Climate Action - Assisting business towards carbon neutrality

Japan is taking steps to bolster its environmental leadership on the world stage. Reportedly Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda plans to pledge more than US 1.8 billion in loans for environmental projects in Asia at a summit of the region's leaders next week in Singapore.
In addition, Japan was the first country to connect to the UN's new carbon trading system last week, enabling the country to begin purchasing carbon credits to meet its goals under the Kyoto Protocol.

Recently, the nation, whose ancient capitol hosted and gave its name to the Kyoto Protocol, has been criticized for failing to reduce emissions quickly enough to meet target obligations set by the initiative to combat global warming.

Japan's emissions last year were 13% above the average level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions it has pledged to meet over the next five years, according to a government report. The nation is the world's fifth biggest emitter of GHG.

According to Japan's Ministry of Environment, the country has received 8.6 million tons of carbon credits since connecting to the International Transaction Log (ITL), which was put into service last week by the UN to track carbon credit trading under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Japan's ITL account allows domestic entities to trade credits globally. The Japanese government is also buying credits through the New Energy and Industrial Development Organization to help offset the additional 13% reductions it aims to achieve.

Japan has said it will use tax funds to buy roughly 100 million tons of carbon offsets over the next five years.

According to the Nikkei financial daily, the loans offered by Japan will fund projects such as sewage disposal and scrubbing sulphur dioxide from power plant chimneys throughout Asia.

This article is reproduced with kind permission of SustainableBusiness.com Originally published 19 Nov 2007.