Renowned Philippine Columnist, Mr. Rey “Butch” Gamboa, reported that Eco Securities of Ireland offered a local piggery, Uni-Rich, $12000/year ($4/carbon credit) for their carbon revenues till the year 2012. Uni-Rich gets carbon credits for trapping and using the methane generated from their pig manure to power some of their facilities.
In turn, Eco Securities sells their rights to big banks (Caisse des Depots) at $18/carbon credit. Does it look like a fair trade?, or is there just too much money for the middle man? But if Eco Securities are the one themselves investing in the certification and the methane trapping equipment, then it is a fair trade off. Not to mention that there are yearly monitoring costs that have to be spent to check whether Uni-Rich is indeed following its Green practices of processing their solid wastes.
Also stated in Mr. Gamboa’s column was that investment banks have now dipped their hands in the carbon trading market.
It is reported that enterprising traders have bought/sold some $60 billion worth of emissions certificates, mostly from European countries and Japan. These investment houses and traders will hang on to these certificates for a while, hoping that their value will rise, or sell to European power generators who need the credits to meet their regulatory obligations.
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The government’s own, Development Bank of the Philippines, is also investing heavily in renewable energy products (hydro, thermal, solar, wind, geothermal) as well as negotiating for the sale of the carbon credits for these projects.
This is definitely good news. The Carbon Credit Market seems to have taken off after the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. All this despite the fact that the United States is the only country remaining today not to support the Kyoto Protocol.
For the local pig industry this is good news. Considering that the margins are slim and the losses high because of feeds, medicines and diseases. An additional means to earn could encourage the growth of the battered pig industry.
I was recommending this to my friend a year ago. For him to check also whether there are already existing carbon credit traders looking into the pig industry. But sadly he called me up this year telling me that he folded up his organic pig business because he got devastated by disease and the loses were piling up.
Category: Carbon Credits, Asia
