Climate change’s big winner

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The biggest winner from the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 treaty that requiries participating countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions?

That would be China, Fiona Harvey reports for the Financial Times:

China has been by far the biggest winner from the Kyoto protocol, receiving tens of billions of dollars in investment to finance low-carbon technology. Last year, 73 per cent of carbon credit projects certified by the United Nations under the protocol were based in China.

The next-biggest shares of the carbon pie went to Brazil and India, with 6 percent each, while the entire continent of Africa captured just 5 percent of U.N.-certified carbon credit projects.

What’s going on? Under Kyoto, developed countries can meet their carbon targets partly by investing in emissions-reduction projects in the developing world. And China, as Harvey explains, produces a great deal of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, greenhouse gases produced as a byproduct of manufacturing refrigerants. HFCs are roughly 11,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so investing in relatively cheap HFC projects in China gives you a lot of bang for your carbon credit buck. (The World Bank has played in major role in promoting these projects, with some controversy.)

Most carbon credit projects in China, therefore, are related to HFCs rather than things like windmills and solar panels — at least so far. New HFC projects are increasingly hard to come by since most factories already have the proper equipment installed.

But what about Africa? Why so little investment? Well, the continent has few factories — hence few carbon projects.