March 3, 2008 (The Edge Daily) – Carbon Capital Corp Sdn Bhd will launch RM150 million worth of biogas and biomass projects in Sarawak next month as part of its long-term strategy for growth.
“We will be launching four biogas projects and one 10 megawatt biomass power plant there, utilising empty fruit bunches (from oil palm).
“These are all projects which we will be investing in and developing 100%,” Carbon Capital group managing director William Kho said.
Spring 2008 (YES! Magazine, Anna Fahey) – Last summer, Chinese President Hu Jintao toured the country in short sleeves to show that his countrymen could turn their air conditioners down. In China, conservation is “in.” Fashions do change.
Global warming denial is out of vogue. Unfortunately, though, the climate change do-nothing set is sporting a new line: “Why should we bother fighting climate change when China’s emissions are increasing?”
February 26, 2008 (Bloomberg) – Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm, said it would trade United Nation emission credits in Japan, the first non-Japanese bank to win permission to buy and sell the environmental products there. Lehman has opened an account in Japan’s emissions registry, an ownership tracking system, the bank said in an e-mailed statement. Permission was granted by the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, it said.
February 26, 2008 (Canberra Times) – Australia’s rapidly escalating electricity consumption remains the biggest risk to meeting its Kyoto treaty targets, a new Federal Government report warns. A Department of Climate Change analysis of national greenhouse emission trends estimates Australia’s emissions from electricity use will increase 59 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020.
Despite use of renewable energy doubling to 20 per cent of the national electricity mix by 2020, carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired electricity are projected to rise from 1990 levels of 129 million tonnes a year to 204 million tonnes. Continue reading
February 25, 2008 (Bloomberg) – GreenAir, a carbon credit dealer, is seeking to raise A$100 million ($92.4 million) ahead of plans for an initial public offering after the Australian government signed the Kyoto Protocol, the Australian Financial Review said. The Sydney-based company, established by former Westpac Banking Corp. executive Himanshu Dua, is trying to secure an underwriter and plans to begin trading on the Australian Stock Exchange within 12 months, the newspaper said, citing Dua.
February 20, 2008 (The Star Online) – As the world’s second largest crude palm oil producer, Malaysia has great potential to reap revenue from certified emission reduction (CER), or carbon credits. According to Aseambankers, palm oil milling, which produces organic waste, create opportunities to generate CERs. It named plantation player TSH Resources Bhd as one of the beneficiaries of CERs in Malaysia.
“Thanks to its biogas power generation, the group qualifies to sell carbon credits, potentially generating an estimated 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in carbon credit points per annum,” Aseambankers said in a recent report.
The research unit added that TSH had already secured annual sales of 150,000 CERs to a European buyer. Continue reading
February 20, 2008 (Economic Times) – Politics and jittery equity indices are making the global carbon credit markets nervous. Carbon credit prices have plunged in the last few weeks. This could be troubling for major supplier India, which sold 20 million carbon credits in 2007, and has a larger number in the pipeline. The bad news is there is little likelihood of things settling down any time soon.
India is already in danger of getting outpriced in the global carbon credit market, with China and Vietnam offering certified emission reductions (CER) at lower, more fixed prices. The price of carbon credits, or CERs, fell to e14 last week, down from e17 in December. Though they are now at e15.50, it not certain how soon they would claw back another e2. Continue reading
February 16, 2008 (Jakarta Post) – The idea of introducing nuclear power to Indonesia is nothing more than a vehicle for a few needy individuals to gain public attention. Any moderately educated engineer will agree that Indonesia’s need for electricity is widely decentralized so nuclear power or large coal power plants are the ideas of people lacking technical understanding.
It should be common knowledge that “the transmission of electricity over long distance comes with huge loss.” There are very few countries in the world with better chances than Indonesia to realize enormous decentralized energy generation at low cost or even free for the country.
Indonesia has a potential 27,000 MW of geothermal sources requiring low investment of which currently only 837 MW are in use. Why? Because Pertamina, PLN and the government have not, over the past 30 years, managed to give the many waiting investors investment security. Continue reading
February 15, 2008 (Financial Express) – India’s carbon market is growing faster than even information technology, bio technology and BPO sectors as 850 projects with an investment of a whopping Rs 65,000 crore are in pipeline. The revenue from 200 projects is estimated at $2 billion till 2012, according to Prodipto Ghosh, member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change. Ghosh was speaking at the ‘Carbon Credit Conference: The way beyond CDM’ here on Friday. Continue reading
February 14, 2008 (New Zealand Herald) – Ministers and officials are grappling with some thorny issues over how to parcel out more than $1 billion worth of free carbon credits to the owners of commercial forests planted before 1990. They ought to have better things to do with their time.
Under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, if a forest planted before 1990 is harvested and not replanted, the carbon stored in those trees (about 800 tonnes a hectare for a radiata pine forest) is deemed to be emitted then and there, and the country is liable for those emissions. Continue reading
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