I let my yard go natural! .....................................Doing my part to save the earth!
Posted on 04/26/2007 8:30:09 AM PDT by Froufrou
Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.
A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.
Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.
The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
The FT investigation found:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found “serious credibility concerns” in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.
“The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it,” he said.
These concerns led the bank to ignore the market and fund its own carbon reduction projects directly.
Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a tonne of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.
The FT has also found examples of companies setting up as carbon offsetters without appearing to have a clear idea of how the markets operate. In response to FT inquiries about its sourcing of carbon credits, one company, carbonvoucher.com, said it had not taken payments for offsets.
Blue Source, a US offsetting company, invites consumers to offset carbon emissions by investing in enhanced oil recovery, which pumps carbon dioxide into depleted oil wells to bring up the remaining oil. However, Blue Source said that because of the high price of oil, this process was often profitable in itself, meaning operators were making extra revenues from selling “carbon credits” for burying the carbon.
There is nothing illegal in these practices. However, some companies that are offsetting their emissions have avoided such projects because customers may find them controversial.
BP said it would not buy credits resulting from improvements in industrial efficiency or from most renewable energy projects in developed countries.
Mindless.
I demand an investigation...we can codename it ALSCAM.
I like the sound of "Gore-on"...
I’m loving that. Can we get the AFLAC duck to play Algore?
Enron? Call it Goron!
Gee, this is all a surpirse.
/s
More on Gore’s company: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1812291/posts
I invite any FReeper who would like to reduce emissions to send me ca$h, which I will use to purchase a bottle of Beano. Any additional funds that I receive will be used in the pursuit of happiness.
A veritable stock-market for something that has no value? Who said capitalism wass dead? When someone figures out how to make money on something useless and ineffective (because this is one of the two lynchpins of the global warming debate — money — the other is about sanctimonious a**holes attempting to control or eliminate behaviors they find personally objectionable), you just know Western Civilization will continue to survive and prosper!
;-)
Al Gore = Scam Artist
It’s OK.
algore has this covered.
When you start to peel back Enron...they were preparing for the carbon credit episode and thought that President Al Gore would ensure this event. Ken Lay had people and various divisions working on the game....and would have cleared billions during a Al Gore presidency. Sadly....Al never made it to president, and GW never thought much of Kyoto...so Ken and Enron’s dream....sunk fast.
I am selling 1,000,000 carbon credits on e-bay right now for the low low price of only $95,000. That’s right, a savings of over 90%! For customers this week, I throw in free shipping!
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