Davey to challenge Polish roadblock over European emission targets

Ed Davey and his progressive colleagues in four other Western European governments are set to clash with their eastern European counterpart in Poland at today's vital meeting of the European Environment Council.

The U.K.'s Energy and Climate Change Secretary, attending his first such meeting in his new role, is backing a move to increase Europe's 2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts from the current 20% to 25%.

This is less ambitious than his predecessor, Chris Huhne, who supported a target of 30% cuts by 2020.

Huhne had argued that this target was less expensive than many thought and that it would save money in the medium and longer term.

The Energy 2050 Roadmap

The EU is already on track to meet its binding goal of lowering CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020. Increasing it to 25% or even 30% is not considered overly onerous.

According to the Energy 2050 Roadmap published by the European Commission last year, without tougher targets the European Union risks locking in carbon-intensive generation plants for the foreseeable future.

The Roadmap seeks cuts in emissions of 95% by 2050 relative to 1990.

On the other side of the desk from Davey today will sit Polish Environment Minister Marcin Korolec.

Korolec will say that the only way Poland will sign up to an increase in the target is if it is granted free allowances for all of its 16 coal powered electricity generating plants under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Poland produces over 90 percent of its electricity using coal.

This risks undermining the whole European emissions-reduction project and is opposed by virtually all the other 26 member states.

Industry misinformation

Behind Poland's position is a campaign of industry misinformation from the Polish energy lobby including the Polish Chamber of Commerce (Krajowa Izba Gospodarcza), and the biggest Polish energy companies Tauron Polska Energia S.A. and PGE (Polska Grupa Energetyczna) S.A., that has been exposed by Polish energy campaigner Kuba Gogolewski amongst others.

For example, the Chamber of Commerce recently published a report which claimed that the costs of implementing the EU climate and energy package would cost Polish industry zł.22 billion a year from 2030; that's four times higher than estimations made by the World Bank and the European Commission (pdf).

However, as pointed out by a coalition of 22 Polish environmental groups, the report leaves out many factors, such as the external costs to Polish society of industrial energy production worth €10-19 billion a year, costs of coal subsidies (€650 million in 2010), and the €1.5 billion per year imports of coal, that emit 15 million tonnes of CO2, thereby grossly understating the baseline scenario against which the costs of the EU package are compared.

Gogolewski writes on his blog that “the dominant position of coal companies in Polish society weakens public debate, ensures that information about alternatives to coal fails to reach the general public, and thus prevents the country from developing a green economy with new jobs and opportunities".

He also points out that Poles are paying for this coal dependency with their lives: “pollution coming from coal lowers the life expectancy of the average Polish citizen by at least eight months, according to estimates by the World Health Organisation for the year 2000".

Today's meeting of environment ministers

Today's meeting is led by Danish Climate and Energy Minister Martin Lidegaard, who has called for a show of unity. “I think it will be a serious situation for Europe if we, for the second time, are not able to agree on climate policy which can send a clear signal to our industry, citizens and also to the rest of the world,” he said.

Senior Polish politicians in Brussels have questioned whether emissions from coal cause global warming at all. “What I think is worrying is if we are now seeing certain member states question the science behind [climate change], the fundamental values and objectives that have been in the treaty for a very long time and if that’s the case, its for the highest level to discuss,” a Danish presidency source said yesterday.

In Germany, despite having the highest electricity prices in Europe, energy bills are lower than in the UK, because of the emphasis on domestic energy efficiency, Greg Barker pointed out in the House of Commons yesterday, as he and Davey set out the Coalition Government's energy policy.

Besides the Roadmap, the other items on the agenda today include setting European positions on the follow-up to the Durban climate conference, and the EU negotiating position for the UN Rio+20 conference on sustainable development to be held in Brazil in June.

Ministers will also discuss the restriction or prohibition of the cultivation of genetically modified organisms in Europe, and a proposal for a new regulation on LIFE, which provides funds for climate action and the environment.

