"Cap and Trade": sistema de redução das emissões de Carbono da Califórnia ameaçado por incertezas

Que bons ventos cheguem da Califórnia!!!

O sistema conhecido por "Cap and Trade" em fase de implantação na Califórnia, tem atraído a atenção de formuladores de políticas públicas, ambientalistas, diplomatas e outros envolvidos nos debates climáticos em todo o mundo. Não é uma novidade. Já existem experiências ativas em países europeus, embora algumas destas experiências tenham se tornado mais conhecidas por escândalos de fraudes do que por seus resultados.

O sistema da Califórnia foi criado em 2006 por determinação de uma lei pioneira proposta pelo então governador Arnold Schwarzernegger, será o mais ambicioso já implantado e tem potencial para movimentar montantes "multibilionários" de recursos. Curiosamente, Schwarzenegger é do Partido Republicano, que abriga os furiosos adversários dos ambientalistas nos EUA. Para ser aprovada, os defensores da lei precisaram vencer uma forte resistência do lobby antiambientalista, quase todo abrigado no partido do governador, mas o espírito e a tradição inovadora da Califórnia prevaleceram. De acordo com a lei, o sistema entrará em funcionamento daqui a seis meses.

Se o sistema californiano tiver sucesso, influenciará o resto do mundo e empurrará para frente a agenda climática mundial. Se fracassar, será um grande obstáculo aos avanços no setor.

O sistema "Cap and Trade" (tradução: estabelece um teto e negocia) resume-se a fixar um limite máximo a ser permitido para as emissões de gases do efeito estufa em uma determinada região (bacia aérea) e um cronograma de metas para que o limite se reduza gradativamente ainda mais ao longo do tempo.

Cada indústria responsável por altos índices de emissão assume metas próprias, estabelecidas de acordo com o nível de avanço tecnológico reconhecido para as suas instalações. Quanto mais defasado, mais potencial de emissões teria uma determinada indústria e, consequentemente, mais compromissos de investimentos para abater as suas emissões deverá assumir.

De acordo com o princípio do "Cap and Trade", o emissor que antecipar ou for além das suas metas obrigatórias, passa a contar com créditos proporcionais que podem ser comercializados em "mercados de carbono", que funciona como uma Bolsa de Valores específica para esta finalidade.

O sistema é interessante, atraente para as indústrias e poderá ser muito eficaz para o meio ambiente, caso seja devidamente implantado e corrigido ao longo do percurso em suas eventuais falhas.

Alguns setores criticam o mecanismo argumentando que este seria apenas um ajuste capitalista, que não alteraria o "business as usual" e que reconheceria o "direito a poluir". Não há dúvida que ainda há muito a se debater, seja pelo aspecto prático, tecnológico e econômico, assim como pela dimensão ética e ideológica. A crítica é válida e poderá ajudar na busca de um sistema mais adequado no futuro mas, o fato é que, não há como deixar de se reconhecer que trata-se de um mecanismo promissor e exequível dentro da conjuntura atual e que aprender com o desenrolar da experiência californiana é indispensável.

Conforme a matéria abaixo, o Brasil é um dos países que pretende implantar o mesmo modelo. Eu sou a favor do modelo e já o defendia quando fui presdente da FEEMA, de 2007 a 2008, para solucionar o problema das saturadas bacias aéreas do Rio de Janeiro, em particular a Bacia Aérea I (Sepetiba: onde localiza-se a CSA) e Bacia Aérea III (Baixada Fluminense: onde localiza-se a REDUC e outras indústrias de grande porte). Em breve, com a implantação do COMPERJ, o problema será grave também na Bacia Aérea IV.

Que a Califórnia ajude a tirar o mundo do quase marasmo climático que nos encontramos no momento, causado pelo impasse diplomático que emperra os acordos internacionais que deveriam prevenir as mudanças climáticas.

Axel Grael

-----
California's carbon market: Will cap-and-trade work?

Nine months before California is set to finalize a trading system aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, participants have the jitters.

Litigation threatens to delay the start of the multibillion-dollar program, and industry executives worry that its regulations will fall short of guaranteeing a smoothly operating market. Fear is growing that it could be susceptible to the fraud that has plagued a similar European system.

“It feels as though the sun has risen in the West,” Henry Derwent, head of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Assn., told traders, bankers, entrepreneurs and oil and utility executives in Los Angeles last week.

