Co2 Emission Reduction

Google, BT, Ikea Urge EU to Set Tougher Carbon Goals

It's a common stereotype that businesses always push for fewer regulations, not more, but a large group of big-name companies is breaking that mold by calling for the EU to adopt more stringent climate change goals. The move comes even as a separate report concludes that nearly half of the U.K.'s largest companies lack targets to reduce their own CO2 emissions.

More than 70 companies, including big names like BT, Ikea, Google, National Grid, Philips, Puma, Swiss Re and Unilever, signed a joint declaration (PDF) urging the European Union to reduce its CO2 emissions by 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That's a much higher target than the 27-nation bloc's existing goal of a 20 percent reduction.  

The companies claim such an aggressive target would spur investment, jump start the transition to a low-carbon economy and improve energy security, creating millions of new jobs in the process. The cuts would be much easier and cheaper to achieve because of the economic downturn, the companies said, but achieving the goal would still require appropriate market incentives.

"Renewable energy at competitive prices is a prerequisite for a clean and reliable European energy supply," Anders Eldrup, CEO of DONG Energy , said in a statement. "But the current framework does not properly incentivize renewable energy. While the energy sector strives to drive down the cost of renewable energy production through R&D, and while fossil fuel prices increase, we still need for European regulators and policy makers to ensure that the price of CO2 is properly reflected in the market. This calls for a move to 30 percent emissions reduction by 2020."

Seven countries -- Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Sweden and the U.K. -- have all voiced support for a 30 percent CO2 reduction target, but other member nations are resisting, including coal-dependent countries such as Poland. The EU has previously said it would increase its 2020 climate target to 30 percent if other developed countries outside the EU followed suit.

That hasn't happened. Under the Copenhagen Accord , President Barack Obama committed the U.S. to a 17 percent decline in GHG emissions by 2020, but that's from a less stringent 2005 baseline, which translates to a reduction of less than 4 percent below 1990 levels.

The other elephant in the room -- China, now the world's top emitter -- has refused absolute emissions cuts in favor of an intensity-based goal of 40-45 percent.

Globalization And The Environment at Reports from the Economic Front

Last week, the International Energy Agency announced that emissions continue to increase unabated. Emissions released in 2010 were the highest in history, despite the economic recession. The report stated that the “prospect of limiting the global increase in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius is getting bleaker.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the level of CO2 emissions released in May 2010 set another record high.

The Kyoto Protocol is the only international treaty that has binding targets for reducing emissions.  It was adopted on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005.  The implementation rules were adopted at COP 7, which was held in Marrakesh in 2001. The Protocol targets are only binding on developed countries (Annex I countries); there are no binding targets for developing countries.  The Annex I countries agreed to reduce their collective production of greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% relative to the 1990 level over the period 2008 to 2012; their commitments are listed in the Protocol’s Annex B. 

Unfortunately, the Protocol does not include any mechanism for enforcing national action, which is one reason that overall emissions continue to grow.  Another reason is that some important polluters, like the United States , never signed the Kyoto treaty.

If no action is taken at COP 17, the Kyoto Protocol will expire.  Most developed countries appear content to let this happen.  At COP 15, held in Copenhagen, the United States led the charge for replacing the Protocol with a less binding agreement, one that included no specific emission reduction targets.  No progress was made at COP 16, which was held last year in Cancun.

Most third world countries–including the G77, Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS), the Least Developed Countries, the Africa Group, and ALBA–support a second renewal period as a step toward a strengthened treaty, one with enforceable national targets and a commitment by developed countries to pay climate reparations to those third world countries suffering the consequences of climate change. 

One argument made by the United States and other developed countries against a renewal of Kyoto is that the Protocol does not including binding targets on the third world, and third world countries like China and India are themselves now major producers of greenhouse gasses. 

A  new study , one that acknowledges the importance of globalization, offers an important perspective on this developed country claim.  In brief, the study seeks to distinguish between emissions generated by production in a given territory and emissions generated in a given territory as a result of both production and consumption.  This is an important distinction because developed country transnational corporations have off-shored manufacturing activity to the third world.  This development has promoted a significant rise in third world emissions.  However, since an ever growing share of third world manufacturing production is exported to developed countries, the calculation of territorial based emissions overstates third world country responsibility and understates developed country responsibility.

New Challenges to Transport After the Economic Crisis, Seeking the Path to a Low Carbon World

Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, Proceedings of the International Conference in Sustainability in Energy and Buildings (SEB'09)

Strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road transport, analytical methods

Vehicle emission reductions

Energy technology perspectives, scenarios & strategies to 2050 : in support of the G8 Plan of Action