CARBON CRASH: VOTE LEAVES EU EMISSIONS TRADING IN TATTERS
The European Union’s flagship program to fight global warming suffered a major blow Tuesday when lawmakers rejected a proposal aimed at shoring up the region’s carbon-emissions trading system, putting its survival in doubt. Germany’s Minister of Economic and Technology Philipp Rösler welcomed the rejection of the backloading plans as an “excellent signal” for an continuing economic recovery.
After the European Parliament’s surprise afternoon vote, spooked investors drove the price of emissions permits down by nearly half. Benchmark electricity prices also fell.
The legislature derailed—at least temporarily—a plan to push up permit prices by postponing issuance of new permits for between five and seven years. Electricity generators and others must buy the permits in order to emit carbon dioxide.
Europe’s so-called Emissions Trading System, first launched in 2008, was designed to raise the cost of polluting and discourage the production of greenhouse gases to protect the environment.
But lately, politicians’ focus on generating jobs and sparking growth in a region struggling to recover from recession is relegating green concerns to second place behind economics.
“It was a vote of reason,” said Poland’s environment minister, Marcin Korolec. Poland, one of the EU’s less-affluent members, has been outspoken in its opposition to the measure, which it said could hamper development.
The parliament’s Environment Committee after the vote said that some lawmakers felt that “a rise in the carbon price would erode the competitiveness of European industry and be passed on in household energy bills.”
Germany’s Minister of Economic and Technology Philipp Rösler welcomed the rejection of the backloading plans as an “excellent signal” for an continuing economic recovery. “Reducing supply CO2 allowances would equate to an intervention into a functioning market system,” and further burden industry, he said.
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, which devised the so-called backloading plan, said it regretted parliament’s move. And the EU’s Council of Environment Ministers said it would try to draw up an alternate plan.
“Today’s vote is a historic failure,” said Joris den Blanken, EU climate policy director at environmental advocacy group Greenpeace. Without action to deal with an oversupply of permits, the trading system won’t “dissuade polluters and promote investments in cleaner production.”
Slack demand for electricity and an abundance of permits in the market helped push the price of emitting a ton of carbon below 5 euros earlier this year, down from nearly €30 in 2008. After the vote, the price dropped to €2.55 before recovering partially to €3.2.
Without the backloading plan to increase scarcity on the emissions permit market, “the ETS will almost certainly collapse,” said Kash Burchett, a London-based analyst at consulting company IHS Energy.
“Prices will likely sink below €1 per ton as participants recognize that there is no political will at present to restore the market mechanism to functioning order,” he said.
The European Union’s climate change policy is on the brink of collapse today after MEPs torpedoed Europe’s flagship CO2 emissions trading scheme by voting against a measure to support the price of carbon permits.
Climate change is a fact. It's been going on natually for 4 billion years. All intelligent people know we are in one of 4000 million years of climate change. That's 40 million centuries of climate change. To pick any one century out of those 40 million periods to compare this century with, is just foolishness. Only those who have bothered to look more deeply will realize O2C is not a contributing factor to this global cooling. Only those who are stupid or paid by Greenpiece, would say otherwise.
ReplyDeleteBravo...
ReplyDeleteFinally someone standing up to the scam.
This planet`s climate has been changing for millions of years and it will continue to change until the end of times, wheter we like it or not.
ReplyDeleteThere has never been in the entire history of the planet,a period with constant, unchanged, flat lined climate.
The "man made global warming" theory is the greatesst scam in the history of the human society.
The people who have perpetrated this scam should be held responsible, their furtunes seized and given jail sentences.
Overall the world is not getting warmer for at least the past 15 years. And it was warmists who were the ones that were saying every weather event was proof of global warming. Maybe Bill should read Murry Salby, or the CERN cloud project or the thousands of other Peer reviewed studies disputing Global warming. Bill Nye a scientist, My Ass. How sad is it that you have to hang out with Maddow for credibility.
ReplyDeleteCO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules capturing 560 times as much heat making 99.8% of all "global warming." CO2 does only 0.2% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?
ReplyDeleteCarbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.
See The Two Minute Conservative at: http://tinyurl.com/7jgh7wv and when you speak ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep.