The European Union is losing its way on climate change

New EU rules agreed on 31 July mean Europe’s 3000 large combustion power plants – coal burning for the most part – will have to cut pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, mercury and particulate matter by 2021. But this is not as good news as it seems.

A version of this article was published on The Fifth Estate last week.

Eighty-two per cent of the EU’s coal-fired plants are estimated to be be non-compliant, emitting excessive levels of pollutants. The cost of compliance is estimated to be over €15 billion (AU$22.4b) according to the European Climate Foundation. This seemingly sounds the death-knell for the coal industry in Europe. But will it?

European climate policy is succeeding in decoupling GDP from energy use, but enthusiasm for climate action is waning.

Christian Schaible, a member of the working group that helped draft the revised standards, explained that “not all plants will have the will, the financing, or even the access to the equipment needed to reduce pollution levels”.

“Investments in plants that are already essentially on life support in order to meet climate commitments simply doesn’t make sense.”

He said that plants committing to close could “under strict conditions and in exchange for reduced operation, be granted exceptions in the short-term”.

This is a nod partly to Eastern European countries still struggling with and committed to the legacy of inefficient Communist-era power systems.

Poland is the biggest polluter of NOx gases from these plants, followed by Germany.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Subsidies for coal continue to abound, as highlighted in a new study, which shows that in Europe, loans of €47.7b (AU$71.1b) have gone to fossil fuel projects since 2013, and many of these projects will continue.

The study, from the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), also shows that 89.1 per cent of preventable deaths from air pollution in Bulgaria come from fossil fuel pollution.

“Fellow Eastern European countries Romania and Poland could also cut air pollution-based deaths by 71.3 per cent and 51.3 per cent, respectively,” it says.

The Rise of the Visegrad Factor

The Berlin’s Institute for International Political Economy Cenk Olgun said: “The most vehement opposition to ambitious European climate policies have historically come from the post-Soviet eastern member States,” in particular the Visegrad Group (founded in 1991 by Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) because the bloc “still struggles with a post-communist economic legacy and conventional power sectors”.

Energy prices and domestic fossil fuel consumption are especially important issues in these countries. They are highly dependent on imported gas and oil.

The Visegrad Group has succeeded in obtaining a high number of free emission allowances from the EU:

Hungary currently holds the presidency of this group and its declared objectives for the coming year are to promote energy infrastructure, security (meaning more gas and LNG, both seen as a way of weaning off coal) and competitiveness, striking its own idea of a “balance between economic growth and meeting climate policy goals”, and expressing anxiety about “carbon leakage” and “investment leakage”.

Permitted emissions

These Eastern European countries are being permitted to increase their greenhouse gas emissions up to 2020 under rules announced on 20 July. These permits to increase are proposed in the Effort Sharing Decision limits released by the European Commission.

These allocate climate targets to each member state within the overall European target in order to decarbonise the non-Emission Trading Scheme sectors – transport (except aviation and maritime shipping), buildings, agriculture and waste.

The overall European emissions target is a 30 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. The UK’s share of this will be 37 per cent – equivalent to a 45 per cent reduction on 1990 levels. The UK has a domestically agreed Fifth Carbon Budget, which has passed into law and commits it to cutting emissions by 57 per cent on 1990 levels by 2030 – further than the proposed European limits.

Then there’s Brexit

The effect of the UK leaving the European Union has not yet been translated into the effect on Europe’s climate goals. As the UK’s emissions savings compensate for emissions increases in other nations, there will be a knock-on effect. Other nations will have to improve at a faster rate.

But this is not reflected in the above 2030 limits. By 2030 the UK will, on its present path, have been out of the EU for a decade.

This oversight is part of the impression coming out of Europe that its climate policy is in disarray.

We saw this in June with the passing of an ineffectual draft of the revised Energy Efficiency Directive.

In addition, the Energy Performance of Buildings directive – agreed by the national governments and the European Parliament – is not being effectively implemented, according to energy efficiency expert Andrew Warren. He complains in a recent piece that “Article 27 of the Directive requires our government to introduce ‘effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties’ for non-compliance with the directive. These don’t exist.”

