Brussels - As European Union leaders congratulated
themselves on approving a set of laws on climate change, analysts
around the world were asking themselves if the package would work.
The answer is most likely to be: yes, but not nearly enough.
The laws aimed at cutting Europe's emissions of greenhouse gases
to 20 per cent below their 1990 levels by 2020 are 'not going to
produce a 20-per-cent cut in Europe, it's going to be something much,
much weaker,' Delia Villagrasa, climate policy expert at
environmental group WWF, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The package of laws is aimed at cutting EU emissions and boosting
energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy such as solar power
by 20 per cent before 2020.
It is the most ambitious attempt to limit climate change ever
agreed, putting the EU in a strong negotiating position ahead of
United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December 2009.
'This is historic ... You will not find another continent in the
world that is giving itself such binding targets,' French President
Nicolas Sarkozy, who chaired the talks, said.
Analysts say that the package will certainly cause European
consumers and industries to trim their emissions. This is largely due
to a plan to make industries obtain permits to emit greenhouse gases,
and to reduce the number of permits year by year.
'The whole point is to cut emissions as cheaply as possible ...
the important thing is that the overall allowance is low enough to
force a reduction,' Stig Schjolset, senior analyst at expert group
Point Carbon, told dpa.
Taken together with the pledges on renewable power and energy
efficiency, the package certainly gives the EU a fighting chance of
hitting its self-proclaimed targets.
'We have guaranteed 20-per-cent cuts by 2020,' European Commission
chief Jose Manuel Barroso said at the end of the Brussels summit.
Politicians say that the targets will compel industry in Europe to
invest in new, revolutionary low-emissions technologies by making it
simply too expensive to emit greenhouse gases.
The 20-20-20 goals 'will force us to restructure our industry so
that we can pollute less and be ahead of the game,' Sarkozy said.
But analysts say that Sarkozy's compromise offers so many
cost-cutting concessions to so many industries and countries that
they fear it will destroy the incentive which it was intended to
create.
Even industries facing no threat of competition from foreign
states with less-stringent climate goals will only have to buy all
their emissions permits at auction from 2025, while branches faced
with such a threat will get all their permits for free.
And clauses allowing member states and companies to get credit for
sponsoring emissions-reduction projects abroad are also seen as
weakening the incentive to create new, low-emissions technology.
'From 2012 to 2020, industry has to make cuts of about 14 per
cent. They can do half of it externally, so that leaves a 7-per-cent
cut within the EU, or about 1 per cent per year. It's not wildly
impressive,' Villagrasa said.
And that is a critical flaw, because the whole point of the
climate package is not just to cut emissions in Europe, but to
galvanize a 'third industrial revolution' based on a new,
low-emissions model of doing business.
Experts say that that is vital if rising powers such as India and
China are to continue their spectacular economic growth without
boosting their per-capita emissions to Western levels.
The two countries are so populous that if their emissions rise to
the per-capita levels seen in the West, global emissions will more
than double at a time when they should be cut in half.
But neither state is rich enough to fund the sort of low-emissions
revolution which is needed - putting the onus on rich powers such as
the EU to make the huge investments needed.
And with Sarkozy's deal awash with concessions aimed at making it
less expensive for EU firms to emit greenhouse gases, Europe looks
unlikely to rise to the challenge.
The EU climate package may well be enough to hit the 20-per-cent
goal. It is certainly not enough to galvanize the kind of
low-emissions revolution which the world so desperately needs.
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