Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

As Kyoto Protocol Comes Alive, So Do Pollution-Permit Markets

/noticias.info/ Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol, a move that will put into effect the international treaty forcing industrialized countries to cut emissions of the gases believed to cause global warming, The Wall Street Journal (11/8) reports.

Russia's ratification of the treaty amounts to a warning shot to companies throughout the industrialized world, signaling they will have to either reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other suspected global-warming gases or start paying for the right to cough them out. As a result, Putin's move sounds the starting bell for a new international financial market in which companies buy and sell what amount to global-warming pollution permits. For more than a year, in anticipation of Kyoto, small numbers of these permits have been traded on a handful of fledgling markets around the world. Now, with the official ratification of the treaty, the buying and selling is ramping up fast.

Institutions ranging from the World Bank, to Japanese electricity producers, to French lender Caisse des Depots & Consignations, are cobbling together investment funds totaling more than $700 million to acquire global-warming-emissions credits. Fund organizers said they expect the size of the investment pools to grow significantly during the next year. How big the so-called carbon market might get is largely a guess. Point Carbon, an Oslo-based consultant, estimates it could reach $10 billion by the time the Kyoto Protocol's mandates kick in at the start of 2008.

The Kyoto treaty mandates emissions reductions only from industrialized countries. But it lets those countries -- and the companies in them -- generate credits toward their quotas by bankrolling projects that reduce emissions far from their own smokestacks, in the developing world. The theory is that, since global warming is global, the atmosphere doesn't care whether emissions occur in, say, Germany or China. For a German company, however, financing an emissions-reduction project in China is likely to be a lot cheaper than doing so at home, because in Germany, the cheap emissions improvements already have been made.

Companies with factories in Europe will face emission-reduction mandates starting in January. In what amounts to a continent wide road test of Kyoto, the EU will cap emissions from approximately 12,000 factories and other facilities in 2005 to 2007, at which point the 126-nation Kyoto accord will take effect. EU credits, or "allowances," already are trading. From September, when Russian ratification of Kyoto remained in some doubt, to October, when the lower house of Russia's parliament approved the treaty, all but ensuring ratification, the number of EU allowances sold through brokers nearly doubled, to about 2.4 million allowances, according to Point Carbon. Each EU allowance currently sells for about 8.70 euros, an indication, in part, that the market views credits generated in Europe as less risky than those generated in the developing world. Those numbers mean that brokered sales on the EU market in October were valued at about 21 million euros.

Even in the U.S., trading in global-warming credits is intensifying. The Chicago Climate Exchange was launched last year for companies to buy and sell the credits, partly in hopes of banking them in case the U.S. eventually does mandate global-warming cuts. From September to October, volume on the exchange approximately doubled, to about 405,000 credits. During that period, the price of an average Chicago credit jumped about 60%, to about $1.50. A Chicago credit costs less than a European one because it's not yet clear that a Chicago credit will count under any government mandate.


08/11/2004 notas_de_prensa_archivo