Tiempo Climate Newswatch

As the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) held a working meeting in California, Canada announced its support for the pact. "We've been looking at the Asia-Pacific Partnership for a number of months now because the key principles around [it] are very much in line with where our government wants to go," said Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, citing the involvement of China and India as an example. John Bennett of the Sierra Club responded that "Canada is being enthusiastic about a meaningless public relations stunt by the United States government when it should be talking about the importance of working... on a programme that has real targets."

The aim of the California meeting of the AP6 was to discuss "concrete steps" to spur the development of clean technology, with "tangible results over these next six months," according to Paula Dobriansky, speaking for the Bush Administration. Responding to criticism of the low level of financial backing from the United States government, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said that that perspective is "completely turned around. Only with private sector investment does the technology get deployed. The government does not go out into the world and spend the several trillion dollars that are about to be spent on the technologies that are going to be the solutions to this problem." Government's role, he concluded, is to guide investment.

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• CBC News
• Globe and Mail
• Comment, CBC News

• ENN
• CICERO

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, chair of Green Cross International, has called on the industrialized nations to establish a 50-billion-dollar fund to support solar power. "This idea reflects our vision of a way of helping the energy-impoverished in the developing world, while creating concentrations of solar energy in cities that could be used to prevent blackouts," he said. Marking the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he warned that oil and nuclear energy are not viable energy sources for the future.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that momentum is gathering for a switch from fossils fuels to renewable bioenergy sources such as sugar cane or sunflower seeds. "The gradual move away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 per cent of the world’s energy needs," according to Alexander Müller of the FAO's Sustainable Development Department. "Oil at more than 70 dollars a barrel makes bio-energy potentially more competitive," he continued. "Also, in the last decade global environmental concerns and energy consumption patterns have built up pressure to introduce more renewable energy into national energy plans and to reduce reliance on fossil fuels." Brazil, with most new cars powered by flex fuel engines, is highlighted as an example for the rest of the world.

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• Yahoo

• ENS
• Renewable Energy Access
• Press release, FAO

The news of lower than expected emissions from European industry triggered a substantial drop in the price of carbon dioxide permits on the European market last week. Prices dropped by close to 50 per cent, causing investors to question the functioning of the European Union's carbon trading scheme. "It does raise the question whether there were too many permits issued and that the governments may have got it wrong," commented Louis Redshaw at Barclays Capital. "If there's a surplus there's no incentive to reduce emissions and the price collapses," said James Emanuel at brokers CO2e.com.

The Czech Republic has recently announced that its emissions during 2004 were about 15 per cent below the national cap. Dutch emissions fell eight per cent below. Estonia has recorded 2005 emissions 25 per cent below its cap and France almost 12 per cent below. Some analysts feel that the reduction in emissions indicates that the market is working. "This is really the first time since the system started that there has been anything other than bad news [for the environment]," said Chris Rogers of JPMorgan.

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Background

• Reuters
• Financial Times

• Market data, European Climate Exchange
• On the Web: Emissions trading