In brief - March 20, 2006
March 20, 2006 Edition 1
Kyoto's a gas for SA firms
South African companies stood to earn at least R5.8 billion over the next 10 years from the sale of carbon credits earned on projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said last week.
Previous estimates stood at R2.5bn.
The R5.8bn projection applies to six South African projects that have either been approved or are in the final stages of approval by the executive board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a global system that allows trade in reductions of carbon emissions by signatories to the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
Harmke Immink, a manager in the sustainability solutions division at PwC, said the estimate was based on an exchange rate of R10 to the euro and a price of e8 per ton of certified emission reductions, the traded products that are the building blocks of the CDM.
The multi-billion rand figure excludes the potential income accruing to several other projects that are in the pipeline, 13 of which have already been registered with the South African authority that oversees the CDM.
"There are a significant number of projects that will materialise in the next two years, some of which are currently still in the research stage," said Immink.
But South Africa still had "very few" CDM projects compared with developing countries like India. She believed this was because the process of securing approval for projects, including environmental impact assessments, had long been cumbersome.
Also, landfill gas projects were slow in taking off because of National Treasury uncertainty about whether the Public Finance Management Act classified certified emission reductions as assets or financial instruments.
Row over forest backtrack
The reserve bidder in the privatisation of Komatiland Forests has vowed to challenge the government's withdrawal from the planned sale of the state-owned forests.
The Department of Public Enterprises and Safcol, the forestry parastatal, said on Friday they had advised the Londoloza-Paharpur Consortium that the government would not proceed with the sale in terms of the process initiated in May 2003.
This is the second time that the government has pulled the plug on the proposed privatisation of Komatiland Forests. The first tender was scrapped in 2002 after allegations that key Public Enterprises officials had unduly influenced the bidding process in favour of the winner, Zama Resources. Paharpur Cooling Towers of India was a reserve bidder.
Gay Mokoena, secretary of the Londoloza Forestry Consortium, said it suspected the government had withdrawn as "a backlash to us for pointing out their oversights in the appointment of the preferred bidder".
"We are taking legal advice and will take the necessary steps as advised by our legal advisers," Mokoena said.
