Climate Change: EU close to meeting 2020 emissions goal already

Cuts in EU greenhouse gas emissions have almost reached the 20 percent target set for 2020, official figures showed on Wednesday, stoking a debate on how quickly the bloc should promise deeper cuts.

The European Environment Agency (EEA), a scientific body set up to inform EU policymakers, said emissions in 2012 were around 18 percent lower than in 1990.

The figures also showed that the 15 EU member states bound by the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period which ended in December 2012 achieved cuts of 12.2 percent compared with an 8 percent target.

An agreement is expected at a U.N. summit in Paris in 2015 on a successor to the first global pact on climate change.

The EU  Commission is expected to publish proposals on 2030 energy and environment targets around the end of the year, which EU sources have said will include a 40 percent emissions-cutting goal and a 30 percent renewable energy target.

Wednesday’s data showed that the EU is also on track to meet a separate 2020 target to increase the share of energy from renewable sources to 20 percent.

Green energy accounted for 13 percent of consumption by 2011. The EEA predicts the bloc should achieve its target by 2020.

Note EU-Digest: Unfortunately without the major global polluters - USA, China, India and a few others taking the reduction of emission goals serious the European efforts won't do too much good.

Read more: EU close to meeting 2020 emissions goal already - official data | News | Eco-Business - Asia's Cleantech & Sustainable Business Community

EU to ban China, India carbon credits trade

Europe is to ban a highly lucrative trade in polluting rights obtained by European-based companies under a UN scheme to favour environmentally-friendly industrial investment in the likes of China or India.

The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, an international tool in the fight to tame global warming, gives firms from industrialised countries incentives to invest in greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries, traditionally huge polluters.

In return, these investments generate rights to emit gases which are said to trade at 78 times the cost of destroying by-product gases, but the European Union will remove them from its Emissions Trading System registries as of May 1, 2013, the European Commission said Friday.

For more: AFP: EU to ban China, India carbon credits trade

Escambray: Chaos, Frictions Mark Copenhagen Summit

For the complete report from Escambray click on this link

The final phase of the UN Summit on Climate Change started with chaos and disorder at the Bella Center entrance, with sessions still characterized by strong North-South disputes. Never-ending lines terribly upset another group of delegates, NGOs, guests and journalists who had to line up for up to three hours out in the open, with temperatures below zero degree. The sort of Gordian knot outside the congress palace obstructed the entry of over 500 people who were trying to legalize their accreditations, as well as others who simply needed to take part in the meeting. The group of African nations today accused developed ones and the COP15 Danish chairmanship of wanting to kill the Kyoto Protocol, thus causing an immediate reaction among green associations in Bella Center.

"If we accept this situation, we will be signing the death of the Kyoto protocol, the only legally related document that exists. It would take over seven years for a new treaty to be signed. It took seven to Kyoto," Algerian delegate Kamel Djemouai said.

News.com.au: Kyoto supporters hail Rudd victory in Australia - by Richard Ingham

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Kyoto supporters hail Rudd victory in Australia - by Richard Ingham

Supporters of the Kyoto protocol were gleeful today after Australian elections left the US in the wilderness as the only major economy to boycott the UN's climate pact. Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd has pledged to ratify Kyoto and his defeat of John Howard at the polls has stripped President George W. Bush of a key ally barely a week before a conference in Bali on the world's response to climate change beyond 2012, they said. “It's great news for the Kyoto protocol,” Shane Rattenburg, Greenpeace's political director, said.A European diplomat said Howard's departure would hamper US efforts to coax support from two other countries whose governments, eyeing the cost of meeting their Kyoto pledges, could waver at Bali. “We're pleased about the (election) outcome,” he said.

EUobserver.com: Paris suggests EU tax on imports from non-Kyoto states - by Lucia Kubosova

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Paris suggests EU tax on imports from non-Kyoto states - by Lucia Kubosova

France has thrown its support behind a European Commission idea to tax environment polluters and also urged Brussels to consider EU levies for imports from non-Kyoto countries, such as the US and Australia. "We need to profoundly revise all of our taxes... to tax pollution more, including fossil fuels, and to tax labour less," French president Nicolas Sarkozy told an environment forum representing government, industry and the green lobby on Thursday (25 October), according to the AFP agency. He urged European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, present at the speakers' podium, to discuss in the next six months the implications of "unfair competition" by firms outside the EU which do not have to abide by strict European standards on CO2 emissions. Note EU-Digest: this is an excellent and fair proposal by Mr. Sarkozy.

www.bbj.hu: Maneka Gandhi say: India won't follow Europe in CO2 emission cut

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Maneka Gandhi say: India won't follow Europe in CO2 emission cut

Former Indian environment minister Maneka Gandhi has criticized the US for not joining the Kyoto Protocol and says India will not follow Europe in carbon dioxide gas emission reduction as energy consumption is already very low in the country.

The 27-member European Union in March agreed on a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, according to INEP news agency. She said coal-produced electricity consumption will increase in India but if the country at this junction could go to renewables such as solar and wind energy, „I think we could head off the CO2 crisis. Otherwise we are going to go smack-bang into it”. Asked to comment on the US position on the post-Kyoto regime where Washington says it will not cut gas emissions unless India and China do the same, the environmental activist replied: „I am quite certain that America is using us just as an excuse.