TOKYO - Japan is considering introducing
compulsory emissions caps and a domestic emissions trading
scheme for its reluctant corporations, the Nikkei newspaper said
on Wednesday.
Tokyo currently lets companies set their own
targets and monitor themselves for compliance, and the country's
most powerful business lobby strongly opposes a compulsory
scheme.
But the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry appears to be breaking ranks with the firms it
regulates. The ministry has set up an informal study panel to
look into compulsory trading schemes, the Nikkei said. The panel
reports to a senior official at the ministry's technology and
environment bureau and will compile its findings in June, it
said, without citing sources.
METI will then meet with other ministries and
key industries to hammer out the details of a plan that could
come into effect from 2013, after the expiry of the Kyoto
Protocol, the world's current framework agreement to tackle
global warming.
Tokyo argues that voluntary industry cuts and
energy conservation by households will allow the country to meet
its international obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
Big Japanese manufacturers have argued that
emissions caps will mean government meddling, unfair
distribution of emission permits, restrictions on growth of
healthy companies and subsidies for ailing ones.
Under Europe's flagship Emissions Trading
System, member states allocate permits to industries based on
their past emissions.
The system, which tends to provide more
generous permits to bigger polluters, nearly collapsed when the
price of carbon-emission rights crashed in 2006.
But the European Commission last month
adopted a new plan in which member states auction most permits
to industries instead of handing them out for free.
A METI official in charge of environmental and economic
issues has said the revised European scheme would be fair and
reasonable in terms of permit allocation.
