The Idea Of Carbon Trading

By Emily Roberts

We may or may not be familiar with the concept of carbon trading. We may have heard of it, but not know what it is about & how it contributes in reducing the carbons being given off into our air.

The carbon emissions trading scheme functions pretty easily. An administration basically figures out how much carbon emissions are transmitted into the air by each company. It then lowers the total share to meet their international responsibilities. Each company has to then meet the lowered target or pay a fee based on how much they have exceeded. When a company reduces its emissions below the level, it can sell their unused amount to other industries who may need more carbon credits to avoid fines.

So how are these industries suddenly lowering their emissions? How are these reduced emissions enough to observe the government's prerequisites and still be enough to allow the business to sell to their contemporaries as carbon trades? You'd think if it is possible today, it is most likely possible then. The matter here is, industries are more probable to be more sensitive to these issues when fines are involved.

There is one deadly blemish however-carbon trading can and most likely will affect the consumers. Because companies might suffer from big fines arising from carbon trading, they can charge the people so their profit is still present even if they pay fines. There is still room for improvement, of course, since carbon trading is generally a new process not many people know of.

The good thing about carbon trading however, is that even if it isn't perfected at the moment, it has helped the environment a lot already. World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit has stated that 374 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) were exchanged via projects in 2005. It shows a 240% increase comparative to 2004 (110 tCO2e) which was itself already a 41% increase compared to 2003 (78 tCO2e).

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