Europas Vorzeigemodel grüner “Markwirtschaft”, das EU Emissionshandelssystem, steht offenbar vor dem Scheitern. Auf einer Tagung des britischen Tyndall Centres in London erklärte Professor Catrinus Jepma von der University Amsterdam, “that the world’s two leading carbon trading schemes are failing to deliver the expected benefits due to a collapse in the price of carbon credits…” Als einen wesentlichen Grund für den voraussichtlichen Kollaps der Emissionspreise machte Jepma vor allem Russland verantwortlich (http://green.itweek.co.uk/2007/02/emission_tradin.html):
“Jepma warned that Russia and many of the Central European States are on track to be well below their Kyoto emission targets for 2012 meaning they will generate 2.8bn credits or Assigned Amount Units that they can sell to those countries unable to meet their Kyoto obligations. This means that there will be a supply of 5.2bn tonnes worth of assorted carbon credits available under the various Kyoto carbon trading mechanisms by 2012, but the biggest polluters in the scheme - the EU, Canada and Japan - are expected to exceed their targets by just 3.6bn tonnes.
“Under the Kyoto targets the supply of credits will outstrip the demand,” said Jepma. “We are going to see the same scenario as with the ETS whereby the price for a tonne of carbon starts high and then collapses to close to zero by the end of the scheme… which is precisely the wrong message.“He added that such a scenario would not only remove the financial incentive for countries to invest in clean technologies that help them stick to their emissions targets - as it would be cheaper to continue polluting and just buy credits - but it would also discourage investment in carbon reduction projects in developing countries as they would have to pay for CDM approval only to find they could not get a good price for the carbon credits they generate.
Jepma said the only hope for keeping the price of the various carbon credits high enough to act as an incentive for countries to hit their Kyoto targets lay with convincing the Russians to retire the bulk of their credits. “We need to convince the Russians that if they put all the credits they have into the market they are going to undermine their own returns from the system,” he said. “We need to implore them to be sensible and help push the price [of carbon] up to a workable level.”
Auf gut Deutsch gesagt: Europas Energiesicherheit und Klimapolitik ist jetzt fast vollständig vom Wohlwollen des Kremels abhängig: nicht genug, daß Europa zunehmend von Putins Lieferungen des Gazprom Gas anhängig ist - jetzt setzt der Kremel noch eins drauf und kassiert auch noch bei CO2 Krediten ab. Kein Wunder also wenn ein derart korruptes Kartenhaus vor dem Zusammenbruch steht.
Aktualisierung 22.2.07 20 Uhr::
Europas Kyoto-Krise hat sich unterdessen noch verschäft. Japan kündigte heute an, die unilateralte Klimapolitik der EU nicht mehr zu unterstüzen. Die Abwendung Japans von den einst im eigenen Land unterzeichneten Kyoto Prinzipien vertieft somit die internationale Isolation Europas und dürfte die klimapolitischen Konflikte innerhalb der EU weiter verschärfen.
