[ A very interesting article. Building nukes or hydro might be significantly
more meaningful. - JH ]

Industry caught in carbon "smokescreen"
By Fiona Harvey and Stephen Fidler in London

Published: April 25 2007 22:07 | Last updated: April 25 2007 22:07

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.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Bream

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/48e334ce-f355-11db-9845-000b5df10621.html



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