From Reuters:
Russia's government on Tuesday opened the door to applications from entrepreneurs and big polluters to profit from greenhouse gas emissions cuts by selling these to Western countries.
The U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol puts limits on greenhouse gases from 36 rich nations but softens the restrictions by allowing governments to fund emissions-cutting projects in poor and former communist countries and count the cuts as their own.
Legal doubts have paralyzed such sales of carbon offsets from Russia, which has the potential to account for about a tenth of total emissions cuts under carbon trading through 2012, estimated at roughly the annual emissions of Australia.
Western intermediaries and speculators have already ploughed millions into the Russian market -- five times more than Russian investors, say economy ministry officials -- in anticipation of a potential 3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) market....MORE
Here's a CI post from last April. That $4.4 Bil. is on the light side.
Carbon Taxes, Carbon Offsets and Thou
Looking at the last few posts I started laughing.
Cap-and-trade? Nyet
Carbon tax? Nyet
Biofuels? Nyet
Nuclear? Nyet
In the words of Viktor Chernomyrdin, former head of Gazprom:
"We meant to do better, but it came out as always"
Speaking of Gazprom, Canada could buy their way out of their Kyoto commitment, willingly entered into by the Liberal government (not pejorative, note big L) by availing themselves of Gazprom's J.V. with Dresdener Kleinwort; it would cost Canada about $6 Billion per year.
From the NYT: "At current prices, the total value for Russian carbon credits could be between 30 billion and 45 billion euros, or about $40 billion to $60 billion. But if negotiations to extend the Kyoto Protocols collapse, carbon credits could be worth nothing."...