Countries very rarely prosecute building owners for non-compliance. The last study of compliance in 2015 found: “In general, information flows and data collection systems across member states for MEP requirements were not fit for purpose” – amongst many other problems with implementation.

The Energy Union strategy and the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement commits to staying “well” below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Taken with other countries’ pledges the EU’s would lead to global emissions of at least 55 GtCO2-e by 2030. But the absolute maximum level of emissions for staying below 2°C would be 40 GtCO2-e. To close this gap, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has asked all countries to reduce their 2030 emissions by at least another 25 per cent.

The currently proposed EU energy efficiency target of 30 per cent is too low to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Looking at energy savings alone, by totalling the amount of savings reported by member states in 2014 and 2015 the total savings target is currently on track to be below zero.

One of the few good signs is in France’s newly published climate action plan. This states that France will push the EU to increase the ambition of its emission reduction targets. Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, said this “sends a clear message to the whole EU that the full implementation of the Paris Agreement means much deeper emission cuts”.

There is now only a five per cent chance that the planet can avoid warming by at least 2°C come the end of the century, according to research published in Nature Climate Change.

The recent deadly heatwaves in southern Europe look likely to be just a taste of what is to come unless far more drastic action is taken by the European bloc. It could mean over 150,000 people a year dying from heat by 2100 if nothing is done, said The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

The European Union used to lead the world on climate change action. This is not the time for it to lose its nerve.

David Thorpe is the author of Energy Management in Buildings, Solar Technology and Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

EU loses nerve to tackle climate change, fuel poverty & slashes 2030 energy efficiency goal

Energy efficiency – you know it makes sense, right?

While paying lip service to the Paris Agreement, the European Union has let a minority of countries slash its energy efficiency targets by 90 per cent on the grounds that even modest targets are too expensive. The EU’s commitment to tackling climate change and fuel poverty is now seriously in doubt.

A version of this article was first published in The Fifth Estate on 5 July.

At a meeting of the Energy Council of EU energy ministers on 26 June, where several energy efficiency policies were discussed, agreement on the energy saving target from 2020 to 2030 was hard to achieve, and reaching consensus came at great cost to the level of ambition.

The new target

Currently the energy saving target is a non-binding one of 20 per cent by 2020, compared to baseline projections. A legally binding target of achieving 30 per cent energy use reduction by 2030 had been on the table.

Originally the European Parliament was calling for a 40 per cent target because the EU is already on track to achieve 24 per cent savings by 2030, and deeper savings are easily available and cost-effective. Earlier this year there was wide expectation that the final compromise might be between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

But at the meeting, some countries demanded that the target should be only voluntary – and other countries demanded that it should be as low as 27 per cent.

In the end a non-binding 30 per cent target was agreed.

This compromise means the new target is less ambitious than the current 20 per cent by 2020 target. Currently countries would have to save 1.5 per cent energy a year. A 30 per cent target by 2030 decreases it to just one per cent between 2026 and 2030, assuming all countries co-operate.

Further loopholes were also added, specifically permitting:

• the double counting of energy savings from new buildings standards/codes – even though those are already covered by the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive
• double counting in the period 2021-2030 savings from energy efficiency measures installed before 2021 with lifetimes longer than 23 years – as if they were new savings
• 15 per cent of on-site renewable energy generation to be treated as energy savings
• excess savings from the current Article 7 (Energy Efficiency Obligation) period 2014-2020 towards the minimum savings 2021-2030

Observers Jan Rosenow and Richard Cowart calculate that together this will reduce the actual energy savings mandate in the EED from an effective level of 443 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) a year to just 52 Mtoe – a reduction of almost 90 per cent.

Rogues and heroes

The rogue countries that argued for this result were the UK, which allied itself with eastern states Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania. The WWF said these countries “could not even support the final weak deal”.

The British negotiator was Conservative MP Richard Harrington. Where other countries sent their secretaries of state for energy, Britain sent an under-secretary from the business, energy and industrial strategy department, who had only been appointed a week earlier.

Richard Harrington

The heroes of the day were France, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and Ireland, who were congratulated by Greens MEP Claude Turmes for fighting hard for a strong deal. He said afterwards that he would use his place on the European Parliament’s Industry Committee to “raise the ambition” of the targets.

