A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

98 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingWhy?With respect to trading in emissions themselves, the problem is deficientdirect pollution measurement and monitoring systems. Manycountries – and not just Southern countries – lack the technical andinstitutional capability to quantify and monitor industrial greenhousegas emissions precisely and regularly. Uncertainties about the quantityof greenhouse gases being emitted by national energy systems ‘are inthe range of plus or minus 10–30 per cent,’ according to one survey. 119Another survey puts uncertainties about overall greenhouse gas emissionsin selected industrialised countries between 4 to 21 per cent. 120Either figure is inadequate for the purpose of detecting the small reductionsignal needed to demonstrate compliance with Kyoto. IPCCcountry inventory guidelines calculate that uncertainties come to 10per cent for electricity generation, 10 per cent for industrial processesincluding cement and fertiliser production and 60 per cent for landusechange and forestry. For methane, the figures are even higher:100 per cent for biomass burning, 60 per cent for oil and natural gasactivities, 60 per cent for coal-mining and handling, and greater than60 per cent for rice cultivation, waste, animals and animal waste. Fornitrogen dioxide, they are 50 per cent for industrial processes, 100 percent for biomass burning, and two orders of magnitude for agriculturalsoils. 121 In 2004, one author foresaw a ten-year delay prior to theestablishment of adequate biotic carbon national monitoring systemsin industrialised countries such as the US. 122In addition, in most countries, data on industrial emissions is providedby polluting companies themselves, not by an impartial authority,often calling the figures into question. In Los Angeles’s RECLAIMscheme, companies’ widespread use of emission factors developed bythe Western States Petroleum Association instead of measurements ofactual emissions allowed margins of error in reporting ranging from50–100 per cent. Oil companies underreported their tanker emissionsby factors between 10 and 1000 123 – one of several problems with theprogramme discovered only through a time-consuming investigationby an NGO, Communities for a Better Environment. 124 In March2002, Anne Scholtz, architect of RECLAIM and Chief ExecutiveOfficer of the emissions broker ACE, was issued citations for filingfalse trading reports. 125In England and Wales, the Integrated Pollution Prevention and ControlSystem that monitors and controls industrial emissions relies heavilyon emitters taking samples of their emissions and reporting the resultsto the British Environment Agency. A report from the Agencysuggested that 40 per cent of sites did not have satisfactory monitoringprocedures in place. Yet from 2001 to 2005, the level of independent