How Tony Blair throws away taxpayers money on carbon "offsets" on his air miles

If you are wondering what Tony Blair means when he says he will "offset" his long distance travel (as he did today) - this is what it means - when he travels , or anyone else does on Gubment business.

The UK Gubment are committed to offset Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from air travel by government staff from April 2006. (The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have their own emissions reduction commitments - don't ask why, that's how Gubments work - it's called joined up Gubment)
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The UK Gubment does this by buying credits from UK-based emissions trading fund Trading Emissions PLC (Y/E 30/6/2006 Turnover £7.21 Mn Profit £3.49 Mn - yes folks that's GROSS PROFIT of 50%) In this instance some other City based Hooray Henries called EEA Fund Management Ltd got a share of the action as well - (follow link for details)

On 28th December 2006 (last week - PAnews/20060029/32377087 and more details here) Trading Emissions sold 225,000t of certified emissions reduction (CER) credits to the UK government carbon offsetting fund at £9.76/t = Euro 7.40 (US$19/t), or 90pc of the price of 2008 EU emissions allowances(tender bid total £2.5 Mn 1/3rd of Annual T/O). The government has the option to buy a further 50,000t of CERs = £0.5Mn. (Today's price is somewhat less at £5.20 = Euro 3.55 - see graph) - smart buying eh ?

“The government is increasingly aware of the environmental impact of air travel and this is a way to mitigate unavoidable emissions,” a spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.

The credits will be generated from small-scale renewable energy and energy efficiency clean development mechanism projects, one of the flexible mechanisms under the Kyoto protocol - such as Sri Lankan villagers using Photo voltaics to generate daytime electricity to run domestic low voltage lights in the evening , TV's etc instead of using paraffin fuelled lighting (which helps prevent the development of nationwide electricity supply systems that are more efficient) ...or Brazilian farmers preventing methane escaping from pig ..er...shit.

One CER will offset the emissions from around 10,000km of air travel — nearly enough for one London-New York return trip, according to the CarbonNeutral company.

All this hasn't stopped a single kilo of jetfuel being burnt - but it gives some folks in Whitehall and Westminster with a nice warm feeling , and of course a Carbon Trader with a fancy commission and if he/she anticipated the market dropping (ie they read Lord Patel on a regular basis) they could have dealt themselves a nice fat trading profit on top - which no doubt they did.

That is what Lord Patel means when he talks about the casino that carbon trading is..a casino that is fed very often with taxpayers money.

This my child is called climate change economics.