A major new clampdown on sources of greenhouse gas emissions can be expected following the 20 February meeting of EU environment ministers in Brussels. The ministers, from all 27 member states, agreed to cut emissions by at least 20% (on 1990 levels) by 2020.
Given the difficulty many countries are having meeting their existing commitments, this will mean drastic revisions to building standards, transport policies and many other areas of the economy.
The ministers even went further and said that, if other developed countries were prepared to take similar steps, the EU would be prepared to make a 30% reduction.
The agreement comes on the heels of the release by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of its Fourth Assessment Report which says that they have more than 90% certainty that climate change is primarily human-induced.
The EU is committed to a target of limiting warming to 2ºC – meeting this objective will require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak within the next 10 to 15 years, followed by substantial global emission reductions of up to 50% by 2050 compared to 1990.
The EU ministers agreement is partly designed as a means of kick-starting the discussions on a post-Kyoto global agreement on cutting emissions – the Kyoto Treaty runs out in 2012 and as yet there is no replacement for it.
The environment ministers’ decision provided member state backing to Commission proposals set out in January. These identified a range of measures to reduce EU emissions further, including:
- Improving the EU’s energy efficiency by 20% by 2020, in line with the Energy Efficiency Action Plan announced by the Commission in October 2006
- Increasing the share of renewable energy to 20% by 2020
- Putting in place an environmentally safe strategy to promote the industrial use of carbon capture and storage technology
- Reducing CO2 emissions from a number of sectors, e.g. residential and commercial buildings, and emissions of other greenhouse gases from a range of different sources.
UK environment secretary David Miliband said: “The unilateral commitment to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 – the first of its kind – shows we’re willing to take concrete action on an issue that citizens care about.”
Given the lack of results so far on reducing emissions (most of the UK’s success in meeting its Kyoto target can be traced back to switching fuels in electricity generation from coal to gas in the 1990s), concrete action will have to be quite substantial if the new targets are to be realised.
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/envir/92864.pdf |