News | Climate Change

http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=2029

Japan is the latest developed nation to see emissions trading plans delayed but has vowed to see legislation passed in time for the UN climate conference in Mexico at the end of the year.

The government has conceded it would not get climate legislation passed on schedule through the upper house in the current session of parliament ending this week. A mandatory emissions trading scheme is an important plank in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s climate change policy which has ambitious targets to cut greenhouse emissions by 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The United States and Australia have also seen government-supported cap and trade schemes run into trouble in the upper houses of their federal legislatures. Australia has put off its scheme until at least 2013 while the Obama administration is trying to rescue chances for the passing of a climate and energy bill in the US Senate this year amid fading hopes.
Reuters reports Japan’s environment minister Sakihito Ozawa telling a news conference the government’s aim now is to have the wide-ranging climate bill enacted by late November. But an upper house election in July threatens to reduce the government’s numbers leaving no guarantee it will be able to pass the controversial bill as it stands afterward. The bill incldued renewabel energy and carbon tax provisions and mandates that a specific emissions trading act be produced within a year of the climate bill’s passing.
Trading was seen beginning as early as 2012 but this timetable is now likely to slide. The environment ministry envisages linking a Japanese trading scheme with those of other countries, particularly a federal US scheme, to lower compliance costs for local emitters.