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National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management

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Green Investment Scheme

The Kyoto Protocol The Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change specifies obligations for industrialised countries – parties to the Protocol, concerning the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Industrialised countries’ accounted in terms of Assigned Amount Units, AAU. In order to make it easier to fulfil these obligations, the Protocol includes mechanisms enabling industrialised countries to meet the reduction targets by financing actions that reduce emissions in other countries. The mechanisms are as follows:

  • the Joint Implementation (JI) mechanism – a country with an emission reduction target may finance projects in another country, with a specific purpose resulting in GHG emissions reduction.
  • Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – under this mechanism a project aimed at GHG emissions reduction, financed by a country with a specific reduction target, is implemented in a developing country – party of the Protocol
  • Emission Trading – countries that release less than the emission reduction target (and thus have AAUs surplus) may sell their surplus units to countries that release more than their target.

The national Green Investment Scheme GIS – Green Investment Scheme is a consequence of the emission trading mechanism. The idea and purpose of GIS is to create and enhance the pro-environmental effect attributed to the sale of AAUs. The national green investment scheme is linked to “marking the proceeds obtained from the sale of surplus Assigned Amount Units in order to ensure that they are allocated to implementing strictly defined goals related to environmental protection in the country of the AAUs seller”.

Greening the revenues. The proceeds obtained from the sale of AAUs are spend in accordance with the conditions agreed upon with the purchasing country and specified in the sales agreement; these concern the time limits for using the proceeds, allocating them to specific types of undertakings, establishing maximum intensity of co-financing, information about the environmental effects obtained. Thus, the national Green Investment Scheme guarantees on the one hand that through the purchase, a country with an insufficient AAUs will be able to increase their GHG emission and that, at the same time, the proceeds transferred will be allocated by the seller to initiatives related to broadly conceived climate and environment protection. Therefore, the fundamental principle of the functioning of GIS – the “greening of revenues” – consists in that the proceeds from the sale of AAUs may only be invested in further reductions of greenhouse gas emissions or in activities aimed at adapting to climate change.

Financial support system, for investments, in the areas of climate protection and reduction of CO2 emission, funded from the proceeds obtained by Poland from the international transactions of CO2 emission amounts assigned under the Kyoto Protocol sale, is called the Green Investment Scheme. The system consist of the following: the Minister of Climate and Environment (who supervises the GIS system), the Advisory Council as an advisory body, the National Centre for Emissions Management Centre (which maintains the National Registry of Kyoto Units), and the GIS National Operator – i.e. the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, as the GIS Implementing Agency. Since 2010, the National Operator of the GIS system, i.e. the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, has already  completed 11 AAUs sales agreements.

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