Emissions target agreed, but only after concessions granted to 'dirty' industries
Andrew Grice, The Independent 13 Dec 08;
Green groups accused the European Union of watering down its trail-blazing pledge to tackle climate change last night, after EU leaders made concessions to "dirty" industries in Germany and eastern Europe.
The compromise allowed the EU to agree on its commitment to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020. Its leaders said the deal, and the election of Barack Obama, will boost the prospects of a historic global agreement on climate change in talks in Copenhagen in a year's time.
Without a common EU front, the UN-led global negotiations would have collapsed. If there is an agreement in Copenhagen, the EU will raise its emissions cut target to 30 per cent.
A two-day EU summit scaled down its original plans, bowing to Germany, which wanted to protect its big manufacturing sector in the recession, and Poland and Hungary, which depend on coal. Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, greeted cameras with a victory sign as he left the meeting.
Instead of being required to buy 100 per cent of their "carbon emission permits" in 2020, as proposed by the European Commission, heavy industries including cement, chemicals and steel will have to buy only 70 per cent.
Robin Webster, Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner, said: "This could have been one of the EU's finest moments, but once again short-sighted national self-interest has been put ahead of the long-term safety of the planet. Huge loopholes allow big energy users to carry on polluting."
Joris Den Blanken, a spokesman for Greenpeace EU, added: "At the time that the US is finally re-engaging with the international community on climate, the EU's leadership is dropping away. Instead of acting to stop climate change, EU leaders are subsidising it."
Lower emissions from cars and renewable energy would be crucial, EU leaders said. Gordon Brown hailed the agreement as "ambitious", saying: "Europe and America acting together on climate change can persuade the rest of the world that we can reach a global agreement in Copenhagen next year. Europe's claim to be the leader on climate change will be not only upheld but advanced by what we agree today."
British officials said Mr Brown won a last-minute concession under which the EU will spend £9bn on carbon capture and storage, paving the way for "clean coal" plants if it works on a commercial basis. Britain hopes to win two of 12 demonstration projects. Britain also helped defeat attempts to delay power companies paying for 100 per cent of their carbon credits by auction from 2013 instead of getting them free.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, admitted that the concessions risked handing windfall profits to some of Europe's biggest polluters and that the original plans had been scaled down. "We would have preferred our initial proposals. But the suggestion that this is a watered-down ambition is nonsense, to put it mildly," he said. "We had to accept changes. That's the price to pay for unity in the end and it's a fair price."
Mr Barroso urged President-elect Obama to respond positively to the EU's move. "Our message to our global partners is: 'Yes, you can ... ' especially to our American partners," he said.
Climate deal: Key elements
*20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.
*20 per cent increase in use of renewable energy by 2020.
*20 per cent cut in energy consumption via improved efficiency by 2020.
*Allocation of "carbon permits" under EU emissions trading scheme to be cut by a fifth from 2005 levels.
*Power companies will have to buy their permits at auction from 2013.
*Auctioning for other industrial sectors and aviation phased in by 2020.
EU leaders claim historic leap towards low-carbon future
Ambitious climate change pact makes generous concessions to the big polluters in European heavy industry
Ian Traynor and Nick Watt, guardian.co.uk 12 Dec 08;
European leaders tonight announced they were leading the world towards a low-carbon future after sealing an ambitious climate change pact by making generous concessions to the big polluters in European heavy industry.
A two-day summit of 27 government leaders in Brussels ended a two-year effort to agree mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and came as a triumph for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in the closing days of his six-month presidency of the EU.
Not noted for his understatement, the French leader declared: "This council will go down in the history of Europe."
The French navigated a route through conflicting claims from Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Italy to finalise a deal that keeps the EU's key carbon dioxide reduction targets intact, while easing the costs of the package for European manufacturers and heavy industry.
The climate accord orders Europe to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. This is to be achieved through national reduction targets which vary among the 27 countries and through a Europe-wide carbon trading scheme in which industries and power plants buy permits to pollute from 2013.
The rules for the emissions trading scheme (ETS), however, were relaxed under German pressure to exempt most companies in the processing industries, such as steel and cement, from paying for the permits and power stations in central Europe, mostly coal-fired, were awarded large discounts on the price of carbon.
"To address the specific concerns of some countries, we had to accept some changes," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission whose draft legislation on the package was much stiffer than that agreed yesterday.
The decisions, to be turned into law by the European parliament next week, also cut CO2 emissions from cars by 19% by 2015, set binding national targets for renewable energy to total 20% of the European energy mix by 2020, encourage the use of "sustainable" biofuels, and order 20% greater energy efficiency by 2020.
Gordon Brown said: "This is a major advance. Europe, after these decisions, remains the leader on climate change."
But critics complained that the package was too little too late, that EU leaders had capitulated to fierce lobbying from European industry, that the loopholes in the system and the awarding of pollution permits free to most non-energy firms in the scheme would trigger a bonanza in windfall corporate profits.
"Industry has to do next to nothing," said Claude Turmes, a Green MEP from Luxembourg who helped draft part of the legislation. "If they are honest, these leaders know they haven't agreed something really ambitious."
Robin Webster, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "This could have been one of Europe's finest moments. But huge loopholes allow big energy-users to carry on polluting."
