EU's CO2 plans a cost disaster: German industry

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany must push for change in how European countries share the financial burdens of tighter carbon trading rules after 2012, or face prohibitive rises in carbon avoidance costs, energy users' group VIK said on Monday.

"Germany's carbon trading position has to become top of the political agenda as we get closer to elections in 2009, the ball is in Chancellor Angela Merkel's court to avert disaster," said Alfred Richmann, managing director of the Essen-based group.

"The EU plans in their current shape will not lead to any more CO2 emissions savings, as those are capped, but bring sky-high new carbon taxes," he said at a conference in Berlin.

Next Big Future: Petrobanks Capri / Thai processes for upgrading and recovering oilsands and heavy oil

If the Capri/Thai processes are successful then Canada's oilsands, other oilsands and heavy oil deposits around the world will have higher recovery rates using a more economic process and the oil will be upgrading in the ground to a higher and more valuable quality. This would be the technology that would crush peak oil for several decades and allow an orderly transition to a post oil world. The processes would enable trillions of barrels of oil to be economically accessed. In a few months the Capri process could be proven out and the energy world would be changed. Oil technology would change the world by unlocking the oilsand and heavy oil around the world. Trillions of barrels of oil would become economically feasible. It [would become a] world and game changer.