Thursday, September 27, 2007

Fortis group buys carbon rights

As a follow-up to
"A Pre-packaged Hedge or Climateer has Wind and Gas"
(HT:WSJ's Energy Roundup)

and specifically
"From Those Wonderful Folks who Brought You Food-for-Oil".
(again HT: Energy Roundup, what would I do without em?)
We see what Fortis has been up to.

From the BBC:
A bank from the Netherlands has emerged as the winning bidder in an auction which marks a new phase in the global "carbon market".

Fortis Bank has paid more than 13m euros ($18m) for the rights to emit 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, in the first such auction to be held in a regulated exchange, the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange (BM&F).

The credits were made available through the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol.

The mechanism aims to attract investment for climate-friendly projects in poor countries from companies in the industrialised world with compulsory limits on their greenhouse gas emissions.

In this case, the credits were held by the city government of Sao Paulo, in recognition of a project to prevent methane escaping into the atmosphere from a massive rubbish tip in the city, the largest landfill site in Latin America.

The Bandeirantes landfill, at the Northern edge of the city, had grown to a 30-million-tonne mountain of rubbish, 100m high, by the time it filled up last year.

Gas preference

In order to prevent the emission of vast quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, a private contractor was brought in to collect it and generate electricity....MUCH MORE