Date: January 16, 2009

Source: John Dorschner (The Miami Herald)

The globe may be getting dangerously warm, but the movement to reverse the trend has been hit hard by the recession.

"There's no doubt the economy has changed the nature of the debate," said Steve Fine, a veteran climate-change consultant, at the second annual meeting of Carbon Markets North America, which opened Thursday in Coral Gables.

Severe economic pressures are expected to postpone efforts in the United States to reduce greenhouse gases, and they're causing problems worldwide with attempts to agree on a plan to replace the Kyoto program, which expires at the end of 2012.

What's more, programs already planned to reduce emissions around the world are now having trouble getting funded.

All of this is happening despite the strong commitment by the incoming Obama administration to combat global warming.

Many of the proposals -- which would penalize the biggest producers of carbon dioxide and other gases -- would ultimately be paid for by consumers, particularly users of electricity, who would see the results in their monthly utility bills.

"Can we really do that in this environment?" asked George Sorenson, chairman of FE Clean Energy Group, of Darien, Conn.

About 100 persons listened to the morning sessions of the conference. About 150 had registered, said Graham Cooper of Environmental Finance Publications, the event's main sponsor. Last year about 200 attended, he said.

The Obama administration plans to support "green jobs" -- making wind turbines, remodeling buildings to make them energy efficient -- as part of the economic stimulus package, but more far-reaching measures, installing policies to penalize the major producers of greenhouse gases, are likely to be postponed.

Fine, a vice president of ICF International, of Fairfax, Va., predicted that it will be 2015 before the United States implements a cap-and-trade program, which would set limits on emissions and if companies didn't meet those limits, they would have to trade with other companies to get credits for gas reductions.

Even so, some panelists hope that at least the House of Representatives can pass some kind of bill before December, when an international gathering in Denmark will grapple with a replacement for Kyoto.

"What we need from the U.S. is a clear signal that the era of doing nothing is over," said Franz Litz of the World Resources Institute, referring to the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, which refused to join the Kyoto effort to stop climate change.

Those meeting in Denmark will have to struggle with several challenges, panelists said. One will be getting China, which rivals the United States as the world's top emitter, to start doing its share of the cleanup. Another is getting money from the industrial world to help finance efforts in places like Brazil and Mexico to reduce emissions. .

Marco Monroy of MGM International, a Miami company that develops projects worldwide to reduce emissions, said in an interview such efforts are "now having a hard time finding financing," amid the credit crunch affecting many other businesses.

Panelists discussed at length the start last fall of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast, where states have created a carbon trading market that might be similar to an eventual national effort. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and other state leaders have been looking to the RGGI model as a possible solution.

But RGGI started carbon trading by allocating more credits for carbon than the region was producing. That strategy muffled complaints from utilities about the program, but it means that carbon started trading at extremely low levels -- about $3 a ton, far below the $17 price on European markets.

In fact, it's below the $6 or so a ton that some American companies pay in the voluntary U.S. market to show they're good corporate citizens, said Wiley Barbour, founder of the American Carbon Registry.

The RGGI pricing is similar to what happened initially in Europe, in which so many credits were given away at first that they did essentially nothing to reduce greenhouse gases.

Many organizations have good intensions, the experts said, but that doesn't translate into reducing emissions. "At the end of the day, the environment doesn't care if we are earnest or not," said Sonia Hamel, a climate action specialist from the United Kingdom.