Activists are protesting "greenwashing," in which a company or government appears to do more for the environment than it is, by gathering outside the JP Morgan premises.
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Billions of dollars could be at stake if carbon emissions trading goes global. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow Scotland approved a new international trading system where companies pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else, rather than doing it themselves.
It's a more efficient way to fight climate change, paying for clean energy or forest preservation in countries that lack the resources to do it on their own.
Kelley Kizzier is the Vice President for Global Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Critics say emissions trading allows companies to continue burning fossil fuels without actually cutting emissions.
The effectiveness of carbon markets is not something that I am very confident about, says a senior attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law.
Fueling the market for offsets.
Emissions trading was approved in principle by the Paris Agreement, but it took until this year's meeting in Glasgow for nations to agree on the rules.
There were many potential buyers and sellers at the Glasgow summit. Capital Power is based in the Canadian province of Alberta and is one of the companies that burn fossil fuels.
Idress's company releases about 11 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year by burning gas and coal. Canada is taxing those emissions. "As of today, you pay about 40 Canadian dollars a ton," Idress said. It's going to be $50 next year. The federal government wants the price to go to $170 by the year 2030.
Capital Power is cutting that tax bill in part by changing to cleaner energy sources, but it also has other options. Capital Power can cancel out its emissions by buying carbon credits from the province of Alberta. Other companies in the province can sell credits that they've earned by doing something to cut their own emissions, such as installing more efficient heating systems or capturing methane from cow manure.
California uses emissions trading to limit carbon emissions from power plants and transportation fuel. The proceeds of the credits that are sold are going to companies that make low-carbon fuel and to dairy farmers who are making natural gas from cow's waste. The EU runs the world's biggest market for carbon emissions.
Hundreds of billions of dollars could change hands in the coming years through a global market in greenhouse emissions. The new trading system was approved at the climate summit.
The Associated Press' Peter DeJong reports.
The decisions in Glasgow might open the door for legally-mandated carbon markets to link up across national and regional boundaries. Capital Power in Canada could buy credits from Brazil.
Privately-run systems of voluntary carbon offsets are not covered by the new rules.
Proponents of a global system see promise.
The backers of emissions trading say that it promotes efficiency, allowing companies to buy their greenhouse gas reductions from whoever can do it most cheaply and easily. It provides a vital stream of funding to companies in the clean energy business.
"People are starting to realize that carbon markets are an important tool in the global crisis," says Kizzier.
There are rules for how to account for such transactions under the Paris Agreement after the U.N. decision in Glasgow. The rules do not allow double-counting. When one country pays for reductions in emissions in another country, those cuts can be included in the national emissions totals of just one of the countries.
The U.N. now has the power to decide which actions are valid for earning credits under the system.
Legal experts are debating what the new rules mean. The rules do not allow the generation of credits for forest protection because they do not mention the idea of credit for avoided emissions, according to an email from the watchdog group Carbon Market Watch.
The UN-backed trading system could embrace forest protection according to experts. It allows credits for any activity that removes carbon from the atmosphere.
Some companies are hoping to make a lot of money from this trading system.
The executive director of the International Chamber of Commerce in Brazil said that Brazil is positioning itself as a massive supplier since carbon credits are its product. A study presented by Dorlhiac estimated that Brazil could sell up to $100 billion worth of carbon credits over the next decade, mostly generated by protecting forests.
"That's what we want," says Kelley Kizzier. "I think people should be looking at this as a revenue opportunity, and as a way that we get finance flowing from developed to developing countries." The countries that need investment capital the most are those that are getting aid from the government.
Carbon trading won't help the climate.
Emissions trading is not a good idea according to many observers. They believe that carbon markets allow companies to release carbon.
Bad accounting can cause this. There were loud protests at the Glasgow meeting. The Kyoto Protocol established an emissions trading system that some nations earned carbon credits for. Limits on greenhouse emissions weren't tight enough to demand much demand for these credits.
The old credits might be sold as carbon offsets without actually stimulating new efforts to cut carbon emissions.
Indonesia is already protecting its forests under its own laws. If it also gets carbon credits for doing this, those credits don't really represent a reduction in carbon emissions. Carbon credits are only supposed to result from actions that are new and additional, but it can be difficult to determine if they are.
Many defenders of emissions trading agree that the system needs tight rules.
Lennon argued that the climate situation is too dire to allow companies to buy offsets. You're not reducing anything. She says that we need to reduce the overall emissions because you're just trading around the world.
Many economists say that for emissions trading to work, countries will have to impose tighter limits on emissions than they have been willing to set. It will take more than that to convince companies that it's too expensive to keep burning fossil fuels.
