Earth Equity News

UN's Clean Development Mechanism Funding of Gas and Coal Power Plants Stirs Controversy. By Jeffrey Ball, WSJournal, July 11, 2008, subscription. "A United Nations program designed to combat global warming has started doing something no one expected: It is subsidizing fossil-fuel power plants that spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually. In the past year or so, 13 big plants in India and China that burn natural gas have won the U.N.'s blessing as aids in the fight against climate change. As a result, owners of the plants earn millions of dollars a year from a U.N. program intended to spur construction of solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable-energy projects. This unforeseen turn is fanning new doubts about the environmental efficacy of the U.N.'s 'carbon trading' program -- the most ambitious effort yet to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases where they're rising the fastest, in the developing world... The U.N. is now venturing further onto controversial turf. In recent months it has opened the door to subsidizing new coal-burning plants. Advocates argue that modern, cleaner-burning fossil-fuel technology is expensive, and without help paying for it, owners would build old-style plants that pollute more... Critics say the U.N. program is straying from its purpose of promoting renewable-energy projects. 'Coal is, like, climate enemy No. 1,' says Michael Wara, a Stanford University lecturer who has published several papers criticizing the U.N. program... Mr. Wara argues that India and China are already building more-efficient plants anyway, since doing so makes economic sense at a time of rising energy prices. Using the U.N. program to subsidize these plants wastes money that could be used for other clean-energy projects... One of the fundamental principles of the U.N. initiative, called the Clean Development Mechanism, is that it should subsidize pollution-cutting projects only if they would otherwise be too expensive to build."