Local consortium for carbon trade eyed

Three organisations are hoping to develop a consortium of companies that want to be involved in energy efficiency to apply for carbon credits from the Kyoto process with aims of selling them to Europe.

Dorjee Sun, chief executive officer of Carbon Conservation Pte Ltd (CC), told The Brunei Times on the sidelines of Asia Inc Forum's National Environment Conference that the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), HSBC and Singaporean-based carbon conservation company CC, are trying to establish the consortium and bundle applications from companies to get carbon credits which will in turn be sold.

"If that can happen, it shows Brunei that something can actually be done and our goal is to get this rolling in the next few months. So if readers want to voluntarily join, we can make a change together and show results," said Dorjee.

Dorjee said this isn't just talk and that his next trip to Brunei will happen only during the launch of this formal process.

He stressed that carbon credit is a viable revenue stream and countries like China have been really aggressive in pursuing it.

"Korea is very aggressive to argue it's a developing country and therefore should get carbon. Singapore technically should get carbon (credits) because it's a developing country. Brunei for some reason has chosen not yet to go hard in receiving carbon," he said.

The opportunity for Brunei, Dorjee said, is to engage with the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) under Kyoto to create carbon credits and to engage deeply in carbon because already, the country can easily be creating carbon credits as a result of these energy efficiency activities from both the public and private companies.

When asked whether or not Brunei is green enough as the Sultanate's main income is from the oil and gas industry, Dorjee said that from a visceral or physical perspective, "you have 60 per cent forest and gas is the least polluting fossil fuel in relation to coal and crude, so it's a good start. But yes, Brunei is already green".

In October last year, Dato Paduka Hj Hamdillah Hj Abd Wahab, then the Deputy Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, said that Brunei may study the idea of grouping with its Heart of Borneo (HoB) partners, Malaysia and Indonesia, to join the global carbon trading market where it could leverage on its rich forest cover.

To date, 76 per cent of Brunei's land area of 5,765 sq km is covered by forest. The HoB is a tri-country declaration that aims to conserve and sustainably manage what the WWF says is one of the most important centres of biological diversity in the world, covering approximately 220,000 sq km of equatorial rainforests.

The Brunei Times