|
|
CLIMATE CHANGE: Denmark, Norway Grapple with Growing CO2
By Ida Karlsson
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 (IPS) - Even as Scandinavian leaders have assumed a prominent role in international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, both Norway and Denmark have failed to reduce their own emissions.
In Denmark, emissions of CO2 from road transport went have actually increased 36 percent since 1990, according to the National Environmental Research Institute. In Norway, emissions from greenhouse gases have never been higher, growing 3 percent last year alone, according to Statistics Norway.
"This is very much linked to our oil and gas production," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who is in New York for the 63rd U.N. General Assembly, told IPS. "We will have an increase in our emissions in the years to follow, but then they will start to decrease."
He said one of the reasons that Norway is investing so heavily in measures against deforestation is to reduce the emissions the country is responsible for itself.
Norway is active at the international level, partnering with the United Nations on initiatives like the UN-REDD programme, which helps developing countries combat climate change from deforestation.
The Norwegian government is financing its initial phase with the support of 35 million dollars. And last week the country announced it would give one billion dollars to preserve the Amazon rainforest as a means to cut global greenhouse gas emissions.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, will be hosting the U.N. climate change conference in 2009. He has said his ambition is "to reach a global and comprehensive climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol" and "to take decisive steps to reduce CO2 emissions."
But are the Scandinavian countries cleaning up their own backyards? In Norway, the manufacturing industry, petroleum industry, and road traffic are the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 72 percent of the total emissions in 2007.
Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway's foreign minister, is not overly concerned about the statistics. "Norway will do its utmost to fulfill the Kyoto commitments. And by carbon capture and storage, we can make a major step towards our goal," he told IPS.
Carbon capture and storage has been promoted as a means to "decarbonise" fossil fuels by removing and storing the CO2 during the production of energy. The Norwegian government has embarked on a programme for carbon capture. Within a few years, the country aims to operate a full-scale facility installed at a large-scale power plant. Already, since the 1990s, Norway has been storing CO2 under the sea-bed.
But environmental organisations are concerned about the long-term effects of the storage. One expert from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says "there are currently too many unanswered questions for carbon capture and storage to consider it an immediate solution."
In Denmark, emissions from road transport are still considerable, especially emissions of CO2, the most problematic greenhouse gas.
Rasmussen told IPS that, "We have seen an increase in the emissions from the transport sector, but we have an infrastructure plan for how to cope with these emissions in the future."
From a global perspective, the United States is the largest CO2 emitter in the world, with its power sector alone producing more than 2.8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. Other countries collectively account for three-quarters of the power-related CO2 burden.
China comes second after the U.S. with 2.7 billion tonnes; followed by Russia - 661 million tonnes; India - 583 million tonnes; Japan - 400 million tonnes; Germany - 356 million tonnes; Australia - 226 million tonnes; South Africa - 222 million tonnes; Britain - 212 million tonnes; and South Korea - 185 million tonnes, according to the database compiled by Carbon Monitoring for Action.
There will be heavy costs to human society if emissions are not reduced. But to limit long-term global warming and stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2030 should not be a terribly heavy burden, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading expert scientific body evaluating the problem.
It estimates the costs of action to be somewhere between 0.2 percent and 3.0 percent of global GDP.
In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol, an international greenhouse gas treaty, was ratified by over 175 countries, committing the industrialised countries to reduce the six greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels in the period 2008-2012. In Bali last December, governments agreed that emission reductions of 25-40 percent will be necessary by 2020.
This December, there will be a new U.N. climate change conference in Poznan, Poland. World leaders will negotiate the architecture of a new international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. And then it is on to Copenhagen, where the agreement must be finalised at the end of 2009.
(END/2008)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
