NY Times article
here.

Under the program, businesses in wealthier nations of Europe and
in Japan help pay to reduce pollution in poorer ones as a way of staying within
government limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide, as
part of the Kyoto Protocol.


Among their targets is a large rusting chemical factory here in southeastern
China. Its emissions of just one waste gas contribute as much to global warming
each year as the emissions from a million American cars, each driven 12,000
miles.


Cleaning up this factory will require an incinerator that costs $5 million — far
less than the cost of cleaning up so many cars, or other sources of pollution in
Europe and Japan.


Yet the foreign companies will pay roughly $500 million for the incinerator —
100 times what it cost. The high price is set in a European-based market in
carbon dioxide emissions. Because the waste gas has a far more powerful effect
on global warming than carbon dioxide emissions, the foreign businesses must pay
a premium far beyond the cost of the actual cleanup.


Another concern is that the program can have unintended results. The waste gas
to be incinerated here is emitted during the production of a refrigerant that
will soon be banned in the United States and other industrial nations because it
depletes the ozone layer that protects the earth from ultraviolet rays.


Handsome payments to clean up the waste gas have helped chemical companies to
expand existing factories that make the old refrigerant and even build new
factories, said Michael Wara, a carbon-trading lawyer at Holland & Knight in San
Francisco.