The EU is falling sharply behind in meeting its legally binding undertakings on reducing greenhouse gases, the European Commission has warned. Delays in implementing effective changes have virtually doubled the effort now required to meet targets set for 2008-2012.
Last month a SIPTU conference in Dublin on the issue was warned that Ireland was likely to massively overshoot its ceiling commitment of an increase of only 13 per cent in emissions by 2010.
The unprecedented economic growth in the economy was likely to increase emissions by 40 to 60 per cent unless radical new measures were taken, said Mr Pablo Benavides, director-general for energy at the Commission. Elsewhere in the EU the picture is similar.
After an all-night session at the climate change conference in Buenos Aires in November, negotiators from more than 150 countries set a deadline of two years for adopting operational rules for cutting emissions of waste industrial gases believed to cause global warming.
Under a protocol to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiated in December 1997 in Kyoto, industrialised countries agreed to accept legally binding reductions in greenhouse gases averaging about 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the period 2008 to 2012, 8 per cent in the case of the EU.
That target was then divided up between EU member-states in a burden-sharing agreement that actually allowed "developing" Ireland to increase its output by 13 per cent. Ireland's programme to meet the target is being worked on by the Department of the Environment.
Critical to the EU's target was the intermediate objective of stabilising emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, a target that now looks certain not to be met as emissions have been on an upward trend since 1994. The Commission now estimates that without significant additional measures greenhouse gas emissions in the EU are likely to rise by 6 per cent over 1990 levels by 2010.
"Comparing these `business as usual' estimates to the Kyoto target implies a double reduction effort of 14 per cent," the Commission said in a communication to member-states this week. And it says that things could get worse if significant economic growth picks up.
The Environment Commissioner, Ms Ritt Bjeregaard, warns that the situation is "alarming" and is stepping up pressure on member-states both for new national measures and to do something about the energy tax proposals, particularly those on aircraft fuel, that have now been on the finance ministers' agenda for years. She hopes that the Cologne summit in June will kick-start a process of putting pious words into action. Observers are far from convinced it will.
There are marked differences between economic sectors. The transport sector, around a fifth of noxious emissions, is expecting to increase its CO emissions by as much as 39 per cent by 2010 from the 1990 level, although a voluntary agreement with car producers is likely now to reduce the figures slightly.
Industrial emissions, representing a similar share of pollution, are expected to fall 15 per cent, while those from households, another fifth of emissions, are likely to remain static, as are the emissions from the power generating sector, the big polluter, representing a third of emissions.
But the Commission's problem is not just in persuading member-states to honour their obligations. International talks resuming in Bonn in June will focus on putting in place an international monitoring and legislative framework for implementation of Kyoto. A clash with the US is inevitable. The Kyoto protocol set up a number of mechanisms to achieve the cuts most effectively and at least cost. Among them was a plan to allow countries to trade in emission rights, and another plan called the clean development mechanism.
In the latter case, private companies in the industrialised world would invest, for example, in high-efficiency power plants in poor countries, which would thereby reap both environmental and economic benefits. The two countries would share credit for the emissions reductions.
In emissions trading, a country or private company would be able to achieve part of its emissions reduction by purchasing reductions from a country or company that has reduced its emissions more than required. In theory, this achieves overall global reductions faster and at less cost.
But whereas the US and Canada see both approaches as very attractive because they require little painful effort on the part of their citizens, the EU has insisted that genuine effort must be made inside all states which are party to the agreement to change energy-consuming habits. Unless that happens, Ms Bjeregaard says, targets will not be met.
The EU argues that such measures must be regarded as complementary additional means and is determined to limit them to less than half of the pollution-reducing "effort" of individual states. That means, the Commission argues, tightly framed rules on both monitoring and trading.
The EU is also at loggerheads with the US over its adamant insistence that the developing countries must also make binding commitments. Ninety-five senators signed a resolution last summer saying, among other things, that the US should not sign any agreement unless it "mandates new specific scheduled commitments" by Third World countries to reduce emissions.
Yet a recent study by the World Resources Institute found that, even in energy-intensive industries, energy costs are just one factor - and one too small to make much difference - among many that are considered when decisions are made on where to produce goods.
The main message from the Commission this week, however, was that we still have to put our own house in order.
