New York (November 26, 2007)- The United Nations may change its rules beginning in 2013 regarding eligible technologies for emissions trading in an effort to convince the United States to join international efforts to address climate change. Halldor Thorgeirsson, the head of emissions trading at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said he is unsure which technologies would be backed by the United Nations, but one potential candidate could be carbon capture and sequestration, which could “allow for significant scaling up” of emission trading.
US lawmakers have remained skeptical of foreign emissions credits because of the potential for credits to not represent true emissions reductions. In some cases, US companies could invest in credits from foreign manufacturers who cut emissions but would have done it anyway. Because of these concerns, proposed legislation in the Senate (S. 2191) that would create a national emissions trading system, introduced by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), does not allow credits for projects that are approved by the United Nations.
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