October 2011

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• What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Disaster
• UK Policy Tracker: Time to Make a Stand(ard)
• Asian Policy Tracker: Land of the Rising Hopes

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What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Disaster

December’s climate change negotiations will determine the shape of the world after the Kyoto Protocol – but what will that world look like?

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) in Durban this year marks the last round of international climate change negotiations before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. It is widely expected that the COP will produce no binding global deal to replace the Kyoto system. Several governments, including those of Norway and Australia, are advocating an extension to the Kyoto Protocol until 2015 as a “transition” period, but a number of other countries – primarily Japan, Russia, and Canada – say that this would be ineffective and unfair, penalising Annex I countries (those that already face emissions caps under the Kyoto system), while allowing major emitters like China and the US to continue without capping their emissions for years to come. This argument is all the more potent because Annex I countries now account for less than half the world’s carbon emissions, and so extending the Kyoto Protocol to 2015 would leave the majority of global emissions untouched for another three years.

Many negotiators are now trumpeting a system of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) – programmes designed and implemented by national governments, under the UN umbrella – as an effective alternative to a global deal. NAMAs are a double-edged sword, however. On the one hand, they allow national governments to take action without waiting for international agreement; on the other hand, without an overarching framework to determine each country’s responsibilities, there is no guarantee that individual NAMAs can deliver the necessary global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

For developing countries, the UN’s Green Climate Fund is still a sore point. The negotiations at Copenhagen established this US$100 billion fund to help poorer countries adapt to the effects of climate change, but the bulk of the funding promised by developed nations looks unlikely to materialise. The World Bank, which (despite reservations among the governments of developing countries) is temporarily in charge of the Fund, has proposed cutting fossil fuel subsidies and using the money saved to make up the shortfall in funding; however, this measure will be unpopular with many countries that heavily subsidise oil, gas, and coal production.

Meanwhile, REDD+, the emerging system for trading carbon credits from avoided deforestation projects, remains in limbo. REDD+ is popular with negotiators, as it provides a compelling way to slow deforestation and channel carbon finance into some of the world’s poorest communities, which are often shut out of the existing carbon market. However, there is some distance to go before governments will be able to agree on an overall structure for REDD+ trading. Some experts have suggested also attempting to agree on a system for trading credits from “blue carbon” projects (projects that prevent the destruction of aquatic plants, in the same way that REDD+ projects stop deforestation on land), but there are fears that adding another element to the technical negotiations over REDD+ would risk bogging down an already complex debate.

UK Policy Tracker: Time to Make a Stand(ard)

Emerging standards help companies track their broader carbon impact.  Is this the future of carbon reporting?

Leading environmentally-aware companies are increasingly eager to go beyond measuring the carbon emissions of their day-to-day operations, and to address the carbon vulnerabilities of their products and supply chains. Now, several well-respected institutions have published new carbon standards that allow companies to track the emissions associated with supply chains and products.

First, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute have added two new standards to their jointly developed Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard measures the emissions associated with manufacturing an individual product, from sourcing the materials for production all the way through disposing of the product after it’s been used. This new standard is unique in that it accounts for carbon removals as well as carbon emissions; that is, if any step in the creation of a particular product actually helps remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (for example, by planting trees to create timber for furniture), this is held to reduce the final carbon emissions from the product. The Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard also provides guidance for companies on publicly reporting the emissions from products.

The GHG Protocol has also added a second new standard, the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard. This is a standard for measuring and reporting carbon emissions throughout a corporate value chain. The standard covers a broad range of corporate networks and relationships, and allows for a variety of approaches to collecting and calculating data in order to fit different circumstances.

The GHG Protocol isn’t the only carbon accounting system expanding its reach, however. The British Standards Institute has made a number of improvements to its public accounting standard for carbon emissions, PAS 2050, which was first published in 2008. The newly revised PAS 2050 now includes guidance for assessing total emissions from products and services over their lifetimes, and allows for the development of sector-specific methods for measuring emissions from products. The revisions to PAS 2050 also bring it in line with internationally accepted methods for measuring a greenhouse gas footprint (including the GHG Protocol).

The CarbonNeutral Protocol already provides guidance for addressing product and value chain emissions, and The CarbonNeutral Company will also be able to offer advice to companies that wish to comply both with the Protocol and with any of the standards above.

Asian Policy Tracker:  Land of the Rising Hopes

Has the home of the Kyoto Protocol already pioneered something better?

With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire next year, international attention has understandably turned towards Japan, the host and one of the driving forces for the negotiations that created the original Kyoto agreement. The Japanese government has been at the leading edge of the UN climate negotiations since the outset. Now, however, while Japan pushes for a new global agreement over an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s third-largest economy is also finding innovative new approaches to fulfilling its own commitment to deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to creating an energy infrastructure that relies heavily on less carbon-intensive technologies, such as nuclear power and clean coal, Japan has integrated carbon offsetting into its long-term strategy for addressing carbon emissions. The Japanese government has recently established a comprehensive domestic carbon offsetting scheme, backed by three government agencies offering a wide range of support for companies wishing to offset their emissions, and for offset project developers. The scheme allows Japanese companies to buy verified carbon credits (known as J-VERs) from in-country offset projects. Companies that offset their emissions through this scheme can proudly sport a government-backed certification mark. Japan is also moving away from the UN’s struggling Clean Development Mechanism and sourcing international carbon credits by negotiating direct bilateral agreements with other Asian countries. For further details about the Japanese government’s activities in the carbon market, please see The CarbonNeutral Company’s recent blog post.