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A Greenhouse Gas Becomes Star of the Market |
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By Diego Cevallos*
Latin
America is joining the international movement for trade in methane
emissions credits. Environmental activists are giving this approach
the thumbs-down.
MEXICO CITY - Capturing methane, one of the
gases that contributes to global warming, is fast becoming one of
the most attractive environmental dealings for industrialized countries
-- and for Latin America. But the trend is causing tensions between
social and environmental activists.
Brazil has already signed on to the first international project
for capturing methane, responsible for 20 percent of the emissions
that cause what is known as the greenhouse effect and changes in
the global climate. The idea is to use the gas to produce electricity.
Projects like this in the developing world will receive funding
from industrialized countries that have ratified the 1997 Kyoto
Protocol on climate change. As part of the pact's ''clean development
mechanism'', by paying for reduced emissions in a developing country,
an industrialized country can claim the results towards its own
abatement target, stipulated by the Protocol.
Following in Brazil's footsteps, other countries in Latin America
are also seeking financing for capturing methane, a gas that emanates
from garbage dumps, livestock waste and some plants. Methane emissions
in Latin America and the Caribbean comprise 9.3 percent of the global
total, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
And in another global effort to use this gas, the United States
signed an agreement in November that gave life to a methane market
consortium, which also includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain,
China, Colombia, India, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and Ukraine.
According to its members, this initiative could reduce overall greenhouse
gas emissions (measured in units of carbon dioxide) by a quantity
equivalent to the removal of 33 million vehicles from the world's
roads each year.
''We see a great future in the (methane) market,'' which would benefit
developing and industrialized countries alike, Jorge Barrigh, coordinator
of the Latin American Carbon Program of CAF, the Andean Community's
development agency, told Tierramérica.
This regional body and other global agencies, like the World Bank,
are pushing for developing nations to take advantage of emissions
credits and technological assistance they see as part of the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) included in the Kyoto Protocol, which
takes effect Feb. 16, 2005.
The CDM is one of three flexible mechanisms set up by the Protocol
designed to help industrialized countries meet their goals for curbing
greenhouse gas emissions to an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels
by the year 2012.
For example, corporations in the industrialized North can obtain
''carbon credits'' when they invest in emissions abatement projects
in the developing South.
Brazil registered its NovaGerar plan as a CDM. The project makes
use of the methane gas captured from garbage in Nova Iguacu, a city
of one million people in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The gas
feeds a thermoelectric plan with the capacity to generate 12 megawatts
of electricity.
Participating in that project is the Netherlands Clean Development
Facility, associated with the World Bank.
CDM credits are an incentive for municipal government to better
manage their garbage, given that ''the possibility of revenues and
reducing costs promotes the creation of more appropriate landfills,''
Antonio Carlos Delbin, technical director of Biogás Energia Ambiental,
the company executing the project, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.
Another CDM project that Brazil will officially sign in 2005 also
aims to generate electricity from methane, but from the sanitary
landfill in Bandeirantes, outside Sao Paulo. The initiative has
been under way since January and is already producing energy.
The reduction of methane emissions in Bandeirantes will reach the
equivalent of 19 million tons of carbon dioxide in 21 years, according
to Helvecio Guimaraes, technical director of Econergy Brasil, a
company providing technical-financial services for clean technology
projects.
Colombia has its own plan for capturing methane. In the western
valley of Cauca, where the sugar mill Incauca is located, sugarcane
pulp will be used to replace fossil fuels in the mill's operation.
With the funds obtained through this project under the Clean Development
Mechanism framework, a business laboratory will be set up for participation
by 120 children and their parents, Incauca's energy chief Rubén
Uchima told Tierramérica.
But not everyone agrees on the benefits of the CDM.
With this option, ''the industrialized countries are shifting their
commitments to curb carbon emissions and avoiding investment in
truly clean development technology,'' says Nadia Martínez, of the
Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.
The CDM ''looks like a good idea, but it has turned into a scheme
for commercial transactions that benefits multinational corporations
with projects that aren't necessarily appropriate,'' Martínez said.
U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew his country from the Kyoto
Protocol in 2001, arguing that it hurt U.S. economic interests.
But Washington has announced it has earmarked 53 million dollars
over the next five years for developing the methane market consortium.
That speaks to what and who are really behind the CDM, commented
Martínez.
According to María Teresa Szauer, environmental director for the
Andean CAF, ''growing interest in capturing methane gas'' is related
to the fact that the methodology for measuring and tracking it have
already been defined and developed, ''which greatly facilitates
its inclusion in the market.''
In response to environmentalists' criticisms, Szauer said they are
''somewhat intransigent'' positions that do not take into account
''the added value that these projects have for our countries.''
The CAF says Latin America and the Caribbean should take advantage
of the clean development mechanism because it will give developing
countries access to profitable and sustainable technologies, which
is why the agency is helping others in the region to identify opportunities
in this arena.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent.
Yadira Ferrer (Colombia) and Mario Osava (Brazil) contributed to
this report.
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