Brussels calls for OECD-wide carbon market
The Earth Times, 28 Jan 2009 13:48:12 GMT
Brussels - The world's richest states should aim to create by 2015 a joint market mechanism designed to make heavy industries pollute less by forcing them to buy greenhouse gas-emission permits, the European Union's executive said on Wednesday. And developing powers such as China, India and Brazil, which are not members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), should join such a system no later than 2020.
The wealthy world should also offer developing countries substantial funding to help them cut their emissions, so that the international community can reach a deal on fighting climate change at a conference in Copenhagen in December, the European Commission said as it set out its negotiating platform for the Copenhagen talks.
"Without a credible financial package, it's clear that there will be no deal in Copenhagen: no money, no deal," EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told journalists in Brussels.
In 2005, the EU set up a system capping the amount of greenhouse gases the bloc's heavy industries could emit and allowing firms which reduced their gas output to sell the surplus emissions permits - the world's first greenhouse-gas Emissions Trading System (ETS).
The commission proposal calls on all 30 OECD members - countries such as the United States, Japan and South Korea - to set up a similar ETS by 2013, and to allow permits to be traded between them by 2015.
Major developing economies, meanwhile, should draw up national plans to tackle global warming before the Copenhagen talks, and have their own ETS ready to link into the OECD one by 2020, the proposal says.
That is becoming an "increasingly realistic" goal, as Australia is currently setting up an ETS, with New Zealand and the US expected to follow suit, Dimas said.
The commission also proposed a number of measures aimed at enticing the world's major economies, both developed and developing, into a binding global deal on fighting climate change in Copenhagen.
It calls on developed economies to pledge to cut their emissions to an average of 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and agree a formula for setting binding country-specific targets based on each one's current emissions, energy efficiency and population.
The EU has already vowed to cut emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to go to 30 per cent if other developed economies accept a comparable cut.
The proposal also calls on rich states to set up a legally-binding system for paying developing countries to fight climate change, either by agreeing rules and targets for bilateral aid or by sharing some of the revenue from the sale of emissions permits.
It calls on the world community to double investment in clean-energy research by 2013 and quadruple it by 2020, and to raise spending on climate-change issues by 175 billion euros (230 billion dollars) a year by 2020.
In return, developing powers should brake their emissions growth so that they release between 15 and 30 per cent less greenhouse gas in 2020 than they would do if they pursued their current policies.
The commission also called for the tightening of a system which allows rich countries to gain credit for sponsoring emissions-reduction projects in poorer ones, making it harder to claim such credits. Such projects would be limited to the poorest countries, cutting rising powers such as China, India and Brazil out entirely.
EU officials say that the wealthiest developing countries are already richer than the bloc's poorest members, such as Bulgaria and Romania, making it only fair for them to pay for their emissions.
The commission launched its proposals a day after new US President Barack Obama named Todd Stern as the country's first-ever climate change envoy, confirming his plans to reverse the sceptical approach to the issue displayed by former president George W Bush.
But the EU text will have to pass two tough political tests if it is to have any chance of global acceptance.
First, it will have to be approved by the EU's 27 member states, who are currently reeling under the impact of the global financial crisis, and who have little appetite for expensive new initiatives.
They it then have to win approval from all major world powers in Copenhagen - a negotiation which promises to be anything but simple.
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