EU on track to miss Kyoto target

EU countries are failing to get to grips with climate change and could miss the ambitious targets set out in the Kyoto protocol, the UN has warned.

A new report from the Bonn-based UN Climate Change secretariat shows that Europe managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by just 1.4 per cent between 1990 and 2003.

The EU pledged to cut emissions by 8 per cent by 2012 at the Kyoto climate change summit in 1997.

The report stressed that the overall reduction in European emissions masked some worrying increases in greenhouse gas output.

“A large part of the reductions was achieved in the early 1990s in countries of eastern and central Europe undergoing transition to a market economy,” said Richard Kinley, acting head of the secretariat.
 
“What we see is that the emissions from developed countries as a group have been stable in recent years and not decreased as they did in the early 1990s.”

“Moreover, projections indicate the possibility of emission growth by 2010. It means that ensuring sustained and deeper emission reductions remains a challenge for developed countries.”

For example, Lithuania reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 66 per cent between 1990 and 2003, while Latvia and Estonia posted cuts of 58 and 51 per cent.

Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic also posted strong declines.

But Spanish emissions grew by 41 per cent during that same period, and there were also significant increases in Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Finland and Austria.

Germany, Luxembourg and the UK were the best performers among the ‘old’ EU member states, with reductions of 18, 16 and 13 per cent respectively.

France and Sweden were the only other EU members to cut greenhouse gas output during the period.

The EU’s emissions trading scheme allows some countries within Europe to lift their output of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as these increases are offset by declines in other countries.

But a report published earlier this month by the Worldwide Fund for Nature claims that the scheme will not be sufficient to allow the EU to meet its 8 per cent reduction target.

“The EU ETS has the potential to become a model for the rest of the world, provided it includes stricter caps on CO2 and better ways to allocate pollution allowances,” said Oliver Rapf, Senior Policy Officer at WWF’s European Policy Office.

“This would create incentives to move away from dirty, CO2-intense coal power.”

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