Learning to trade in carbon dioxideDecember 01, 2003"You have to be well prepared to enter the emissions trading arena. Otherwise you'll run the same financial risks as on a conventional stock exchange," declares Franzjosef Schafhausen of the German ministry for the environment, who heads the working group on the national climate change program. Poor awareness of the implications of emissions trading was also perceived by a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI after staging a "trial run" in Baden-Württemburg last year. The results of their experience and a related thesis paper have been published (in German) in a study that can be ordered or downloaded from from the Internet. Evidently, the art of emissions trading is not a game for novices. The Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen has also set up an executive training program called "jupiter". It was developed in collaboration with the North Rhine-Westphalian chamber of commerce. According to ISI estimates, some three to four thousand companies in Germany will be affected by the new rules - from big corporations to SMEs - especially those operating plant with a high level of carbon dioxide emissions. The "greediest" companies in this respect belong to the power generation and metalworking industries, and producers of steal, glass, minerals, ceramics and cellulose. These firms will have to uphold the promise made by the German government to the international community when it signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, namely to significantly reduce all greenhouse-gas emissions by 2012. As of 2005, companies will require a credit for each metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Any surplus allowance can be sold to other companies in Europe - and, by 2008, possibly worldwide. Companies unable to provide the requisite number of allowances risk substantial fines. "Many executives are still in the dark about how to approach emissions trading," reveals jupiter project manager Dr. Gorden Spangardt. "Our 18-month training program is based on a simulation game that allows them to test projections of various emissions trading alternatives over the period from 2005 to 2012." The first step in the exercise is to determine how much carbon dioxide is emitted by their companies' operations. Twelve companies will start training in January 2004. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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