EU Energy and Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete commented that finding agreement on the Energy Efficiency Directive was “not easy” and that as a result it fell “below the ambition of the Commission”.

Miguel Arias Cañete

Others were equally disappointed. Clémence Hutin, climate justice and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “These negotiations should have been about ramping up the EU’s climate efforts for 2030, instead we are risking a decade of inaction. EU governments have expressed deep regret at Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, yet they are turning their backs on the main tool for cutting emissions – energy efficiency.”

Benedek Jávor, Greens/EFA MEP said: “There is an engaged energy efficiency community that stands ready to raise ambition levels and invest massively in the energy transition. They just need the right signals from policymakers. To fully unlock this potential, all member states need to give their support. Where some countries lag behind, there is a real risk of higher energy costs and serious competition gaps.”

The European Parliament’s own Impact Assessment had shown that higher levels of ambition would deliver significantly greater benefits, as revealed in the table below.

Level of energy savings:	30 per cent	33 per cent	35 per cent	40 per cent
Reduction in gas imports	12 per cent	23 per cent	29 per cent	41 per cent
GDP increase in 2030	0.39 per cent	1.45 per cent	2.08 per cent	4.08 per cent
Additional jobs	396,950	1,587,800	2,428,400	4,856,800
Savings in fossil fuel import bills (bn) for 2021-2030	69.6	147.3	199.3	287.5
Reduction in pollution control and health damage costs (bn/year )	4.5-8.3	15.2-28.4	19.9-36.6	30.4-55.9
Total GHG emissions reductions ( per cent to 1990)	41 per cent	43 per cent	44 per cent	47 per cent

These are consistent with figures from the De-Risking Energy Efficiency Platform (DEEP) database, which contains close to 6000 individual energy efficiency projects across the member states of the EU. Overall, it shows the cost per kilowatt-hour saved in buildings is 2.5 eurocents and in the industry sector 1.2 eurocents.

Fuel poverty is an issue in all member states. It affects tens of millions of Europeans (between 50 million and 125 million depending on how you measure it). Of the main causes – low income, high energy costs and poor insulation of European dwellings – the directive could do much to affect the latter two.

The Energy Union strategy and the Paris Agreement

The Energy Efficiency Directive forms part of the EU’s Energy Union Strategy.

The general aim of the Energy Union strategy is to move towards the decarbonisation of the EU economy by 2030 and beyond, while strengthening economic growth, consumer protection, innovation and competitiveness. The Commission proposal on energy efficiency updates the current Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU and was presented in November 2016.

Buildings are the largest single energy consumer in Europe, consuming 40 per cent of final energy.

Even before this meeting, the EU was not on a trajectory to meet its self-assigned 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of “at least” 40 per cent by 2030 below 1990 levels under the Paris Agreement.

According to Climate Action Tracker – which monitors individual countries’ plans to achieve the global aims of the Paris Agreement of limiting warming to 1.5°C – the EU’s domestic emissions are projected to be cut by only 30-39 per cent.

The EU’s target is, anyway, not consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, says Climate Action Tracker. Extrapolating the current trend to 2050 would give an emissions reduction of 64 per cent below 1990. The EU’s goal is 80-95 per cent.

Looking at energy savings alone, by totalling the amount of savings reported by member states in 2014 and 2015, the total savings target is currently on track to be less than zero.

Factoring in the new, seriously unambitious targets under the Energy Efficiency Directive would make achieving Europe’s goal under the Paris Agreement much harder and more expensive to achieve.

The extra expense comes because it is cheaper to take action now than in the future, and because it is generally cheaper to install measures to save energy than to build new generation plant.

The European Union is now seriously lacking credibility in its position on tackling climate change. What is always puzzling is why energy efficiency – which has been shown innumerable times to have multiple benefits and mostly be more cost-effective than building more generation capacity – has so few friends.

Perhaps we should stop energy ministers deciding such matters and let those unswayable by lobbying from energy suppliers do so instead.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy efficiency, building refurbishment and renewable energy. See his website here.

