Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I will talk about government to government trading. Let me go through it. In the Kyoto agreement, that would have been done through an IT transference system. I do not know where in Ireland the international transaction log of those is being kept. I cannot find that out. It should be there but it is not mentioned in the Bill. It is required to be registered for the purposes of the Kyoto Protocol. I presume the registration body is the Environmental Protection Agency, but I am not certain and it is not written down in the Bill. I have listed two items that should be written in the Bill.

I refer to the different units used to measure emissions and the trading of emissions. The European Union allowances are already being traded even though they do not exist. Ireland cannot trade the allowances. I note from last year's departmental accounts that €5,000 worth of CERs were purchased and I wonder how this was done and by means of what broker. I will send the Minister a note on that information and I will double-check that it was his Department's accounts.

It seems that the EPA will operate the scheme and I agree with Senator Brady that it has a proven record. However I question how these units will be audited and this is not explained in the Bill nor does the Bill state that they are required to be audited. However, the Bill correctly states that the Minister may give directions or guidelines to the agency and this should be done. Is it possible to purchase emission units in Ireland? I ask the Minister to answer that question.

Certified emission reductions, CERs, are produced in the five examples given in the Minister's opening contribution — the hydropower plant in Bhutan, the other projects in Honduras, Nepal, Cape Town and Moldova. They are all clean development mechanisms which produce units tallied in CERs. Another element of the Kyoto Protocol are the joint implementation projects which will be undertaken in non-developing countries, non-Third World countries, where projects are put in place to create certified emission reductions. Each unit is the same; one CER equals one emission reduction unit which also equals €1 union allowance. They are also equal to one carbon tonne or one tonne of carbon emissions.

I have a suggestion to be considered by the Minister and by Senator Brady and it explains why I am critical. A third unit of the Kyoto Protocol is called a removal unit, an RMU. All these units are equal. The RMU is for dealing with sink projects, meaning that if something is creating a problem because of emissions, it is taken away and credit can be earned. I suggest this could be done in Ireland by putting in place a project to solve the problem when it is identified. If the Minister took this decision tomorrow morning, he would put a plastic sheet over every sewage treatment plant in Ireland and this would capture the methane. This methane is worth 20 times carbon emissions as it is 20 times more powerful and more dense. The capture of one cubic tonne of methane is the same as 20 cubic tonnes of carbon and this is being produced with our landfills and our sewage treatment plants. Once the methane is captured we will not need to buy the carbon credits and we can use the methane so it is a winner both ways. I am not talking about tweeds and green wellies but rather about a serious commercial proposition. The problem could be dealt with from start to finish, emissions would be removed, the Kyoto Protocol commitments would be met, carbon emissions would be reduced and it would be a win in every way. I would like to see this achieved.

I am concerned when I see a reference to Kyoto units because I am not certain if there is any unit called a Kyoto unit as it is a term used to describe the various units to which I have referred. They are all equal to each other and they are all tradeable and are being traded somewhere in the world. The purpose of the Bill is to allow for European trading and I note there is a trading in Chicago. If I came to the Minister with a project and proposed putting a roof over a huge landfill site in north Dublin in order to capture all the methane escaping from that site and this will be measurable by volume, this would help the country under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol. This would be an RMU, a removal unit.