Barroso admitted that the terms of the deal could bring windfall profits for industry, reversing the logic of the polluter pays principle that is supposed to underpin the carbon trading scheme.
But he and others stressed that these concessions did not affect the overall targets. The accord was the first such agreement in the world and put Europe in a strong position to strike a broader pact with the incoming Obama administration in the US ahead of the effort to reach a worldwide global warming agreement in Copenhagen a year from now, Barroso said.
"This is a message especially to our US partners," said Barroso. "Obama is still far from what we are proposing…The idea that this has been watered down is nonsense."
"Combined with the spirit of engagement from president-elect Obama, there is now everything to play for as we put the pieces in place for a global climate deal in Copenhagen next December," said Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary.
The package also includes provision for 12 pilot projects on carbon capture and storage — using novel technology to collect CO2 emitted from power stations and bury it underground.
The projects are to be funded from the proceeds of the carbon trading which is supposed to generate tens of billions in revenue by 2020. Under pressure from the British, the summit agreed to double the funding available for these projects.
"This is a transformational funding stream for a transformational technology," said David Miliband, the foreign secretary. "Nowhere else in the world has got that."
Green lobby cry foul as biggest polluters get more time to clean up
Summit criticised as missed opportunity for giving heavy industry concessions over carbon emissions
David Charter in Brussels and Lewis Smith, Times Online 13 Dec 08;
Heavy industry won extra time to go green yesterday as fears of factory closures during the economic crisis led Europe’s leaders to water down climate change proposals.
The EU stuck to its target to cut 20 per cent of greenhouse gases by 2020 and boost renewable energy, winning praise from John Kerry, Barack Obama’s envoy to a UN climate change summit in Poznan, Poland.
The goals are the world’s most ambitious and the EU hopes that Mr Obama will use them to steer the US towards a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.
But big concessions for polluting industries such as steel and cement, under pressure from the German Government, led to accusations that yesterday’s EU summit in Brussels was a missed opportunity.
Plans to make all industries buy permits to emit pollution from 2013 onwards were deferred by EU leaders amid fears that these costs would cause job cuts and an exodus of production to countries with less stringent controls.
While electricity generators will have to buy their carbon permits the EU decided to hand free credits to key industries in a move that will reduce revenue for green measures such as developing carbon capture projects.
European industries exposed to international competition will receive free emissions permits if they face a 5 per cent increase in costs, a measure that is viewed as covering more than 90 per cent of EU industry. They will still have to reduce emissions year on year.
James Wilsdon, of the Royal Society, said that the EU climate change deal could represent “a missed opportunity” because of the way it had been watered down.
He said that too much attention had been paid to short-term economic considerations instead of the longer and more deadly problems of climate change.
“Europe must have a fully functioning Emissions Trading Scheme covering all sectors, where permits are not just given away. Those who cannot see beyond the short term must not hold sway – the consequences are too serious,” he said.
“Large-scale investment now in green technologies can reap long-term economic gains. A failure to invest in these will leave Europe dependent on others for our energy and increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”
In the wide-ranging compromise deal struck by EU leaders, Britain won €3 billion (£2.6 billion) for extra investment in carbon capture and storage, taking the total to €9 billion. President Sarkozy of France, who chaired the EU summit, hailed the deal as seminal. “It is quite historic what has happened here. No continent has given itself such binding rules,” he said.
But Greenpeace, the WWF and other environmental groups denounced the agreement as “a dark day for European climate policy” despite the commitment to retain the headline target of 20 per cent CO2 cuts by 2020. “European heads of state and government have turned their backs on global efforts to fight climate change,” they said in a joint statement.
They accused the German, Italian and Polish leaders, plus Mr Sarkozy, of choosing “private profits of polluting industry over the will of European citizens, the future of their children and the plight of millions of people”.
Mr Kerry said that the EU’s overall agreement would serve as a blueprint for the rest of the world. He said that the deal would have an impact at talks planned for Copenhagen next December when world leaders will meet to try to seal an international accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
Europe has been the driving force for getting a fresh pact to succeed Kyoto in 2013, but delays and disagreements on its own measures have damaged its reputation in recent weeks.
Its failure to sign off its climate change package until yesterday was one of the chief stumbling blocks at the Poznan summit, where other countries were reluctant to commit themselves to becoming low-carbon economies until wealthier nations acted. The global economic downturn has meant rich and poor nations have been less willing to spend money on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Even though it was watered down, the accord served as a catalyst to break two weeks of deadlock at Poznan. Within hours of learning of the agreement, delegates moved towards releasing hundreds of millions of dollars to help poor nations protect themselves from the impact of climate change.
Negotiators in the Polish city agreed to release cash from the Adaptation Fund to poor nations where it will be used to help them cope with global warming. Mozaharul Alam, a delegate from Bangladesh, said: “This is an important step.”
As 145 ministers and 10,000 delegates prepared to head home they were addressed by Al Gore, the former US Vice-President who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. He urged them to work to seal an accord in Copenhagen next year on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It was clear that “increased CO2 emissions anywhere are a threat to the integrity of this planet’s climate balance everywhere”, Mr Gore said.
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