Climate Change, Environment, Europe, Headlines

CLIMATE CHANGE: EU Could be Greener

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Oct 8 2008 (IPS) - The outcome of a crucial European Parliament vote on tackling climate change this week was not as negative as many green activists had feared. Yet it also suggested that the rhetoric of European politicians on how they must exercise leadership to ward off the threat posed by rising temperatures is not being matched with decisive action.

Despite coming under immense pressure from representatives of major energy-consuming industries to dilute a package of proposals aimed at reducing Europe’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the assembly decided the plan should remain broadly intact.

One of the most contentious issues under discussion related to the scope of the cuts.

Last year the EU’s governments vowed to slash CO2 output to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and that this would rise to 30 percent if similar commitments are made by other large economies. Although the Parliament’s industry committee had recently tried to avoid making the 30 percent limit compulsory in the case of an international agreement being reached, its environment committee voted Oct. 7 that the more ambitious reduction target should apply automatically in such an eventuality.

Tomas Wyns, a campaigner with the Climate Action Network Europe, said that this move sends “an encouraging signal” to the talks on fashioning an international accord scheduled to take place in Poznan, Poland, in December and in Copenhagen next year. He called on EU governments to ensure that the ‘climate and energy package’ they are scheduled to finalise before the end of 2008 is a robust one.

Environmentalists were also relieved that attempts to weaken the planned Emissions Trading System (ETS) were to a significant extent foiled.

Some members of the assembly’s largest political grouping, the centre-right European People’s Party, had advocated that all pollution permits given to firms under the ETS should be awarded free of charge.

But a majority in the environment committee rejected that call. Instead all carbon credits, as the permits are called, will be sold by auction by 2020. “Indefinitely handing out credits for free would have undermined this centrepiece of EU climate legislation and continued granting grotesque windfall profits to industry,” said Caroline Lucas, leader of Britain’s Green Party.

It is estimated that auctioning should reap 50 billion euros (68 billion dollars) per year by 2020. Members of Parliament (MEPs) have called for half of the proceeds to be used to help poor countries deal with climate change.

The anti-poverty organisation Oxfam welcomed this appeal. “There is a deep injustice in the impacts of climate change,” said Douwe Buzeman from the group’s Brussels office. “Rich countries have caused the problem with many decades of greenhouse-gas emissions, but poor countries will be worst affected, facing greater droughts, floods, hunger, and disease.”

Yet the green movement also pointed to major shortcomings in the Parliament’s vote, particularly the position it took on coal, the biggest source of pollution from Europe’s energy-generation activities.

MEPs recommended that a new emission ceiling of 500 grams per kilowatt-hour for coal-fired power plants should be introduced from 2015. Greenpeace regards this as a retrograde step, given that some of the cleaner plants in operation today emit 350 grams per kilowatt-hour.

“This weak emission performance standard will not deliver the necessary decarbonisation of Europe’s electricity sector,” said Joris den Blanken from Greenpeace. “It means that highly polluting plants will continue to be built across the EU. Coal was dirty in the 19th century and it’s still dirty today. Europe must break free of the shackles of its past and phase out coal to save the climate.”

The environment committee has argued, too, that all new coal plants built in the EU should be equipped with facilities to capture carbon and store it underground, rather than release it into the atmosphere. MEPs are seeking that 10 billion euros should be allocated to developing the necessary technology.

During 2007, EU governments promised to finance 12 carbon and storage (CCS) projects by 2015 but none have yet been built.

“CCS development has the potential to make an enormous contribution to the fight against climate change,” said Liberal MEP Chris Davies. “We can afford no delay and no more construction of conventional coal-fired power stations. It is time now for ministers to back their fine words of last year with some practical action.”

Den Blanken, however, described carbon capture as “an expensive gamble”, suggesting that money for the coal industry would be better spent on wind or solar energy.

Another weakness identified in the Parliament’s position is that it gives the EU considerable leeway to indirectly cut emissions through financing ‘clean development’ abroad, rather than by improving its environmental performance within its own borders.

Delia Villagrasa from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said the reliance on buying external credits makes it “clear that the EU is so far only part-way down the road to being world leader against climate change.

“Science tells us that developed countries should reduce their emissions by 25 to 40 percent. But as a result of the environment committee vote, countries and industries can buy their way out of their required emissions reductions by offsetting about a third of their effort, buying external credits, but without a guarantee that such offsets comply with solid environmental and social criteria.”