Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
WESTMORELAND-BASED company Eco-Tech is claiming to be the first Jamaican
entity to successfully sell carbon emission reduction credits under the 2002 Kyoto Protocol.
Speaking at the inaugural Climate Conference (C3), convened by Eco-Tech and held at the Rose Hall Resort and Country Club in Montego Bay, St. James, last week, Managing Director Maikel Oerbekke said the company had earned US$100,000 worth of credits as a by-product of selling 60,000 energy-saving light bulbs to the tourism industry.
Mr. Oerbekke told The Gleaner that 45,000 tonnes of credits were earned, of which 12,000 have so far been brokered through CO2e.com, a London-based subsidiary of international brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald. He added that interest in the remaining 37,000 tonnes of credits is being shown by three parties.
Eco-Tech follows the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ)-owned Wigton Wind Farm which last year signed a nine-year US$3.1 million deal to supply credits to the Netherlands. These credits were sold under the United Nations (UN) 1997 Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) whereas Eco-Tech sold its credits as Voluntary Emission Reductions (VERs), which can be bought privately.
"We started in 2001 and didn't sell until 2002 but the whole VER market is getting hotter and hotter," he said.
A VALUE PAST 2012
"The carbon credit system shows how you can finance projects; maybe it sounds abstract but we have done it," Mr. Oerbekke. "We want to see the environment having a value past 2012 (when Kyoto expires); moving forward this is the only way you will get change over the long term."
It may be more realistic for Jamaican projects to look to generate VER carbon credits rather then CDMs, partly due to their more expensive CDM application process, believes Bert Brown, managing director of SGS Jamaica. SGS is a multinational company that conducts project verifications.
"The scale costs, with verification costing around US$100,000, are likely to be too costly for many projects," he said. "I think in the Caribbean we need to look towards solar power as a possible attractive CDM project, and I think we would also need to collaborate on a regional basis to share these costs."
According to Nicola Steen, senior vice-president of CO2e.com: "VERs are extremely viable and corporations
frequently buy them to show their green credentials so, for instance, community projects in Jamaica would be very attractive to such buyers."
