United Nations Climate Summit Madrid
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It's so easy to burn coal, oil and natural gas. And so hard to stop. This year, global emissions will rise again and again, more Germans than ever will fly. And this year, of all things, the federal government has set itself the goal: the country should be climate neutral by 2050. Then we should net out a single ton of greenhouse gases. The way there is so long - and time is short.
A shortcut could exist for rich countries like Germany, neutralizing their carbon footprint with money. With the help of emission certificates, which are created by climate protection projects in other countries. This so-called market mechanism is at the heart of the Madrid Climate Conference.
For the global climate, it does not really matter where emissions are released and where they are saved. It depends on the total amount. Therefore, the idea of a carbon market is a sensible approach. In addition, the trade can use both sides: the seller states, which earn money with the certificates. And the buyers, who save money, because climate protection would be more expensive for them at home.
But for more than a week, the negotiators of nearly 200 states now argue over what rules should apply to this trade in certificates. Because some states want to build loopholes in the market: for their own benefit. And at the expense of the climate. If successful, this could result in billions of tons of greenhouse gases being emitted more than planned (see the background here). It could happen that large polluting states, corporations or airlines can buy their own money on paper. And sellers fill their pockets with the sale of certificates that bring little or no additional climate protection.
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Whether this happens depends on the results of the negotiations on these two points:
Double counting: If Land A buys certificates from climate protection projects in country B, country A should be allowed to credit these emissions to its carbon footprint. In return, seller country B would have to delete the savings from its own emissions accounting system so that the measure could benefit the climate.
But not everyone sees it that way. Example Brazil: The country has the largest rainforest in the world - and with it a lot of capital, which can throw it into the balance of CO2 trading. The state can afford to pay for non-felling as well as reforestation - with CO2 rights that it sells to countries like Germany. At the same time, however, Brazil wants to be able to calculate the emissions it has saved itself - this would double its carbon footprint.
Above all, the EU and particularly affected by climate change nations want to prevent such tricks and we stand for a strict regulation. "This mechanism must be absolutely honest," says Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for the Environment.
After all, Brazil stands under the right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro "largely alone" there, as one negotiator expresses. But as long as Brazil votes against the market mechanism, no deal is possible.
Ancient Certificates: In the Kyoto Treaty, the predecessor of the Paris Climate Agreement, the participating industrial nations committed themselves to reducing their emissions to certain levels. Even then an emissions trading was set up. Even then, additional certificates could be created through climate protection projects in emerging markets: Certified Emission Reductions (CER), that was the name at the time.
Billions of CER were generated in countries such as China, India and Brazil. According to an analysis by the Freiburg Ökoinstitut, more than two-thirds of the examined CER projects were questionable whether they would not have been made without certificates.
In particular, European industrial companies then covered themselves with CER. After the introduction of EU internal emissions trading, they had to submit a certificate for every tonne of CO2 emitted.
For a while, the CER licenses were for printing money and buying free. But then the market collapsed: because several states left Kyoto and an oversupply of certificates opened up in EU trade. Result: The CER were sometimes sold off for a few cents a ton or not used at all.
These old stocks now want to sell Brazil and India in the new market. It's about huge amounts: According to the non-governmental organization Carbon Market Watch, CERs could still be available by the end of 2020 for the output of around 4 billion tons of CO2.
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"Germany does not want to allow that," says Environment Secretary Flasbarth. But he also says: "Here you can find solutions, so I advise as a Rhinelander to a portion of pragmatism." That sounds like the Europeans are willing to compromise. If Brazil does not give in the double count, the old certificates could become the bargaining chip.
Climate protectors are appalled. "If the old certificates are included in the new system, there is a threat of market slump, and then the prices are on the ground - and the incentive for more climate protection is destroyed," says Linus Herzig, Germanwatch emissions trading expert. And although the climate targets remain on paper, more greenhouse gases could be blown into the atmosphere in the future. Four billion tonnes are almost equal to the annual emissions of the entire EU.