Tags: energy efficiency,

It's Europe that has made our land more green and pleasant

Do you think that the UK's membership of the European Union is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? If a referendum were held on the UK's membership, how do you think you would vote?

These are the questions that David Cameron is addressing in his speech on Europe, and that are asked in public polling surveys on this most touchy of subjects.

According to one recent survey, which asked just these questions, over 56% would "probably or definitely" answer that they would vote to leave, and 45% think that Britain's membership is a Bad Thing. Only 28% believe it is Good for the country.

But the answer you get depends on the question you ask.

Suppose a pollster asked you this question:

Are you grateful that we have clean beaches?

Or how about:

Is legislation to keep our water and air clean from industrial pollution a good thing?

What about:

Do you think it is a good idea to set targets for manufacturers to make their products consume less energy?

I am willing to bet that well over three quarters of the population would answer yes to all of these questions.

Then the polling company might ask the question:

Are you aware that all of the above are controlled by laws emanating from Europe that have been accepted by the British government?

I am willing to bet that well over three quarters of the population would answer no to that question.

In this debate on Europe we hear a lot from the business lobby about red tape from Europe holding back growth.

As if, were we tomorrow to cast off from the continental landmass, like a hot air balloon we would rise majestically into a sky of profit having jettisoned the ballast of legal compliance.

It is never mentioned exactly which laws are supposed to be jettisoned.

Even the coalition government's own campaign to cut red tape, in which the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs has played an enthusiastic role, has actually found little besides ancient and redundant legislation that it can bury without affecting health and ecosystems in a way that would cause public outrage.

It is precisely our membership of the European Union that has forced business and agriculture in this country to take care of our environment and protect our health, to safeguard species and habitats from the otherwise careless activities associated with the production of goods and wealth, energy and employment.

These are successes that figure high on people's list of priorities. Breaches of, say, pollution laws, occurring on their doorsteps trigger howls of anguish and outrage.

The Bathing Water Directive protects our beaches. Directives like the Groundwater, Habitats, Industrial Emissions, Landfill, Nitrates and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive protect us, our children, families and neighbourhoods from dangerous pollution.

Do UKIP and Eurosceptic MPs in all parties wish to abolish all of these as they abandon Europe?

Do they, perhaps, want to make Britain the continent's 'dirty old man'?

Let me ask you: are these protections, instead, not something to celebrate?

We can legitimately ask that, if our national government had not been not forced by Brussels to incorporate these laws into national legislation, whether it would have done so, and indeed whether they would be enforced, and by whom?

Think of how many times Britain has been taken to court for breaches of environmental laws, for example in the case of dirty beaches.

It is because of Europe that raw sewage is no longer poured straight into the sea and our rivers and waterways.

Even now, London is under threat of prosecution from Europe for breaches of air pollution legislation.

These foreigners should not be sticking their noses into our business, you say? Who else is going to protect our environment?

If you want us to leave Europe then you have to be clear on this.

That 'the environment', meaning weather, sea currents, migrating birds and so on, does not respect international boundaries is precisely the reason why we need a continent-wide protection regime.

And it is because it has set, and is due to meet as a bloc, its targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, for growth in renewable energy, and for increases in the energy efficiency of products made within its boundaries, in its fight against the worst ravages of climate change, that Europe can speak with a louder and more authoritative voice at global climate change talks.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and the Landfill Directive encourage recycling. The ambition of the Water Framework Directive is to protect our waterways.

I am sorry, but unless you can convince me that, outside of Europe, we would introduce protection at least as good as these for the environment, and, even more importantly, enforce all of these, I will vote overwhelmingly for us to stay within the European Union.

I'm all for simplifying red tape. But let's hear it for European green tape. Without it, our environment would be even more despoiled than it is already.

Shale gas fracking needs tighter regulation - EU

Protest against fracking by Cuadrilla in Lancashire, UK, in 2011.

A new report for the European Union warns that tough new regulations are required for the shale gas industry because of the high risk it poses to human health and the environment.

The study, 'Impacts of shale gas and shale oil extraction on the environment and human health', the most comprehensive analysis yet of the shale gas sector, says that drilling for shale gas poses a “high risks", worse than those posed by other fossil fuels.

