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Glossary Page 2Glossary Page 3Glossary Page 4Glossary Page 5Glossary Page 7Glossary Page 8Glossary Page 9| Word | Description |
Emission sources: | Activities which result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Under the GHG Protocol, emission sources are defined by their scope: Scope I emissions are directly controlled by the reporting entity, such as fuel combustion; Scope II emissions are influenced by the reporting entity but occur remotely, such as the purchase of electricity, which can cause fuel combustion at a power station; Scope III emissions are caused by third parties whose services the reporting entity uses, such as freight shipment. |
| Emission trading: | An administrative approach to control emissions release. Governments set a cap on the total emissions from a sector or sectors. The cap is set at a lower level than the business as usual emissions would be. The total emissions are divided into a fixed number of allowances for a given time period. These allowances are then distributed amongst companies participating in the scheme. Allowances are often auctioned, but can also be freely distributed or sold at a fixed price. At the end of a set time period, participants are required to surrender an amount of allowances equal to their overall emissions from that period. Participants may buy or sell allowances if they expect to emit more or less than would be covered by their initial allocation of allowances. There is consequently an incentive for those companies that can reduce their emissions cheaply to make larger reductions and sell their excess allowances. This flexibility ensures emission reductions are achieved in the most cost effective way possible. |
| European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS): | Set up as a key policy to help the EU meet their emissions reduction target under the Kyoto protocol, the EU ETS is the largest multi-country, multi-sector greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in existence. Under the EU ETS governments set a cap on the total emissions from large energy intensive industries in their country. They then set a limited number of allowances to be allocated to companies in the scheme, each allowance representing one tonne of CO2e that the company is allowed to emit. In the first two phases of the scheme these allowances are freely allocated, but the intention is to move to an auction based allocation in subsequent phases. Companies must monitor their emissions and are obliged every year to return an amount of emissions allowances back to the government that is equivalent to their emissions for that year. As the total number of allowances available is lower than the total business as usual emissions from these sectors, there is an incentive for companies to reduce their emissions to avoid having to buy additional credits from the market or so as to have an excess of allowances to sell. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/emission/index_en.htm |
| Global warming potential (GWP): | Refers to the degree to which a greenhouse gas contributes to the greenhouse effect, which is a function of the radiative properties, molecular weight and lifetime in the atmosphere of the gas. The larger the GWP, the greater contribution it will make to global warming.CO2 is set as the benchmark with a GWP of 1, with all other greenhouse gases’ GWPs set relative to this (for example, methane has a GWP of 21 and nitrous oxide of 310). |
| Global warming: | Another term for climate change. |
| Gold Standard: | A voluntary standard for carbon credit projects, developed by a group of NGOs including WWF. Essentially it is a number of screens or levels, which guide project proponents through the project development process. Its method is built into the regular CDM/JI project cycle, and adds three extra stages for quality control. It was developed in response to the concern that emission reduction projects were not making a positive contribution to lowering CO2 levels and it is endorsed by over 49 non-Governmental organisations worldwide. http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/ |
| Greenhouse effect: | The natural process by which the earth’s atmosphere traps some of the sun’s energy, warming the planet enough to support life. This process is enhanced by human emissions of greenhouse gases, causing climate change. |
