Global Offset Experts: South Korea announces it is to launch cap-and-trade on 1 Jan 2015.

Feb. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- Reporters were recently told by a South Korean presidential secretary that South Korea, the OECD’s fastest-growing greenhouse gas emitter, intended to start a cap-and-trade scheme between 2013 and 2015 after intense opposition from industry to the government’s original plan to begin in 2013.

Powerful export-led conglomerates in Asia's fourth-largest economy have been asking government for a postponement as competitor countries such as Japan and the U.S. have either delayed or put emissions trading schemes on the back burner for the present, Global Offset Experts was informed.

The head of the task force for climate change at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry said in January that industries still wanted to discuss carbon trading in 2015 and ahead.

"The revised bill increased percentage of free carbon allowances to reduce burdens on companies," the Korea Economic Daily quoted the secretary as having said.

Under the latest review, still to pass through parliament, the percentage of free carbon allowances is more than 95%, an increase from the earlier 90%. The rest will be auctioned.

In early February, major business groups filed a petition to the government asking for a moratorium on the plant, arguing that all-out trading was likely to cost the country’s manufacturers up to $12.43 billion unless 100% credits were eventually made available at a price through auctioning.

Global Offset Experts research revealed that the south-east Asian nation’s greenhouse gas emissions have doubled since 1990 and are slightly higher than those of Australia’s almost 600 million tons and on a per-capita basis are equal to those of some European nations.

The South Korean government intends reducing carbon emissions by 30% from projected levels by 2020.

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