Budapest - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development wants to buy up to ten million euros (15.7 million dollars) in carbon credits from Hungary, an official from the bank said on Wednesday. Zsuzsanna Hargitai, the bank's Hungarian representative, told MTI news agency that the bank would buy the credits if Hungary agreed to use the money on further cutting greenhouse gases.
Since the Kyoto Protocol came into force in 2005, carbon credits can be purchased and to allow nations to meet their emissions' targets.
Hargitai said that Ireland and Spain, which are in nowhere near as strong as a position as Hungary, would make use of the credits.
Former communist countries such as Hungary have credits to spare as their emissions have dropped significantly since state-owned heavy industries closed with the break up of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991.
Hungary is committed to reducing emissions by 6 per cent from its baseline by 2012.
However, as an economy in transition, it was free to choose its baseline and selected the period between 1985 and 1987, when its energy consumption was at a high.
By 1994, emissions had dropped by 18 per cent compared to the baseline and have not risen significantly since.
Hungary in December signed a framework agreement to sell credits to Japan, which also must cut six per cent from its 1990 levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
However, Japan, which the World Bank ranks as the third-largest economy in the world behind the US and China, saw its emissions actually rise 7.8 per cent in 2005 from 1990 levels.
Critics of trading carbon credits say the system does not bring about any concrete reduction in emissions and fails to emphasize the need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
