Word: traded
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...from using biofuels. CO2 emissions resulting from deforestation or other changes in the way we use land are not evaluated at all. The result is a huge, if accidental error in the existing global carbon accounting system - and one that now stands to be repeated in the cap-and-trade bill up for debate in Congress. "It's a very, very large loophole," says Searchinger, who had done pioneering work on problems of biofuels. "We're just effectively ignoring what happens on land." (See TIME's special report on the environment...
Given how limited the impact of the Kyoto Protocol has been, the effects of that error have been modest so far. But if the U.S. adopts a cap-and-trade system with the same mistake, or if the world agrees to a truly global successor to Kyoto, the blowback could be enormous. As long as biofuels are incorrectly treated as 100% carbon neutral, they'll represent an economical way for companies to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions and comply with a tightening carbon cap. One study estimates that if the world were to meet a 50% "cut" in global greenhouse...
...should get credit for those cuts. But politics will be another matter - the biofuel industry already has a lot of weight, especially in the U.S., where environmentalists need the votes of rural and Midwestern representatives in Congress if they are to have any hope of passing a cap-and-trade bill. Challenging the biofuel loophole could effectively scuttle cap-and-trade...
...that may well be a boon. If cap-and-trade were passed with the existing biofuel loophole, it could set up a system that would incentivize the expansion of bioenergy at the expense of the environment and carbon cutting. Certainly the error could be fixed later, after the bill is passed - but by that time the financial interests in favor of biofuels would be even stronger, and would surely resist changes. "If this isn't fixed, you could give companies a very powerful financial incentive to go clear land," says Searchinger, who has briefed members of Congress on his research...
...fired power plants. On the supply side, the state has required utilities to provide one-fifth of their power from renewables by 2010, which will jump to one-third by 2020. And California's soup-to-nuts effort to slash emissions - including a cap-and-trade regimen in 2012 - is the blueprint for federal climate legislation. (Download a PDF on California's industries, labs and technologies...