It has been reported in the Spanish newspaper El País last week, that Spain will buy 6 million tonnes of CO2 emission rights from Eastern Europe, in order to fulfill the Kyoto Protocol. However this is a drop in the ‘pollution’ bucket when the Spanish government admits that it needs 159 million tonnes (an optimistic number according to El País) due to the excess of emissions from transport and households. Spanish industry may have to buy almost the same number of tonnes if they cross the limits set by the Kyoto Protocol.

In 2007, Spain’s emissions had increased by 50% since 1990, although the Kyoto protocol only allows a 15% increase for EU countries. Unfortunately the Kyoto protocol allows countries to sell and buy surplus emission rights and countries in Eastern Europe have a surplus on CO2 emission rights due to the closing down of some of their most contaminating factories in the early 90′s.

A deal has been agreed with Hungary to buy 6 million tonnes of CO2 and is negotiating with Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and Estonia to buy more excess carbon credits.

There are hree trading schemes set by the Kyoto Protocol under which emission credits can be bought and sold, as explained by Reuters:

One scheme under Kyoto allows nations that are comfortably below their emissions targets to sell excess quotas to other signatories in the form of credits, called Assigned Amount Units (AAUs), that are not necessarily related to emissions cuts.

Another scheme allows rich nations to invest in clean energy projects in poor nations, and in exchange receive offsets called CERs. The third scheme sees rich countries buy offsets called ERUs from similar projects in former communist countries.

The Spanish government calculates to spend 1.2 billion Euro to satisfy the Kyoto Protocol, including the cost of green energy projects mainly in Latin America. Spain has already launched projects to produce clean energy and hence offset 60 million tonnes of CO2. But so far that is not enough to comply with Kyoto, which is why Spain has had to buy the credits.

However buying carbon credits does nothing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and only acts as a political ‘rug of convenience’ which our current damaging behaviour can be swept under.

image credit: dmytrok