Japan To Become Active Emissions Trading Market.

With Tokyo now forced to speed up implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty recently ratified by Russia, Japan is expected to become one of the most active emissions trading markets. Russia could become one of the main sources of CO2 missions credits to Japan, as it will be selling quotas for the discharge of about 2 bn metric tons of greenhouse gases.

Last August, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) signed a ground-breaking deal with Agro-super, a Chilean pork producer. Under the agreement, arranged by the gas emissions trading broker CO2e.com, Tepco paid several million dollars for emissions credits to Agrosuper, which is using new technology to collect and eliminate methane produced by its 100,000 pigs.

The power companies, steel mills and other firms were very concerned when this news came of the Russian ratification". Several other companies are close to signing deals to involve swaps with agricultural projects in Brazil and Mexico. The price for carbon credits, now about $6/ton, will rise. Commentators have drawn a link between global warming and this year's typhoons that submerged Kyoto and killed more than 80 people in Japan. If the protocol that bears Japan's imprimatur is not to find itself also under water, politicians and business leaders must use the Russian ratification as a spur to more effective action.