There are 34 posts filed in European Union (this is page 1 of 3).
Last week, the EU suspended funding to a conservation and climate project in Kenya. The suspension came after Kenya Forest Service guards shot and killed Robert Kirotich, an indigenous Sengwer man. Yesterday, human rights and environmental organisations wrote to the Finnish government calling for the suspension of Finland’s €9.5 million “Private Forestry and Forest Enterprise Support in Kenya project”.
A British man, Mohsin Usmangani Salya, has been sentenced to three years and three months in jail. Carbon Pulse reports that a court in Germany found Salya guilty of carbon credit VAT fraud.
Today the European Commission released its proposal for integrating emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) into the EU’s 2030 climate and energy package. The Commission’s proposal will allow member countries to emit more greenhouse gases.
Last week Carbon Pulse reported that the Public Prosecutor‘s Office in Frankfurt am Main and the German Federal Criminal Police have issued a “wanted poster” for three men suspected of being involved money laundering and tax evasion relating to the EU Emissions Trading System.
More than 9,000 people and 67 organisations have signed on to a letter urging the European Commission to drop its plans for biodiversity offsetting. Biodiversity offsets would “harm nature and people” and “give power to those who destroy nature for profit”, the letter states.
Five years ago, the European environment commissioner Stavros Dimas warned that biodiversity loss posed a threat as serious as climate change. But the EU continues to lose biodiversity.
The Right Honourable Owen Paterson MP is the UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Commenting on his appointment in 2012, George Monbiot described it as “a declaration of war on the environment”.
In 2011, carbon markets traded a total of €96 billion worth of pollution allowances and carbon credits. In 2012, the figure was €62 billion. In 2013, it fell to €38.4 billion. The price of EUAs (EU Allowances) has fallen from €18 in 2011 to €5.
A free screening of Tom Heinemann’s excellent documentary “Carbon Crooks” will take place on 12 November in Brussels. The screening is organised by the NGOs Corporate Europe Observatory, Carbon Trade Watch, FERN and Climaxi, and will be followed by discussion.
Carbon cowboys. VAT carousel fraud. Double-counting. Hackers. A fake bomb scare in the Czech Republic’s carbon registry. Phishing via fake carbon registry websites. Invented carbon credits. Overvalued carbon credits. Boiler rooms. Imaginary baselines. Auditors with conflicts of interest.
Yesterday, “Varm luft for milliarder”, a documentary by Tom Heinemann, was broadcast on Danish television. It’s an exceptionally good documentary, with beautiful photography and featuring interviews with politicians, academics, a carbon trader, a journalist and an activist.
A new documentary, “Carbon Crooks”, will be broadcast on 9 September 2013 in Denmark. The film is directed by Tom Heinemann and documents the failure of carbon trading to address climate change and investigates some of the fraud in the carbon markets.
Last week, the clean development mechanism registered its 7,000th project. At a first glance, the statistics look impressive. Over a 10 year period, the CDM has issued 1.3 billion carbon credits, added 110,000 Mega Watts of renewable energy and seen US$215 billion invested in low carbon projects in the Global South.
Voluntary carbon credits make a very poor investment. Nevertheless, there are many companies selling voluntary carbon credits to the public as investments and (unfortunately) many people buying them.
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme is in crisis. Yesterday, the European Parliament voted against the backloading proposal which was aimed at increasing the price of carbon permits. After the vote, the price of carbon permits dropped by about 40% to its lowest ever price of €2.63. New Energy Finance predicts that it might fall as low as €1.
