Comments adriandeveny has made

  • Barack- time to do your research

    What worries me most about this interview is actually Obama's answer to the question on a tax vs cap and trade system.  His answer clearly shows that he does not understand the difference- or at least that he didnâ€TMt do a good job showing that he understood the difference in this interview.  Based on his statement here, he seems to think that auctioning off permits is equivalent to setting a carbon tax.  While I agree that auctioning permits is a necessary feature of an equitable cap and trade system, it does not accomplish what a tax accomplishes.  A tax creates a pre-established market price on carbon that can provide a great deal of market stability.   I am not arguing that a tax is better, or that we cannot have an effective hybrid policy. I simply believe that it is the job of a politician to be aware of the political solutions to environmental problems, even if he does not fully understand the science. It does not appear that Barack even understands the differences between the main political solutions to emissions reductions, and I think this is an indication of the low priority he is giving environmental issues in his campaign.
    I like Barack, and overall I think he is an excellent candidate, but is time that he gets better informed on environmental issues.
    On An interview with Barack Obama about his presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 4 months ago 28 Responses

  • why ARE there so few forestry projects in the CDM?

    As strange as Missy's comments are, they do bring up an important point.  There has never been a single forestry projected rejected under the CDM.  There is no doubt that the forestry projects have massive methodological problems recognized by the CDM board, but these methodological problems aren't the direct cause of failure in the CDM.  
    I'm starting to think that the reason these projects are failing simply has to do with lack of demand due to default buyer liability for emissions reductions. Since there is a lot of risk that forestry projects won't actually result in additional emissions reductions due to the problems mentioned by Adam, most buyers go with the safer bets in the industrial sector.  Plus, industrial emission reductions tend to be much cheaper (especially when you're dealing with methane or HFC's).  That said, forestry projects can be cheap since that have the potential to be scaled up, but at small scales they are not cost competitive.  This, of course, results in a major damper to supply.  
    So in the end, in the current CDM structure, there is not much potential for supply or demand of forestry credits.  
    As I mentioned in an earlier post, the best hope yet is for the implementation of the Compensated Reductions approach to reduction of emissions from deforestation.  This proposal has substantial backing from many countries and is the most likely proposal to address deforestation in the post-2012 commitment period.
    On Trees are good for a lot of things; carbon offsetting isn't one of them posted 2 years, 4 months ago 27 Responses

  • Internalizing other values into the carbon market

    While forest conservation and reforestation are critical to biodiversity protection, I think the point of this article is that forest carbon projects are not necessarily the best form of offsets in the current carbon market.  The EU ETS has created an international market for trading carbon credits.  Neither biodiversity, nor sustainable development dividends, have yet been internalized in this market.  But if we look at the CDM, there is a ray of hope for making reduction of emissions from deforestation competetive.   Interestingly, the two stated goals of the CDM are 1. to reduce carbon emissions, and 2. to promote sustainable development.  The second goal has been nothing more than a nod to a popular cause up to now.  But as an explicitly stated goal of the CDM, there may yet be a chance to internalize development dividends in the carbon market-- and if this happens, forestry actually has the potential to out-compete other forms of offsets.  

    Most carbon offsets have very low sustainable development dividends because they benefit only a small group of relatively wealthy people--factory owners, landfill owners, owners of large ranches, etc.  Community forest projects, however, have the potential to benefit a fairly large number of people in the lower income levels.  Again, these projects face the problems of leakage, additionality, and permanence, and so these projects would still have to be a part of a larger national forest conservation policy designed to reduce national deforestation rates.  These national level Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation would then be traded in the carbon markets.

    It seems unlikely that biodiversity values will ever be internalized into the future carbon markets, but there is still a lot of action being taken on biodiversity conservation as a separate cause.  Obviously not enough is being done on this issue, but that doesn't mean we should force it into climate change policy where it doesn't necessarily belong.On Emphasis on the 'rare' posted 2 years, 4 months ago 23 Responses

  • well, not exactly...

    the information presented in this post is accurate, but the conclusion is misleading.  "Offset projects should simply not include tree planting" is an awfully dangerous statement considering that tropical deforestation accounts for 20% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. We simply cannot turn our back on this issue.

    It is clear that planting trees in northern latitudes has a net warming effect due to albedo, and it is also clear that planting trees in the tropics would have a net cooling effect.  The effect of planting trees in temperate regions is less clear.  

    So why not focus our replanting efforts in the tropics?  You mention a commonly cited problem known as "leakage" where the planting and protection of one grove of trees may simply lead to loggers diverting their efforts in a nearby region.  This is certainly a well documented problem, and for this (and several other reasons), forest carbon projects have been quite limited relative to all the other types of offset projects

    Right now there are only two ways in which carbon can be officially offset through tree planting:  1. customized offsets purchased in the voluntary markets, 2.  afforestation/reforestation projects under the Clean Development Mechanism.  Both of these have had very little success to speak of.  As a result, people are now looking at the post-2012 Kyoto policy framework for new ways to address this critical issue, and it is increasingly become a major point of discussion at the COP meetings.  There have recently been several calls for new approaches to address this issue, and there is now increasing support for one approach referred to as Compensated Reductions. This approach would create a new carbon trading mechanism where reductions in national deforestation levels from a historical baseline can be assigned carbon credits that are tradable in the global carbon market.  This national approach to addressing tropical deforestation will effectively eliminates the leakage problem once effective satellite monitoring systems are put in place (expected around 2010 according to the FAO).

    The bottom line is that we will never really stabilize emissions without curbing tropical deforestation.  Since most offsets from carbon sequestration that exist today are unhelpful, this only means that more needs to be done to curb tropical deforestation, not less.  Hopefully we will see something emerge for the post-2012 Kyoto framework, and if it's designed well, we should all support it. But let's not send the wrong message with simplistic proclamations that we should avoid forest projects.  It's just not that simple.On A good reason we shouldn't love trees, at least not in this case posted 2 years, 5 months ago 40 Responses