The Guardian's recent myth debunking feature lists an organization called Sandbag that focuses its work on the European Emissions Trading Scheme . It buys up emission permits in order to reduce the pool that's available on the European market. Here's the debunked myth in full:
What they tell you: Turning off the lights saves CO2
What they don't tell you: It makes sense for individuals to use less electricity to help reduce the emissions of British power stations.
The Guardian's recent myth debunking feature lists an organization called Sandbag that focuses its work on the European Emissions Trading Scheme . It buys up emission permits in order to reduce the pool that's available on the European market. Here's the debunked myth in full:
What they tell you: Turning off the lights saves CO2
What they don't tell you: It makes sense for individuals to use less electricity to help reduce the emissions of British power stations.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that the total amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and other industrial facilities across the EU between now and 2012 is fixed by the European Emissions Trading Scheme. This means that if the UK power sector reduces its emissions, extra carbon permits get freed up for use elsewhere, such as German power stations or French cement plants. In other words, the same amount of CO2 will be released, just from different sources.
If you want to ensure that your electricity savings do make a real environmental difference, join Sandbag, a charity that will remove CO2 permits from the EU scheme to stop your good work being traded away on the carbon markets.
For the Guardian article, see here.
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