http://www.ft.com/cms/s/48e334ce-f355-11db-9845-000b5df10621.html

ndustry caught in carbon ‘smokescreen’

By Fiona Harvey and Stephen Fidler in London

Published: April 25 2007 22:07 | Last updated: April 25 2007 22:07

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

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Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.

The FT investigation found:

■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found “serious credibility concerns” in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.

“The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it,” he said.

These concerns led the bank to ignore the market and fund its own carbon reduction projects directly.

Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a tonne of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.

The FT has also found examples of companies setting up as carbon offsetters without appearing to have a clear idea of how the markets operate. In response to FT inquiries about its sourcing of carbon credits, one company, carbonvoucher.com, said it had not taken payments for offsets.

Blue Source, a US offsetting company, invites consumers to offset carbon emissions by investing in enhanced oil recovery, which pumps carbon dioxide into depleted oil wells to bring up the remaining oil. However, Blue Source said that because of the high price of oil, this process was often profitable in itself, meaning operators were making extra revenues from selling “carbon credits” for burying the carbon.

There is nothing illegal in these practices. However, some companies that are offsetting their emissions have avoided such projects because customers may find them controversial.

BP said it would not buy credits resulting from improvements in industrial efficiency or from most renewable energy projects in developed countries.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Bream

Astroturfer

There goes Gore's cop-out for his King Kong sized carbon foot print.

"There goes Gore's cop-out for his King Kong sized carbon foot print."

I suspect that his carbohydrate offset diet is fraudulent as well?

http://i17.tinypic.com/4goumbd.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042601104. html

Interesting article.

However, John Travolta could not have been the only one on board.

A B-707 requires at least two pilots (Captain and First Officer) and if I remember correctly it also requires a Flight Engineer although he may have had the plane upgraded to eliminate the need for the Flight Engineer.

I read an article on John Travolta's B-707. It was originally flown as a Quantas airliner and he restored it to it's original paint scheme.

Hah if he was truly concerned about the environmental impact, yet wanted to have his own converted commercial jet to fly around because he's a "famous movie star" (HAH!), couldn't he get something a little LESS impactful?

The Boeing 707 stopped being produced on a wide scale in 1969. Since then, commercial jetliners have almost cut emissions in half through better fuel economy of the jets and more advanced materials and aerodynamics of the planes themselves. It kind of reminds me of the tree-hugger who gloats about driving around in his 1953 Corvette ... yeah, it looks great and is a killer toy, but doesn't it counteract your message?