The Japanese government has delayed the implementation of emissions trading laws but has promised to see legislation passed in time for the UN climate conference in Mexico at the end of 2010.
The government decided on June 17 that it would not be able to get climate legislation passed on schedule through the upper house in the parliamentary session that was scheduled to end in late June. A mandatory emissions trading scheme is an important plank in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s climate change policy which has ambitious targets to cut greenhouse emissions by 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The United States and Australia have also seen government-supported cap and trade schemes run into trouble in the upper houses of their federal legislatures. Australia has put off its scheme until at least 2013 while the Obama administration is hoping to rescue a climate and energy bill and get it passed by the US Senate later this year.
The news agency Reuters reports that Japan’s environment minister Sakihito Ozawa has told a news conference that the government’s aim now is to have the wide-ranging climate bill enacted by late November. But an upper house election in July threatens to reduce the government’s numbers leaving no guarantee it will be able to pass the controversial bill as it stands. The bill includes renewabel energy and carbon tax provisionsm, and makes obligatory the passing of an emissions trading act within a year of the climate bill’s passing.
Trading was expected to begin by 2012 but this timetable is now likely to slip. The environment ministry envisages linking a Japanese trading scheme with those of other countries, particularly a federal US scheme, in order to reduce compliance costs for emitters.
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