The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) wants to buy
up to EUR 10 million in carbon credits from
said last Wednesday.
Zsuzsanna Hargitai, the EBRD’s Hungarian representative, told MTI news
agency that the bank would buy the credits if
further cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Since the Kyoto Protocol came into
force in 2005, carbon credits can be purchased to allow nations to meet their
emissions’ targets. Hargitai said that
and
nowhere near as strong a position as
credits.
Former communist countries such as
have credits to spare as their emissions have dropped significantly since
state-owned heavy industries closed with the break up of the
Union
is committed to reducing emissions by 6% from its baseline by 2012. However, as
an economy in transition, it was free to choose its baseline and selected the
period between 1985 and 1987, when its energy consumption was at a high. By
1994, emissions had dropped by 18% compared to the baseline and have not risen
significantly since.
signed a framework agreement to sell credits to
its 1990 levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
However, Japan, which the World Bank ranks as the third-largest economy in the
world behind the
emissions actually rise 7.8% in 2005 from 1990 levels.
Critics of trading carbon credits say the system does not bring about
any concrete reduction in emissions and fails to emphasise the need to move
away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
