Emission reduction needs a new approach

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Over the last six months after the Copenhagen conference little has been done in the area of reduction of emissions globally. Europe has gone back to its faulty carbon trading mechanism tightening up the laws on one side, as well as introducing massive destructive changes at the other end at the behest of the logging lobby and the oil cartel which will slowly affect its own economy adversly. The good work done by Spain Portugal and Germany in the field of solar and wind energy may come to nought due to the unseemly controversy on Europe's debt which is being fanned up by crafty speculators looking for quick returns in the worlds most profitable market.

The US to be fair has been trying to get away from the iron grip of big oil and big coal, and has been to some extent successful in bringing about hope for new energy companies. Hit by the Gulf oil leak calamity at a time it was just coming out of recession, it has to do a lot of work in keeping the stimulus flowing at the same time control its budgetary deficit. US investment on clean energy had dropped in the year 2009 but is being revved up during the current year as it will make a bid to regain leadership in the clean energy field that it has been losing to Spain, Germany, Japan and China.

China has been pushing relentlessly on all three energy fronts oil, coal and new energy. Scared of a repeat of the oil shock of 2008, it is building massive buffer stocks of oil with its purchses rising by 30% during the first five months of 2010. It is stocking both crude as well as refined and increasing its storage facilities both offshore tankage as well as floating storage as well as refining capacities. It has also signed an contract with an Australian company Resource House to supply it $60 billion of high quality Australian coal over the next 20 years. At the same time it is going full steam ahead with new energy projects and has become the largest investor in clean energy ahead of the US.

India is working its way through a maze of domestic terrorist problems both from the taliban as well as the ultra left. However the economy is growing at an excellent rate of 9% and the Reserve bank is doing its best to keep spiralling inflation under control. It has taken a lot of good steps in emission control of coal based plants but has been slow to bring in investment in clean energy, where it stands the most to gain. It has however taken the bold step of dropping oil subsidies, which itself will reduce consumption since it has now the highest cost of petrol (gasoline) in the world. It is time other nations emulated India and drop subsidies on oil and coal to make it a natural deterrent to burning fossil fuel