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Kyoto Protocol

After seven years of debate between leaders, politicians and scientists, on 16th February 2005 the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to control climate change finally became international law.
The industrialized nations who sign up to the treaty are legally bound to reduce worldwide emissions of six greenhouse gases (collectively) by an average of 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by the period 2008 -2012.
The final ratified agreement means Kyoto will receive support from participating countries that emit 61.6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. The protocol is officially the first global legally binding contract to reduce greenhouse gases.
After the agreement became law, if any of the participating countries exceed their proposed 2012 target, they will then have to make the promised reductions from the 2012 target and an additional 30 percent.

Kyoto Protocol PDF Click here

The World Bank Carbon Finance Web Site

For more information go to: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php

Carbon credits

The carbon credit market is a mechanism that was born from the protocol of Kyoto, which obliges the developed countries to reduce their Greenhouse Effect Gases (GEI). To comply with the emissions reduction goals the developed countries can finance projects of capture or debate these gases in other nations -chiefly developing-, accrediting such decreases as if had been facts in own territory.

Under the Kyoto agreement, the tradeable credits (called Certified Emission Reduction, CER), are proof enough that the world's net greenhouse emissions have been reduced. At the same time, carbon finance provides a means of leveraging new private and public investment into projects in developing countries and economies in transition.

Perenia offers a complete carbon service providing expertise throughout the project development and carbon credit creation and commercialisation value chain. It will assist developers of emission reduction projects in developing countries create and sell carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

The carbon credit market comes itself developing on a worldwide basis since 1996, but only in recent years acquired greater force. It is estimated that only in the year 2002 equivalent bonds to 70 million tons were traded.

To take full advantage of this thriving market and bring our unique expertise in project development to the table, Pacific Hydro has joined forces with Australian engineering consulting firm SMEC to create Perenia, a complete end to end carbon consulting business.

Pacific Hydro is managing a significant pipeline of projects that will generate up to 8 million carbon credits each year at maturity. In Chile, alone, La Higuera and La Confluencia run on river hydro projects each have the potential to generate almost one million carbon credits per year. In particular, La Higuera hydro project received registration under Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and doing so, became the largest hydro project and the first in Chile, to be registered.

For more information go to: http://www.science.org.au/nova/054/054key.htm