Carbon-market supporters from China to California will push for emissions trading even as they prepare for the end of the United Nations Kyoto Protocol in seven years, Europe’s top climate negotiator said.
Nations including China, New Zealand and some US states have formed an informal group, “kind of the champions of the carbon market,” Artur Runge-Metzger said in a May 2 interview in Bonn, Germany. “It’s that club that’s going to set international standards” rather than UN talks, he said.
Countries are increasing links between markets outside of the climate-protection targets set by the UN, which has led global efforts to reduce emissions since 1992. California last month approved rules that allow companies in the world’s ninth largest economy to trade pollution rights in Quebec, while Australia in 2012 agreed to use European permits to cut costs.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol sets market-based emission-reduction targets for the EU and 37 countries. US and China, the biggest polluters, never signed, making the agreement “something that ended up in a kind of cul-de-sac,” Runge-Metzger said during the climate talks last week.
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