Green investment scheme

A Green Investment Scheme (GIS) refers to a plan for achieving environmental benefits from trading ‘hot air’ under the Kyoto Protocol.

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Under the Kyoto Protocol many economies in transition (e.g. Russia and Romania) were allocated emission commitments, so-called “assigned amounts”, well above their emissions at the time. Arguably, the commitment level surplus would allow these countries’ emissions to grow as their economies recover, but even with rapid growth of emissions the emissions will be well under their target (see Hot air. Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol allows countries to sell their surplus as Assigned Amount Units (AAU, where one AAU is equivalent to one tonne of CO2 emitted) to countries in deficit. Environmentalists and many European countries oppose such trading by on the grounds that it would undermine the Kyoto ambitions by allowing buyers to emit more without the sellers needing to do any effort to reduce emissions – the ‘hot air’.

The Green investment schemes are supposed to provide environmental benefits of hot air trading by earmarking revenues from these transfers for environmentally related purposes in the seller countries. Various GIS proposals exist, some requiring strict quantification of actual emissions reduced.

The EU, and individual member states, are likely to invest through GIS only in quantifiable projects with relatively strict verification and additionality requirements. Japan is likely to be the largest buyer of Russian AAUs. The Japanese approach is that GIS should include all activities – quantifiable and non-quantifiable – with investors free to decide their degree of ‘greenness’.

See also

• Carbon emissions trading
• Hot air (Kyoto Protocol)

References

• A Russian Green Investment Scheme. Securing environmental benefits from international emissions trading Published July 2002 by Climate Strategies. Authors: Kristian Tangen, Anna Korppoo, Vladimir Berdin, Taishi Sugiyama, Christian Egenhofer, John Drexhage, Oleg Pluzhnikov, Michael Grubb, Thomas Legge, Arild Moe, Jonathan Stern, Kenichiro Yamaguchi. link
• Green Investment Schemes: Options And Issues. OECD environment directorate and International Energy Agency. Authors William Blyth and Richard Baron (International Energy Agency). Published by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2003, COM/ENV/EPOC/IEA/SLT(2003)9 link

Developing a Green Investment Scheme in Romania (1.21-Mbyte MS DOC File, 68 pages, 2006) Authors: Lavinia Andrei, Adina Relicovschi, Veronica Toza Coordinator: Maria Khovanskaya [ http://www.rec.org/REC/Programs/ClimateChange/green-investment-scheme.htm link]