EU sticks to 20% climate target
EU decides against unilateral increase in its emissions-reduction target.
The European Union today made a formal declaration to the United Nations that it will stick to its target to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2020.
All big-polluting countries are required to file an emissions-reduction pledge to the United Nations climate secretariat in Bonn by Sunday (31 January) at the latest, a deadline agreed at last month’s summit in Copenhagen.
The EU letter, drafted by Spain’s EU presidency and the European Commission, was approved after EU diplomats signed off the text yesterday.
The outcome of Copenhagen – widely seen as disappointing for the EU – led to calls for the bloc to re-think its climate diplomacy and raise its target to cut emissions by 30%. Instead, the letter re-states the EU’s long-held position that it will only go to 30% if other countries making similar efforts.
The letter states the EU’s belief that developed countries as a group should reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 25% to 40% by 2020 and by 80% to 95% by 2020. Over the same period, the EU wants developing countries to moderate by 15%-30% the projected trajectory of the growth in emissions, based on business-as-usual projections.
The decision to stick with the original target will disappoint green-technology advocates and environmentalists, who argue that a 30% promise would breathe life into international negotiations.
Greenpeace’s EU policy director, Joris Den Blanken, said in a statement: “The EU is starting to sound like a broken record. Its back-seat tactics did not work in Copenhagen and they continue to fail today. The only way the EU can exert any international leverage is if it increases its domestic emissions target to 30%.”
But carbon-intensive industries, such as chemicals and steel, are likely to welcome the decision to stay at 20%. These industries argue their competitiveness would be damaged if the EU tries to do more than the rest of the world.
Fact File
Key dates
March 2007: EU leaders agree to cut emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990, but by 30% if other countries join in. At the same summit they also vow to increase the share of renewable energy to 20% by 2020.
December 2008: The EU ‘climate and energy package’, a series of laws setting national climate targets, reforming the emissions-trading scheme, promoting renewable energy, is agreed by the European Council.
11 December 2009: The EU finesses its negotiating tactics for the Copenhagen climate conference, which is already underway, setting out conditions that need to be met before it goes to 30%.
18/19 December 2009: The Copenhagen Accord emerges from the UN climate conference. In the two-and-a-half page text, countries that produce 80% of the world’s emissions agree to take steps to limit global warming to 2ºC. Steps to do this are not spelled out and countries are asked to send their targets to the UN by 31 January.
European leaders will discuss climate-change diplomacy when they meet on 11 February for an informal summit in Brussels. Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, has said that the EU needs to find a way to translate its “ambitious climate change goals [into] global negotiating power”.