology.

It would be irresponsible to assert that nuclear energy is without risks, but this extraordinary force of Nature that is such an immense source of energy deserves our attention to be managed with respect so that we can make a careful use of it limiting every possible risk. It is quite possible that fourth generation nuclear reactors would have survived the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and we would not be now in a position of questioning the safety of nuclear energy but rather praising it.

France has operated a number of nuclear facilities for a long time, generating almost 80 per cent of its electricity in this way, and in the process it has dramatically cut its GHG emissions and achieved the lowest carbon footprint in Western Europe. This has been a huge understated success and it is a clear example to follow.

China has 14 nuclear stations in operation, 26 under construction and is planning a further 28, which will make it a leader in nuclear energy and technology, using the most efficient and safest reactors in the world. This is good news for a country that has a steep projected increase in energy demand, and we certainly wouldn't like to see this demand met by burning more fossil fuels than it does already.

The Australian government has announced plans to introduce a carbon tax from July 2012. It is not clear whether it will boost carbon trading and encourage companies to reduce their emissions or it will simply add to the state coffers.  

Traditionally the idea of a carbon tax has been viewed as a knee-jerk reaction of the political classes to force companies to reduce emissions, versus the more progressive cap-and-trade approach which generates significant funding for renewables projects in the developing world. However both can work together if the revenue raised from the carbon tax is used to fund emission reduction projects. There is a big question mark of course as to how this can be implemented in practice.

A carbon tax can only achieve emission reductions if it's sufficiently high to make an impact on a company's turnover. In other words the carbon price per metric tonne emitted must be such that the total carbon tax bill for an average emitter amounts to a significant percentage of the turnover, otherwise there would be no real incentive to make a serious effort to curb emissions (which can be costly to implement). The downside of a high carbon tax is that there can be implications for the end consumer of goods and services in higher prices and a decrease in competitiveness.

Effectively emissions reductions can be very costly and take a long period of time to implement because in most manufacturing processes changes require a timescale of years. Without a clear plan of how the carbon tax revenue will be allocated to drive the low-carbon economy and clean energy investment, it remains simply yet another tax.

It is expected that the registries in the UK, Germany and France will reopen either later this week or next week at the latest. The disruption of spot trading will not even dent a market where 90% of the volume is traded in derivatives, but the real damage is to the credibility of the system.

It's unlikely that the registries of countries where security measures are lax will reopen anytime soon or perhaps even ever. After all, reputable trading firms need not use those registries and all carbon credits can be securely kept in the registries of the countries where the main carbon exchanges are located ie. UK and France.

By B Bell

My eye caught an exchange in the Letters section of the FT where two readers write in about the problems in the carbon markets.

One said that the reason why the concept fails is because a carbon credit has no physical reality attached to it. Another replies today saying that financial instruments lack a physical reality but that the carbon markets failed because credits were designed to be used (or retired as they say in the industry), like fishing licences, not traded endlessly for profit.

I think both readers miss the point.

Carbon credits do have a physical reality. They enable compliance buyers to emit a set amount of CO2 that in the manufacturing process does have a very tangible physical form. Just like a financial instrument such an insurance policy does not have any physical reality until it is activated in the form of a claim for a loss, which is when it becomes connected to the real world, in the same way a carbon credit connects directly with GHG emissions and our impact on our climate.

At the point of origination, they provide the funding for a very physical reality, say in the form of a renewable energy project, that would not happen without those funds.

The present problems are not caused by the fundamental concept of the credit, they are due to the poor security of some of the national registries. It is true that carbon credits do not lend themselves to trading as much as equity for example. Equities can go up in value fairly linearly over the long term, whereas carbon credits are more likely to coast around reasonably fixed values so the amount of speculation that can go with it is more limited.

The suspension of spot trading this week in the main European carbon markets undermines the credibility of a system that is still finding its place in the financial world. 

The theft of 1.6m EUA owned by a Swiss cement company from a carbon registry in Romania shows that a lot of work needs to be done to strengthen the system so that it can be taken more seriously. The European carbon market is worth an estimated £80bn a year and growing, and it deserves a more credible process of checks so that the ultimate consumers of carbon credits can have faith that the trading exchanges and all the agents involved from project origination to retirement of credits deliver a credible product with the equivalent assurances of other commodity markets.