Water contamination

Amongst these is water contamination caused by the hydraulic fracturing of rocks to obtain the gas, known as ‘fracking’. The report warns that no fracking should be allowed in areas where water is being used to drinking purposes.

Seven other risks are highlighted, including contamination and depletion of ground and surface water, degradation of biodiversity, land, air quality and the danger of earthquakes.

It also speculates as to whether the use of toxic chemicals for injection should be banned in general. At least, it says, “all chemicals to be used should be disclosed publicly, the number of allowed chemicals should be restricted, and their use should be monitored".

It notes that fracturing fluids contain heavy metals and radioactive materials, and that in the United States many accidents have happened which have harmed the environment and human health. There, recorded violations of legal regulations amount to up to 2% all drilling permits, a very high level.

There has been groundwater contamination by methane and potassium fluoride, leading to salinisation of drinking water in the vicinity of wells.

There also needs to be better monitoring of shale gas extraction and “a thorough cost/benefit analysis" as part of a life cycle analysis, to assess the overall benefits for society and its citizens.

All of this is because the technology is novel and the consequences heavily dependent upon particularities of the local geology in each case. This makes regulation a complex issue.

Impact on climate change

So-called ‘fugitive’ methane emissions from hydraulic fracturing, where the gas escapes into the rock and water as part of the extraction process, later to be released into the atmosphere, can also be high and have a huge impact on the greenhouse gas balance.

There have been no studies done yet on methane intrusion into aquifers and in different instances these emissions might vary by up to "a factor of ten", the report notes.

This means that emissions of greenhouse gases from shale gas extraction, relative to its energy content, can be either “as low as those of conventional gas transported over long distances, or as high as those of hard coal over the entire life cycle from extraction to combustion", the report observes.

It concludes that "the present privileges of oil and gas exploration and extraction should be reassessed in view of the fact that the environmental risks and burdens are not compensated for by a corresponding potential benefit as the specific gas production is very low."

Earlier this year, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, warned that any energy strategy involving shale gas would be 'not the optimum path' for the environment or climate change.

Regulation

Germany is already considering tighter regulation of fracking that occurs near water reservoirs and set to require developers to conduct environmental impact studies, according to a new report commissioned by the German Environment Ministry.

The EU study is one of five due to be released today, and identifies loopholes, gaps, scientific uncertainties and regulatory gaps in current EU regulation relevant to the industry.

As an example, the Urban Waste Water Directive does not allow the injection of pollutants into groundwater reserves. The authors of the report observe that this is likely to occur in shale wells.

Fracking could also fall foul of the Mining Waste Directive, which covers ‘flowback fluids’, or liquid containing toxic chemicals that flow into geological strata and could reach the surface. These are an inevitable part of the fracking process.

The new EU study recommends that environmental impact assessments should be made mandatory for proposed shale gas operations. As it stands, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive does not cover this new sector, and only applies to facilities which extract over 500,000 cubic metres of gas per day, well over what shale wells produce.

Back in May, the new Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, told the Cabinet that it should fast-track shale gas exploitation. He is also in favour of deregulation.

The next step is for an expert forum to address this question in December, ahead of consideration by the European Parliament.

Another report being prepared for the European Parliament and due to be published later this month, also reportedly recommends “a thorough analysis of the EU regulatory framework regarding specifically UFF [unconventional fossil fuels] exploration and exploitation”, and calls on the Commission “to propose, as soon as possible … appropriate measures, including legislative [ones], if necessary”.

Fierce lobbying is said to be going on behind the scenes over the exact wording of this report.

MEP Claude Turmes, vice-chair of the Green Party in the European Parliament, said that, “without any new legislation, there is no adequate framework to protect citizens and the environment from shale gas. We need the European Commission to work on this."

A further report prepared by the industry committee earlier this summer also agrees that large-scale shale gas extraction “may require a comprehensive adaptation of all the EU's relevant existing legislation".

Next steps

The European Commission now needs to decide on its position on this new source of energy. It can either prepare a new directive that covers, amend all existing legislation, this particular industry or offer “soft guidance", the least preferred option by environmentalists, although the one preferred by the Energy Directorate.

