[DRB]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800758.html

As U.S. lawmakers work on the details of their greenhouse-gas legislation, they are looking carefully at Europe's experience. Five Senate proposals all use the same basic approach, known as "cap and trade," that Europe has used for the past two years. But what the snappy name "cap and trade" means is that the market will put a price on something that's always been free: the right of a factory to emit carbon gases. That could affect the cost of everything from windowpanes to airline tickets to electricity.

Europe has already hit a few bumps with its program. There's the Dutch silicon carbide maker that calls itself the greenest such plant in the world, but now can't afford to run full-time; the French cement workers who fear they're going to lose jobs to Morocco, which doesn't have to meet the European guidelines; and the German homeowners who pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before -- even as their utility companies earn record profits.

In some ways, Europe's program has been a success. It covers 45 percent of the continent's emissions, 10,000 companies and 27 European Union countries. It has built registries that list carbon dioxide emissions for every major plant.

In other ways, the approach has been a bureaucratic morass with a host of unexpected and costly side effects and a much smaller effect on carbon emissions than planned. And many companies complain that it is unfair.

Germany boasts that it has cut emissions to 18.4 percent below 1990 levels, the benchmark used in the Kyoto Protocol and in Europe. But nearly half the reduction was because of sagging industrial output in the former East Germany after reunification. For the 2008-2012 period, E.U. officials sliced 5 percent off Germany's emissions proposal.

Perversely, Europe's cap-and-trade system has done little to reduce output at such places as the Janschwalde coal plant, Europe's third-biggest carbon dioxide emitter. Each year, it spews more than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide. The dirty gray plant still has turbines and generators that date from Soviet times. It has nine cooling towers, and just half of its output can power all of Berlin.

But the cap-and-trade system does provide an extra reward for efficiency. And the owner of the plant, the Swedish energy firm Vattenfall, installed new blades in the old Russian turbine, boosting the plant's efficiency to 36 percent, from 33 percent. Vattenfall has also retrofitted a 1,600-megawatt plant nearby at Schwarze Pumpe, which has a much higher efficiency rate.

One key issue is how to deal with imports from countries that don't price carbon. A U.S. system that raised costs for U.S. firms would make imported goods, especially from India and China, even more competitive, adding to the trade deficit and possibly driving U.S. companies out of business. But, for now, demanding that China act on greenhouse gases is a non-starter, and waiting for Beijing could be an excuse for inaction, proponents of U.S. legislation say.

 

[N8 v2.0]

i need to set up a business selling "enviromental attributes" to suckaz... er... i mean liberals.

 

[$tinkle]

i need to set up a business selling "enviromental attributes" to suckas... er... i mean liberals.

in what do you think all the energy (i.e., evil oil) companies have been investing? don't forget about soros & his 1.2m share purchase of burn-in-helliburton in feb...and that BAY (bayer pharm, maker of anti-anthrax cipro) went from 23 to 34 / share in 3 weeks (21 sep '01 - 12 oct '01) when our economy was weakened from the attacks by 'extremists who abusively invoked islam'.

buy on the fear...

 

[N8 v2.0]

we need to set up a 'green tag' RM trading company... just think of all the coin we could relieve from the goofballs..err... i mean open minded folk in here.