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7 comments on EuroNews: November 15, 2006
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7 comments on EuroNews: November 15, 2006
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If we accept that manufacturing a widget in China (or similar country) emits more CO2 than manufacturing that same widget in Europe (to quantify this, comparing the average CO2 per kWh of Chinese vs European electricity might be a good proxy to start with) then anything that encourages such off-shoring of widget manufacturing drives global CO2 emission.
Putting a price on European CO2 emissions of, as you say around €9/mt for 2007 and €16/mt for 2008 forward creates addition incentive on top of all the others for this CO2 increasing off-shoring. Import tariffs in excess of the local emission costs would negate this effect, at least for European consumption.
To be fair though carbon trading must also be lowering the carbon intensity of CO2 emitting activities that remain in Europe so it can't be all bad news!
Many European companies also seek to offset their emissions through the purchase of Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) in other parts of the world, which obviously also goes to offset to a certain degree the exported pollution of off-shored manufacturing.
There is some anecdotal evidence that not all CER schemes are actively welcomed by their host communities (small hydro schemes in India flooding valleys and forcing population relocation, for example). Furthermore, I am not convinced that saving rainforests from slash/burn agriculture or palm plantations is ACTVIE reduction of emissions, in that carbon would be sequestered in any case. That is not to say that I am not in favour of saving the rainforests, I am, hugely so.
On another note, I believe the growing need for liquid bio-fuels as petroleum replacement represents the biggest single threat to the rain-forests. Both Malaysia and Indonesia are accelerating the destruction of Borneo's forests to plant palm oil plantations, and I believe that Brazil will increasingly encroach on the Amazon when it becomes clear that US corn is both too expensive (in comparison to Brazilain sugar cane) and also increasingly required to feed both humans and farm animals.
We need to look to crops that can be grown on marginal land rather than compete for either arable or forest land. In this respect Jatropha appears to be a perfect biodiesel source plant (http://www.biodieseltoday.com/whyjatropha.htm). I calculated that we could produce 1 million barrels/day of biodiesel with "only" 24 million hectares of Jatropha plantation or approximately 0.35% of the land mass of the African and Asian continents. Clearly not a "silver bullet" solution, but surely grist to the mill and also a provider of signifincant employment and revenue in the world's poorest regions.