The Environment and Climate Directorates believe that more strict action needs to be taken, especially since the industry is prohibited in countries such as France and has been linked to earthquakes.

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, the Liberal vice-chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, said, “There are a lot of potential dangers to water, the environment and biodiversity that we seriously have to look into. I don’t believe at this moment that a single directive for shale gas is the right approach."

Antoine Simon, shale gas campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: “This report silences industry rhetoric - shale gas is undeniably a high-risk activity. It threatens the health of local communities, and the environment, while locking Europe into fossil fuel dependency. These risks are a clear sign that a moratorium on this toxic technology in Europe should be a priority for decision makers.”

Yesterday, the South African government lifted a moratorium on fracking for shale gas in the country's semi-arid Karoo region, which contains gas reserves being investigated by energy company Royal Dutch Shell and petrochemical group Sasol.

A report published earlier this year by Policy Exchange in the UK, Gas Works? Shale gas and its policy implications also called for effective regulation.

US intransigence caps Copenhagen fiasco

If anyone should shoulder the blame for the failure of the UN Climate Change conference to conclude with a legally binding and effective deal it is President Obama.

Other countries had made or been ready to make concessions, even though no-one did enough to secure the measures required to avoid a temperature rise of at least 3 degrees Celsius.

China conceded that it would no longer seek financial support from rich countries to help it reduce its emissions. But when it saw no new US measures on the table, it felt no compunction to accept independent monitoring of its emission reduction efforts.

The EU had agreed a unilateral 20 per cent emissions cut by 2020 on 1990 levels and offered to raise this to 30 per cent if other rich countries did more. It also promised to pay its “fair share” of a global total of €22-50 billion in international public money.

The UK seems unwilling to criticise the US, putting a brave face on the fact that Obama came to Copenhagen at all.

The text agreed so far contains only an aspiration to provide $100bn by 2020, with no certainty about how much is public money from rich countries. The money may largely come from carbon trading - a volatile, unpedictable market.

Lumumba Di-Aping (Sudanese leader of G77) compared the Copenhagen Accord proposed to the Holocaust and to asking African people to sign the suicide pact.

Tuvalu and other threatened states are very bitter about lack of transparency - the text had been agreed before midnight by a small group of countries (25-10-5 countries, including US and EU) and brought to the plenary.

There is no tight deadline to convert the deal into a legally-binding agreement - so no sense of urgency.

After two years of wrangling and stalling - what a tragedy for the most vulnerable nations and the whole world.

The governments of the world have behaved like irresponsible schoolchildren who had to prepare for an important exam but left everything to the last minute and failed the exam, rather than like responsible custodians of the planet.

What a betrayal of our trust.

What does the Accord say?

Targets: no mitigation targets for 2020 or 2050
The document mentions pledges already made by some parties. Other countries can write their intentions into the scheme in the document before 1 February 2010.

Finance:
- long term finance: 100 bln USD each year by 2020 repeated, no concrete pledges. The money should go from public and private sources.

- short term finance 2010-12
10,6 bilion USD - UE
11 bln USD - Japan
3,6 bln USD - US

Verification/control: control wording taken out. Big developing countries have to report their emissions every second year, some kind of international surveillance but at the same time "respecting national sovereignty".

Europe's progress to Kyoto targets is slow - league table of countries

The EU has published its assessment of where Europe is on the track towards its 2012 Kyoto target of reducing emissions.

I've made the chart below from its figures, which shows the percentage each of the 26 countries and Europe as a whole is along the path. The worst achiever is at the top of the chart, Spain is leading way ahead.


The UK is in the bottom half of achievers, 10th from the bottom and 16th from the top.

The EU says it needs the purchase of emission credits from third countries and forestry activities that absorb carbon from the atmosphere and further measures in order to meet the (inadequate) 8% reduction target for 2012.

It says it's on line to cut EU-15 emissions in 2010 to 7.4% below levels in the chosen base year (1990 in most cases) - just short of the target.

The figures show just what a long way we have to go, even to reach this inadequate target.

> read the full report