India Protests to Prevent UN Stopping Supply of HFC-23 Carbon Credits
India, the world’s second-most populous nation, lodged a formal complaint to prevent the United Nations emissions market regulator from stopping issuances of credits derived from projects that cut hydrofluorocarbon-23 gas.
“India considers such steps to be violative of the rights and obligations of parties under the Kyoto Protocol and has lodged formal protest with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat” in Bonn, according to a statement from Environment Minister Shrimati Jayanthi Natarajan.
Five Indian projects that destroy the gas, which traps about 11,700 times the heat in the atmosphere compared with carbon dioxide, have together received about 61.6 million metric tons of credits, according to a Bloomberg calculator using UN data. They are valued at 529 million euros ($761 million) based on 8.59 euro-a-ton spot price of Certified Emission Reduction credits on the BlueNext exchange in Paris as of 3:09 p.m. They have fallen 28 percent in the year to date.
Kalpana Palkhiwala, spokeswoman at the environment ministry, declined to comment immediately when contacted today by phone.
The European Union this year banned factories and power stations in its carbon market, the world’s largest, from using HFC-23 credits from May 2013. A Danish proposal to ban the use of the credits by governments to meet their own climate goals gained support from almost half the 27-member EU, the Environmental Investigation Agency said in June.
Germany, France and the U.K. are among 11 nations that officially support the proposal to ban EU countries from using HFC-23-linked CERs to comply with emission limits under the protocol, according to an e-mail from EIA and Bonn-based CDM- Watch, two non-governmental groups seeking a wider ban of the credits.
The Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board, regulator of the UN market, will further consider revising rules governing HFC-23 credits at a meeting planned for Sept. 25 in Quito, Ecuador, according to a report from a board meeting that ended July 15.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alessandro Vitelli at avitelli1@bloomberg.net
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