“But however tempting it may be … to celebrate getting out ahead of the rest of the United States,” he cautioned, California’s trading system must show “real momentum.... If the program goes poorly, if the regulations don’t allow for a functioning market, there may be little market for California to lead,” Derwent said.

Scientists say that carbon dioxide and other gases, mainly from fossil-fuel burning, are trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. leading to dangerous climate change, including rising sea levels, longer droughts, floods and melting glaciers.

In 2006, California passed the nation’s most comprehensive climate law, mandating a cut in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020 — about 10% below today’s emissions. Although Congress balked at similar legislation in 2009, California has moved forward. Its plan to cap greenhouse gases at 600 industrial plants and allow companies to buy and sell emissions permits is modeled on Europe’s 6-year-old cap-and-trade system.

The 700 executives who signed up for the Navigating the American Carbon World conference last week included officials from Alcoa, Chevron, General Electric, Shell, Southern California Edison and other major companies. They were joined by financiers from Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Barclay’s Capital and other large Wall Street firms.

Engineers and entrepreneurs manned booths and handed out shiny brochures to promote companies that verify carbon emissions, manage greenhouse gas data, broker credits and develop offset projects such as systems to control methane from farm manure or increase forest carbon sequestration.

The European system, which covers 12,000 companies in 30 nations, traded $123 billion in carbon allowances last year and is on target to slash emissions by 21% below 1990 levels over the next decade. But the market has been jolted by an estimated $6 billion in tax fraud schemes along with the recent cyber-theft of $50 million in carbon credits stored in the Czech Republic registry.

Today, “the eyes of the world rest upon this [California] market,” said Tom Lewis, chief executive of Green Exchange, a consortium of Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and other banks and brokers. Noting the “fraud and violations” in Europe, he added that California could be an example for the U.S., but “the criticism … will be abundant if we get it wrong.”

Carbon-intensive industries are also concerned that California might not provide enough ways for them to offset their emissions by purchasing credits. Although air officials have adopted rules for crediting U.S. forestry and livestock and the destruction of ozone-depleting chemicals projects, they have yet to approve rules for projects such as cutting methane from coal mines or rice farms.

California’s program would be North America’s biggest carbon market, three times larger than a utility-only system in 10 Northeastern states. By 2016, about $10 billion in carbon allowances are expected to be traded through the California market.

A court decision last month temporarily halted California’s cap-and-trade program after local environmental groups contended the California Air Resources Board failed to analyze alternatives to trading. The decision is expected to be appealed, but any delay in the January start date could throw a wrench into the financial planning of hundreds of companies.

“There’s some uncertainty around when this program is going to start and maybe if it will ever start,” said Graeme Martin, a Shell Energy official.

Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary D. Nichols told the conference that “our ability to move forward is threatened as a result of litigation. We don’t know how it will turn out.... Some segments of the community, who define themselves as environmental justice groups, just hate cap-and-trade” because they believe it would not cut pollution in their communities.

“We have to be open to the possibility there could be other approaches and that we could achieve [carbon] reductions in a different way,” Nichols said. She added that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who met with European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard last week, “has the opportunity to put his mark on it.”

The trading program, seen as a way for industry to cut costs, was incorporated into the 2006 law by former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Six other U.S. states that had joined with California in the Western Climate Initiative in recent years have declined to participate in its trading program. Three Canadian provinces have indicated they will join.

“The way forward lies in individual regional, national and state systems over the world reaching out to each other over time,” Derwent said, given the failure of the United Nations to negotiate a new global climate treaty.

California’s success, he added, will determine the eventual fate of carbon trading in Congress: “Washington needs to have evidence from California that the solution being applied here works.”

China, Australia, Brazil and several other nations are considering cap-and-trade systems. And Chinese initiatives in particular were the talk of last week’s conference.

Veronique Bugnion, chief of analytics at Point Carbon, a research firm, noted that China, which has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest carbon emitter, plans to launch a trading market in six regions by 2013, with a goal of adopting a national program by 2015.

A cap-and-trade market, which sets a price on carbon emissions, is seen as an economic incentive to replace fossil fuel-powered plants with solar, wind and other renewable energy facilities. “The race for a cleaner and more energy-efficient future is on,” Bugnion said. But unless California regulations “put a smart price on emissions, a price people can use to plan for new facilities, a price companies can rely on to innovate … China will eat California’s innovation lunch.”

Fonte: Los Angeles Times