Search

This article discusses software from Carbonetworks Corp., which assists executives in planning for future environmental compliance regulations by mapping out corporate carbon footprints. This subscription based service will be useful as anticipated caps on carbon emissions and markets for trading emissions allowances are designed. The utility of this software in quantifying the financial advantages of different approaches to pollution mitigation is discussed.

This article focuses on the efforts of Canada to develop a trading platform for greenhouse-gas emission credits. Steve Teller is a man whose job is on hold. He's project manager of the Canadian Climate Exchange, a company that the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange formed two years ago to develop a trading platform for greenhouse-gas emissions credits, which corporations will be able to buy and sell in order to meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. There is a small swarm of brokers, consultants, fledgling exchanges and other entrepreneurial companies expecting that Canada's Kyoto commitments--to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012--will spawn a new industry around the trading of emission credits. A trading system gives businesses that face pollution restrictions the choice of paying the government for credits, subsidizing emission reduction projects elsewhere, or paying for internal measures that reduce emissions, whichever is cheaper. These are companies in the electricity generation, oil and gas, mining and heavy manufacturing industries, which together are expected to produce about half of Canada's total greenhouse-gas emissions by 2010. The Kyoto Protocol went into effect on Feb. 16, and yet Canada's plan to meet its steep--some say impossible--emission reduction obligations is still not fully known.

The article discusses environmental policy in British Columbia, Canada as of 2013, with information on carbon taxes and climate-change policies. Topics include criticism by B.C.'s auditor general John Doyle on the aim of the Pacific Carbon Trust to issue carbon credits to offset emissions by public-sector business, carbon accounting debates, and Canadian government policy for pollution reduction.

Comments on proposals of the federal government of Canada on how the country might meet greenhouse-gas reductions set by the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement. Criticism of the proposals by Environment Minister Lorne Taylor; Options which are being discussed, including a domestic emissions trading plan.