Citola Blog
New Zealand AAUs Are Going Global
The market in carbon offsets/permits/units is still very uneven. The failure to achieve a binding agreement at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen last December leaves the world with the existing markets for carbon offsets/permits/units and their exchange.
So we’re left with a somewhat ironical situation. While the entire planet is affected by carbon emissions, the progress towards addressing the problem has to be made by individual countries. The system that evolves is, to be kind, organic in its evolutionary path. In plain English, that means that no-one’s organised or powerful enough to be in charge. Just as Europe for years had different railway gauges and power sockets with differently shaped pins (still very much the case, despite the best efforts of the European Union), so we’re seeing different systems and standards for carbon offsets/permits and the markets that surround them.
The legal frameworks for trade in the United States and Australia are both the subject of intense political infighting – and we’ll bring news of those when there’s progress to report. Good news, however, seems to be emerging from New Zealand. New Zealand has a fledgling market for Kyoto-compliant forest-based carbon offsets. The New Zealand government is helping to stimulate an international market by facilitating the conversion of domestic New Zealand carbon units (NZUs) to one of the developing internationally accepted standards, the Assigned Amount Units (AAUs).
AAUs are United Nations carbon standard allowances, and the cornerstones of a system whereby emissions trading is carried out at government-to-government level in accordance with the terms of the Kyoto protocol.
AAUs are also being claimed by New Zealand foresters under new government initiative, the Permanent Forests Sink Initiative. That’s good news for New Zealand forest owners, and has been recognised as such.
While this move to reinforce and internationalise the forest-generated carbon offset market certainly is to be welcomed, we at Citola are not alone in feeling that the New Zealand system is somewhat harsh on forest owners who wish to harvest timber occasionally. For more details on that, click here.
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