Obviously the weakest link in the process are the 30 national carbon registries, and the centralized registry to be introduced in 2013 cannot come soon enough.

Feed-in tariffs are a wonderful incentive to decarbonise the economy through local micro-generation of clean electricity. Individual households and companies can generate electricity and get paid for feeding it into the National Grid and therefore cut their bills as well as receive a net payment for the effort. 

However in the long-term feed-in tariffs will have function alongside the markets and nothing can successfully live in a parallel universe without a reality check of market prices. In France EDF (Electricite de France) has promised unrealistic feed-in tariffs to solar energy providers, at around 10 times the wholesale price per megawatt per hour produced, which is obviously not a sustainable business model for the company.

(The spot price is about 55 euros per MW/h and EDF pays 546 euros to small-scale suppliers. It is costing £1bn of losses a year).  

It has led to an extraordinary escalation of supply, leading to farmers covering barns with solar panels and concentrating more on generating electricity than their own farming business. EDF receives 3,000 applications a day to connect to the grid.

The forecast is that by the end of this year France will have met its solar energy target for 2020.

In the UK,  feed-in tariffs are at the other end of the spectrum, with payments set at £4.13 per megawatt per hour, far below the spot price. Therefore the utilities get much better value for the solar energy (or the supplier is short-changed, depending of how one looks at it). 

Clearly the long-term sustainable model will be one where feed-in tariffs converge closer to the spot price and vary accordingly.  

The Cancun UN climate talks ended last week with an accord, to set the pace for next year's Durban meeting. This was real progress, in spite of subzero expectations and plenty of disagreements during the 2 weeks of the meeting.

There is reason for cautious optimism: there's a commitment to extend the CDM framework beyond Kyoto and to include new aspects such as CCS and REDD. This is good news for carbon trading but as usual the devil is in the detail - and all technicalities need to be worked out in the new year. One can anticipate that funding for these projects will have to come from the sale of carbon credits, which is the obvious way to raise funding in developed nations to fund clean energy projects in the developing world. The economic potential of carbon trading as a force to fight climate change far exceeds the economic might of governments.

Progress with REDD was difficult, with Bolivia showing strong opposition to the plans. REDD and forestry in general (to include afforestation and reforestation) must play a central role, and in a sense Cancun was a triumph because, in spite of the hurdles and cacophony of the UN forum, for the first time ever a consensus is in place to acknowledge that our two main priorities are the protection of the rainforests and the generation of clean electricity. This statement in itself makes Cancun a significant success.

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme came into force in April this year, and large companies must sign up with the Environment Agency before 30 September.

The purpose of the scheme is that companies will account for their carbon footprint on an annual basis and purchase carbon allowances for each tonne emitted, on the basis of their electricity consumption.

There will be a League Table of best and worst performers and energy efficiency will be financially rewarded by the scheme. In this way, CRC will be "revenue neutral".

Carbonica offers a full carbon management solution and a premium carbon performance package, so that companies make the best of the CRC scheme and leave of the carbon accounting redtape to us.

For more information contact: crc@carbonica.org

Note: The Environment Agency has since changed the rules, and owing the spending review the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme will no longer be revenue neutral. Companies will still be required to purchase carbon allowances at £12 p.u. but there will be no repayments to the top performers of the League Table. The EA announced that the scheme is under review so there could be further changes.

Carbonica went online on 17 September 2008, after months of sweat, blood and tears with web design, content management etc. It was a fun experience and our wonderful designers came up with a lovely website. We have thoroughly enjoyed these two years and we are delighted to celebrate our second birthday!

In two years we have envolved from very small projects to having 12 reforestation projects of our own in South and Central America, and have traded in both VERs and CERs in the carbon markets as both brokers and project originators. It has been a learning curve but we have thoroughly enjoyed it.

We'll like to thank all our supporters, affiliates, and customers, both individuals and businesses, for their support and custom and we hope to be here to serve you for many years to come!

The Carbonica Team

The scientific struggle to increase the efficiency in which renewable energy is used and then reused has proven to be a daunting task. Large wind farms and fields of solar panels are commonly used to generate energy through solar radiation. Congruently, investors are having a troublesome time competing with traditional oil and electric suppliers.

