Recently in Emissions Category

In discussing the inclusion of airlines in the EU Emissions Trading System, which started January 1, here are a few numbers to consider:

The Barrel was preparing to pull together a blog entry based on recent Platts' reporting regarding the impact that California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard might have on the state's crude oil market and production. Then a federal court intervened.

In the end, it was the final fifty minutes of negotiations on the fly between the heads of the Indian and EU delegations that reached a compromise agreement at 3:30 am Sunday at the Climate Summit in Durban, ending the longest running climate summit ever, a dubious achievement. 

EU and India occupied center stage in the dispute over whether emerging economic powers such as China and India should have the same legal responsibilities for controlling their greenhouse gas emissions as do industrial countries.  The compromise Durban Platform for Enhanced Action was embraced, if not fondly, but at least with relief by exhausted delegates, most of whom worked through two or three nights of negotiations. 

In diplospeak, the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action is an "agreed outcome with legal force," rather than the more vague "legal outcome" that India and China wanted, or a "protocol with legal instrument," EU's preference. 

However, under the Platform, all nations will be required to commit to reducing emissions starting in 2020. But that will require the climate summit in Qatar next year to launch negotiations toward an agreement by 2015 to include targets that countries will have to achieve in 2020.

Reaching a  deal by 2015 will be  arduous. The Durban agreement also extends the Kyoto Protocol for the EU and a few other developed countries during a second commitment period after 2012. The rest of the world will have only voluntary commitments until 2020. 

The following Regulation & The Environment column published in Monday's Platts Oilgram News, was written prior to the conclusion of the Durban meeting.

Negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations produced the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. It was a watershed event, marking the first international agreement curbing emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial countries.

The Protocol mandated a five-year first-commitment period setting levels of emission reductions, starting in 2008 and ending December 31, 2012. Thus began a decade-and-a-half countdown to negotiate and ratify "a new international framework [by 2012] that can deliver the stringent emission reductions ...clearly indicated as needed," according to the UN's climate change secretariat.

European nations scrambling to secure their gas supplies have made some big advances in recent weeks. The UK's largest household gas supplier, Centrica, signed on November 21 a $20 billion, 10-year gas supply deal for imports from Norway's Statoil.

Meanwhile, political leaders from Russia, Germany, France and the Netherlands gathered in the German coastal city of Lubmin November 8 to celebrate the inauguration of the first line of the Nord Stream project.

The Australian LNG industry's protestations that the federal government's planned carbon tax will put it at a competitive disadvantage to other exporters such as Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia are starting to ring a little hollow.

There's no denying that a carbon tax is an impost that Australia's regional competitors will not have to bear, but the prospect is clearly not putting the brakes on investment in what has been a booming LNG sector based on conventional and unconventional gas resources on both sides of the country.

heating oil futures contract as of August 21, effectively setting the end of the line for the world's first successful energy futures contract. It recorded its first trade in 1978. It's fascinating to look back through the history of how it came to be.

Al Gore's newly named Climate Reality Project (he's not giving up!) wants everyone to make September 14-15 "24 Hours of Reality," with people around the world sharing videos about climate change effects and local approaches to solutions.

Coal's role probably will be just one focus of the event, which aims at regular people, not so much at policymakers like members of Congress. It seems like the only thing to do right now for people who want to get at greenhouse gas emissions, because CO2 reduction might be last on the list of things that stand a chance of being done in Washington. It might even be first on the list of things that stand no chance of being done in Washington. It appears Michael Bloomberg agrees somewhat with the more grassroots approach.