Carbon Credit Watch News

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According to a chart made by British NGO Sandbag, Czech power producer CEZ ranks 7th among European companies that profit most from excess carbon credits as it received about carbon credits worth GBP 98 million for 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2008-09.  read more »

As the controversies surrounding the United Nations’ (UN) carbon credit scheme continue to mount, the agency is trying to pass the buck on liability for exaggerated carbon-reducing claims. The Executive Board—the body that overseas the UN’s international carbon credit scheme, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)—has tabled a proposal to make the companies that verify carbon emissions liable for excess credits.  read more »

Plantations on peatlands will no longer be supported by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a framework for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions via projects in developing countries, reports Wetlands International.  read more »

Indonesian officials are looking to ensure palm oil plantations are eligible to earn lucrative subsidies under a U.N.-backed scheme to promote carbon sequestration through forest projects. But doing so, critics argue, will create an incentive to convert biologically rich tropical rainforests to these monoculture plantations in order to earn the credits.  read more »

Using forests in the developing world as carbon sinks continues to gain traction in both political and NGO circles as a way to reduce global emissions. Too bad many of the residents who will be most affected by such programs—locals living in the forest—have been left in the dark when it comes to the details of such schemes.  read more »

Officials behind the United Nation’s carbon credit program should be wondering what kind of monster they have created. After numerous examples of fraud and a rising chorus of fears that the carbon credit market will attract organized crime, the UN is facing new allegations that carbon markets create a perverse incentive for polluters to increase their production of an environmentally-toxic substance.  read more »

The expanding carbon market is providing scammers and other financial fraudsters ample opportunity to turn a quick profit.  For a quick primer on how to scam the carbon markets, look no further than a report from Michelle Chan at the environmental group Friends of the Earth.  read more »

A recent case involving an alleged bribe to Liberian officials by a UK-based carbon trading company is highlighting how prone global carbon markets are to corruption and fraud. According to a report in the Financial Times, City of London police are investigating UK-based Carbon Harvesting Corporation for an alleged plan to pay Liberian officials $2.5-million for land concessions that the company hoped would reap more than $2-billion in carbon credits.  read more »

A sneaking suspicion that large, environmentally-damaging dam projects would be one of the major beneficiaries from the global warming movement is quickly becoming a reality. According to a report from Reuters, Zhang Guobao, the head of China’s National Energy Administration, says the country needs to speed up construction of large dam projects if it wants to achieve clean energy targets—to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels—it touted at the December meeting in Copenhagen.  read more »