Reducing our carbon footprint lies heavily on new technologies, and the efficiency of those technologies. For instance, Doug Band and the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) have been working closely on a project to reduce fleet emissions in the San Francisco Bay Area by utilizing advanced route optimization software. In other related alternative energy news, companies like Ford have been implementing solar panels in their vehicles to promote the usage of solar radiation for hybrid vehicles.

Both of these are fantastic steps towards a more sustainable earth, but have we really reached the point where organizations and collaborative units like the CGI can see the ROI?

By definition, solar energy is radiant heat and light from the sun, which is harnessed by us to produce electricity. There are various forms of solar-powered devices, including wind, wave, hydroelectricity, and biomass – all costly and inefficient. Because of expensive resources, along with lessened efficiency, most of these devices cannot be utilized globally. But scientists out of Stanford have found a somewhat promising solution.

Typically, solar panels and/or secondary powered solar devices will capture light or heat, and convert it into electrical energy; but they’ve never been able to simultaneously use both, until now!

Photon Enhanced Thermionic Emission or PETE, simultaneously combines the heat and light from solar radiation to create electricity.  Traditional solar panels utilize photovoltaic technology, which is flawed in that it decreases in efficiency as temperature rises. This is an obvious problem, seeing as the sun produces both light and heat. The new process of PETE, actually increases efficiency of the panels as the heat index increases.

In a recent piece by Science Daily, Nick Melosh, a scientist at Stanford claims that this isn’t just a “slight tweak,” in the conversion process, but rather a major breakthrough in a new energy conversion. He goes on to mention that the materials required to make PETE are very affordable.

The intricacies of PETE aren’t too "sciency" for the simple-minded either – nearly 50 percent of lost energy is accountable to the silicon conductor having limited transparency in regards to the light entering in. Most of the unconverted energy then turns into heat; as the sun gets hotter, energy waste increases. The obvious solution to this problem was to find a way to harvest this unused heat energy. Melosh’s group discovered that by simply shelling a piece of semiconducting material with a layer of metal cesium, enabling the simultaneous usage of light and heat.

And the best part about PETE, is that it doesn’t reach maximum efficiency until the panels hit an excess of 200 degrees Celsius, which is extremely hot. Traditional solar panels reach somewhere around 100 degrees Celsius on a hot day in the sun. Accordingly, this allows PETE to be used in concentrators (i.e. parabolic dishes), which are typically used to power entire grids and communities

In these larger systems, any remaining heat waste can then be dumped back into existing thermal conversion systems, similar to those used in the Mojave Desert. PETE actually takes that unused heat, and later dumps it back into existing thermal conversion systems. Researchers state that by using PETE in these large solar concentrators, efficiency can increase by 55%.

By doubling the efficiency we’re at now with solar power, this would be a tremendous leap in green energy efforts. This will ultimately allow those invested to become a legitimate competitor of oil. Let’s hope that scientists at Stanford continue to keep up the good work!

This is a guest submission by Jack Lundee.

Jack Lundee was born in 1984 and is a regular contributor to everythingleft.wordpress weekly. He graduated from the Newhouse School of Communications and is now an IT expert and freelance writer on the environment and political science.

It seems absurd but at the moment local authorities in the UK are not allowed to sell renewable energy to the National Grid, lest they will affect the energy market (i.e. lower prices and upset energy companies). Thankfully this will change from August 18, a major step forward in the decarbonisation of the UK.

Energy secretary Chris Huhne announced the reversal of the ban so that local authorities can install wind turbines and solar panels and generate renewable energy. It's wonderful news. Not only will they be able to cut GHG emissions and their utility bills, but they will also be able to feed the excess electricity generated into the National Grid.

Microgeneration is an important part of the decarbonisation of the economy. Communities can participate in generating clean electricity and therefore reducing the demands on the National Grid. Without this, the pressures on the National Grid will be immense, as demand is projected to double in the coming decades.

Local authorities have the means to influence communities, leading by example. They own many buildings and run large operations, where a significant review of energy supply can have a lot of visual impact. Councils installing wind turbines and solar panels en masse will not go unnoticed. This will encourage communities to be part of the same philosophy and households will be more likely to invest in solar panels for domestic use if their local authority is carbon neutral (or carbon negative) and a net producer of renewable energy.

This process can show us eventually that it is possible ultimately to decarbonise Britain's energy and produce clean electricity and consume it efficiently, without unnecessarily restricting our usage of it.