€3.2 billion of grant funding

The overall budget for the new LIFE programme would be raised to €3.2 billion, of which €800 million would be allocated to a new climate sub-programme, which will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing resilience to climate change, and increasing awareness, communication, and exchange of information on climate actions.

€2.4 billion will be targeted at promoting resource-efficiency, using innovative solutions for better implementation of environment policy and integration of environmental objectives in other sectors.

Regarding Rio, ministers will discuss proposals for the establishment of Sustainable Development Goals and their level of ambition.

On GMO cultivation, Britain will argue for individual member states to be able to decide their own policy on the issue.

They will also be discussing resource efficiency and low carbon growth, issuing a call for rapid progress on the implementation of the Roadmap to a resource-efficient Europe and the mainstreaming of environmental and climate related issues into the economic agenda for growth and jobs.

Emissions credits surplus means developed countries need do nothing

Was Cancun a success? Well, countries, except brave Bolivia who dared to quote the science, did agree on something - which is an achievement of sorts.

But although progress was made on a number of issues to do with accounting for a nation's emissions and verifying their actions, none of the decisions made at Cancun are yet sufficient to lead to quantifiable changes.

According to Climate Action Tracker, which provides an independent peer-reviewed assessment of emission reduction proposals, the largest factors limiting emissions savings are:

Surplus emissions allowances
Countries will currently be able to sell and buy allowances originally meant for the period up to 2012 beyond that date. If so, this could mean that taken together, developed countries wouldn't need to do anything further to curb emissions until at least 2020. This would add about 3-9% relative to 1990 to the emission limits, and credits would still not be exhausted until 2025-2030.

Forests and land use
The options for accounting for the impact of a country's forests, land-based emissions, deforestation and reforestation are not finally agreed. By 2020 they could cause a nation's emissions to be 3% more than they would otherwise be relative to 1990.

Japan's get-out
Japan has a relatively ambitions 25% reduction target below 1990 by 2020, but it is likely to be met by offsetting in developing countries. As these actions would be counted by those countries, this would mean double-accounting.

American inaction
There's scant chance of federal greenhouse gas legislation in the USA. This means their 2050 target is unlikely to be met. Double counting of offsets is a problem for America and its partners too.

The gap between hope and action
With business carrying on as at present, global emissions by 2020 will be 56 billion tonnes CO2equiv/year. To limit warming to 2°C or 1.5°C, they would need to be in the range of 44-40 billion tonnes by 2020, a reduction of 22-29%, or 12-16 billion tonnes, at a rate of over two billion tonnes per year.

The promises made at Cancun lie in a range from low ambition to high. If the lowest were attained by 2020, there would be a reduction of just 3 billion tonnes, leading to an average global temperature raise that is highly unacceptable, of 3.2oC.

If the highest ambition targets were reached in 2020, this would only add another 1.3 billion tonnes of cuts, to 51.7 billion tonnes per year.

The gap is therefore between 8 and 12 billion tonnes per year in 2020.

How can the gap be closed?
The Climate Action Tracker has identified several options which would achieve more than enough to close the gap:

• The decision on how many emissions allowances could be carried over by nations after 2012 has yet to be taken. Therefor it is possible to eliminate new surplus emissions ‘built into’ 2020 reduction pledges; options for this are included in the negotiating text
• Remove crediting for forestry and land use that allow developed countries to increase their emissions
• Reduce international aviation and marine emissions up to half of the projected levels in 2020
• Increase ambition level of developed countries as a group - in line with the European Union's aspiration - to a 30% cut below 1990 in 2020 (without forestry credits)
• Ensure reductions of emissions in developing countries of 1.5 - 6.2 billion tonnes
• Halt deforestation by 2020.

Crucially, global long-term emission reductions are required as well: at least 50% below 1990 by 2050. The UK's Climate Change Committee advocated 60% last week. The Cancun climate conference did not include a goal for 2050.