Brussels, 16/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - The package of energy and climate measures to make law the commitments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (subscribed to by the European Council of 10 March 2007), that the Commission is expected to bring forward the Commission on 23 January is awaited with feverish anticipation and has already been the subject of much speculation. The principles around the way of sharing European greenhouse gas emission reductions, sent by the Commission to member states has been the subject of intense debate, with member states fearful that they will be required to make too great efforts, and NGOs concerned for exactly the opposite reason.
To share the burden to reach the target of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, there will be a need for solidarity among member states. Reduction targets by country will have to take account of the GDP of each, but, at this point, the draft directive contains no country by country breakdown. It says simply that by 2020 no member state should have reduced its emissions by less than 20% of the 2005 level (the only year for which real emissions could be checked and verified) and must not exceed 25% of the 2005 level.
A key element in achieving the EU target will be the review of the Community emissions quota system and the operating modalities of the carbon market from 2013, which will extend negotiation of permits to pollute, currently limited to CO2, to the six greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol and to all installations whose emissions can be monitored, measured and checked as accurately as CO2 is at the moment. Another innovation is that the Commission is likely to propose getting rid of national plans for allocating emissions quotas and rather have a European emissions ceiling.
In a letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on 11 January, French President Nicolas Sarkozy drew Brussels' attention to the need to “set a target for gradual convergence towards a volume of carbon dioxide emissions per inhabitant in all countries of the EU. To achieve this convergence, France suggests that the overall emissions reduction effort expected of each member state by 2020 should vary depending on the starting point per inhabitant, without prejudice to the separate subject of solidarity mechanisms among states”. The French President said he supported “the principle of a revised directive on emissions permit exchange allowing a sectoral mechanism to be set up and quotas to be auctioned depending on the extent of openness to international competition”, but he did not hide his fears that Europe would have to pay the cost unless other countries joined in the efforts. “If major world economies do not join in a binding effort to reduce emissions, European constraints will force industry to relocate in those countries which have a less rigorous environmental regime: global emissions will not fall and corresponding jobs in Europe will be lost. The mechanism, then, will be neither effective, fair nor economically sustainable,” he warned. He reiterated that a “border compensation mechanism with regard to imports from third countries which refused to accept binding efforts” was essential - whether it took the form of tax adjustment or the requirement on importers to purchase quotas.
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) is pressing the Commission to abide by the commitments made in December at the Bali Conference on climate change (emission reductions of between 25 and 40% from most industrialised countries) and to seek reduction targets of at least 30% of 1990 levels, the Kyoto Protocol reference year. It says that less ambitious targets would not allow the rise in temperature of the planet's surface to be maintained at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. WWF stresses, too, the importance of the time factor: if all the issues in the climate package are discussed at the same time to get the approval of member states and the European Parliament, the decision-making process could take over two years and delay the final agreement to the end of 2009, when the new Parliament and Commission will have taken up their posts - too late to ask the world to take the EU seriously at the decisive Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, where it is hoped an international agreement on the global regime governing the fight against climate change after 2012 will be signed, WWF notes. It urges the Parliament and the Council to consider the various proposals of the legislative package separately.
It says to that the European ceiling imposed on installations covered by the future ETS should be in line with the target of a 30% reduction in emissions within the EU, and that 15% of the reductions achieved in developing countries should be funded by Europe. (A.N.)