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U.K. Climate Envoy Hession Vies to Head UN CO2 Market (Update2)
2011-01-10 17:33:36.794 GMT
(Adds IETA, CDM Watch comments from seventh paragraph.)
By Catherine Airlie and Mathew Carr
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Martin Hession, vice chairman of the
United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, is vying to lead the
executive board over the world's second-largest carbon market.
Board members will select the new CDM chairman at their
next meeting, which begins Feb. 14 in Bonn, according to
information on a UN website. Clifford Mahlung, the CDM's current
head, is due to end his one-year term in February.
"We need to build on what is good in the CDM and improve
it through consolidation, simplification and standardization,"
Hession said by e-mail today. "This needs to be done so as to
increase predictability and without creating additional
uncertainty."
Hession would aim to clarify the rules that govern the UN's
carbon market and make the basis for key decisions more
transparent, he said. As head of global carbon markets at the
U.K.'s Department of Energy and Climate Change, he represented
the county at last month's climate summit in Cancun, Mexico.
"We need a much higher standard of public debate on the
CDM," Hession said. "All too often what is good in the system
is dismissed or ignored, and much of the discussion on problems
is not sufficiently focused on concrete solutions."
The CDM chairmanship rotates between developed and emerging
nations each year. Pedro Martins Barata, a Portuguese member of
the executive board, said in a Dec. 20 interview that he too is
considering the position. Hession took over from Barata as CDM
vice chairman in the middle of last year.
Standardized Baselines
The International Emissions Trading Association said the
next chairman should take "very seriously" the need to improve
communication between the regulators and stakeholders and to
develop what it calls standardized baselines, which would credit
emitters that beat certain industry targets rather than applying
a case-by-case review. The approach, favored by IETA, was
approved at the Cancun talks.
"We will be ready to work constructively with whomever is
chosen and excited to follow through on the many requests made
of the board in Cancun," Kim Carnahan, an emission offset
specialist at Geneva-based IETA, said by e-mail today.
Mahlung of Jamaica took the top job at the CDM last year
after serving as vice chairman. The board oversees the supply of
emissions credits in the UN market. The European Union allows
some UN offsets to be traded in its own carbon trading system,
the world's largest.
The executive board must "finally publish" its
investigation into projects that cut hydrofluorocarbons, said
Eva Filzmoser, program director at the lobby group CDM Watch in
Brussels. HFCs, produced from industrial processes, are a more
potent greenhouse-gas than carbon dioxide. The group accused
some such projects of getting excess credits. The UN report was
initially due on Dec. 10, Filzmoser said by e-mail today.
"Acknowledging flaws and fixing them, especially after the
recent scandal around HFC-23 projects, is of vital importance,"
Filzmoser said.
For Related News and Information:
EU carbon-market stories: TNI EU ENVMARKET <GO>
Top energy, power news: ETOP <GO>, PTOP <GO>
Top environmental stories: GREEN <GO>
--Editors: Mike Anderson, John Buckley.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Catherine Airlie at
+44-20-7073-3308 or cairlie@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Voss at +44-20-7073-3520 or sev@bloomberg.net
