permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Here's a story from the Associated Press, via the Environmental News Network:

In the Economics of Global Warming, Pig Emissions Have a Part to Play

December 29, 2004 — By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press
SANTIAGO, Chile — Pig manure in Chile will keep neon lights glowing on 
Tokyo's Ginza in years to come. It's a grand north-south tradeoff to slow 
global 
warming: You reduce your "greenhouse gas" emissions so I don't have to cut 
back 
on mine. 

In this case, a Chilean pork producer is eliminating methane fumes from 
animal waste and selling the resulting "credits" to Japanese and Canadian 
utilities, requiring that much less of them as they reduce carbon dioxide 
emissions at 
their coal- and oil-burning power plants. 

It's one of the biggest deals in a potential multibillion-dollar market, a 
global exchange a Canadian executive calls "absolutely essential" for meeting 
targets under the Kyoto Protocol. But some warn that abuses may subvert the 
spirit of that climate treaty. 

Last month in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the annual international climate 
conference approved an expansion of this Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, 
as 
the exchange is called, and a strengthening of the U.N. office overseeing it. 

Carbon dioxide, methane and a few other gases trap heat that otherwise would 
escape the atmosphere. A scientific consensus, endorsed by a U.N.-sponsored 
network of climate experts, blames much of the Earth's temperature rise of 
recent decades on these emissions, and warns it will lead to damaging climate 
disruptions. 

The 1997 Kyoto pact, effective next Feb. 16, sets mandatory targets for 
industrial nations to reduce emissions by 2012. Although the U.S government 
rejects 
Kyoto, other nations are setting emissions quotas for industries that spew 
out the gases, particularly carbon dioxide, the most common. 

The CDM was established under Kyoto on the theory that emission reductions 
help the climate wherever they occur. It allows northern industries to 
underwrite reductions in developing countries -- where they're not mandatory 
-- and get 
credit for them. 

Japan says up to one-third of its required cutbacks may come from foreign 
sources. Don Wharton, director of sustainable development for Canada's 
TransAlta 
utility, said the CDM is "absolutely essential" because there's too little 
time to install new technologies at home. 

"We believe most large Canadian companies will have to rely on offsets 
(credits) to meet their reduction requirements," he said. 

TransAlta and Tokyo Electric Power Co. found a partial answer in pig manure 
pits in the green valleys south of Santiago. 

Industrial pork operations usually collect excrement in pits where it 
decomposes naturally, emitting methane into the open air. But Chilean food 
producer 
AgroSuper, spotting the Kyoto opportunity, installed US$30 million (euro22 
million) in technology to handle the waste of 100,000 pigs, covering pits 
with 
vast plastic sheets and drawing off the methane, some to flare, some to use 
in 
generators to power farm operations. 

Though less prevalent than carbon dioxide, methane is a more potent 
greenhouse gas. Each ton of contained methane earns AgroSuper some 20 "CERs" 
-- 
certified emission reductions equivalent to 20 tons of carbon dioxide. 

The Chilean agribusiness will divide 400,000 CERs per year for nine years 
between the Japanese and Canadian companies. Wharton estimated this would 
meet 10 
percent of TransAlta's needs for reductions. 

A credit currently sells on the new European carbon market for more than 
euro8 (US$11). But terms of the AgroSuper deal, still awaiting final U.N. 
approval, were not disclosed. 

That carbon price is expected to rise, and big players are jumping into the 
market. A firm called CO2e ("carbon dioxide equivalent"), a subsidiary of the 
New York financial house Cantor Fitzgerald, brokered the AgroSuper deal and 
is 
developing another involving Brazilian power plants using sugar cane, a 
renewable fuel less carbon-heavy than coal or oil. China, meanwhile, is 
working to 
qualify more than 500 projects for salable credits. 

Environmentalists worry that a flood of questionable projects may win U.N. 
certification as Kyoto comes into force in 2005. They cite CDM proposals for 
hydropower dams, for example, saying they're often "business-as-usual" 
projects 
that aren't replacing carbon-heavy alternatives, but would have been built 
without the Kyoto trading mechanism. 

"The fact they're getting CDM credits is not helping the climate," said Ben 
Pearson, Australian founder of a campaign called CDM Watch. He said climate 
change will be slowed not through "marginal" projects with animal waste, but 
by 
addressing "the real issue, which is to fundamentally reform the way we 
produce 
and consume energy." 

Santiago lawyer Sergio Vives, who helped negotiate the AgroSuper deal, 
defends it as a real reduction. 

"It's quite clear they probably wouldn't have gone ahead with this 
technology" -- and methane would still rise into the atmosphere -- "without 
an incentive 
like the CDM," he said. 

The world is taking notice of South America's porcine potential. 

A Florida-based firm, AgCert, is installing methane-capture technology at 30 
pig farms in Brazil. In one Brazilian state alone, Minas Gerais, 3.4 million 
pigs produce 7 million tons of waste per year -- a lot to work with to keep 
lights burning in the credits-hungry north. 

Source: Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=690