The EU has firmed up its policies on key areas of climate policy - funding the preservation of tropical rainforests and boosting the production of biofuels.
EU decisions on a number of climate and energy-related policies come to a head in these first two weeks of December as it seeks to lead the rest of the world toward a new international climate agreement. More than 190 nations are meeting in Poznan, Poland to advance negotiations towards a successor to the Kyoto Protocol agreement from 2013 onwards - and progress is slow.
Late last week, EU ministers approved a proposal by the European Commission in Brussels to recognise carbon offset credits generated by paying poor countries to reduce deforestation. The credits could be counted towards future binding targets on EU nations to cut greenhouse emissions, goals that are currently being negotiated as part of the new global treaty.
A crucial part of the EU decision, however, is the continued rejection for now of allowing so-called avoided deforestation, or
REDD, offset credits into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme so that companies as well as governments could buy them to meet targets. REDD credits won’t be allowed before 2013 and a decision on whether to open the EU ETS to them is to be considered again in January.
The EU approach would see governments earn REDD credits by funding avoided deforestation action out of EU ETS emission allowance revenue garnered from high-emitting firms - the aviation industry, in particular.
EU negotiators are pushing this national-level funding approach hard in Poznan, seeking to have it included as major plank in a future treaty. There is broad acceptance that deforestation must be tackled in any global agreement. Up to 20 per cent of total world greenhouse emissions every year come from logging and burning native forests, releasing massive stores of carbon.
“The EU is going to progressively work out how to introduce avoided deforestation credits into the market,” Bloomberg reports France’s climate envoy, Brice Lalonde, saying in Poznan. “We know that in the end we’re going to have to have the market because we have to multiply by 30 the amount of money to contribute to save the forests.”
At the Poznan conference, Brazil has opposed the idea of rich countries earning credits towards their targets, instead wanting such countries to contribute to big international aid funds that better target the potential land rights and payments equity and justice issues under REDD. Other developing countries say both approaches can be combined.
The policies on deforestation, biofuels and renewables feed in to the EU’s overall climate and energy package for 2013-20. EU governments are trying to reach final approval at an EU leaders summit at the end of this week.
The thorny issue of biofuels targets is also coming down to the wire, with Italy holding out against a now-heavily modified target to replace 10 per cent of all transport fuels with biofuels by 2020.
Because of the impact on agricultural land and food production from biofuel crops, member states have agreed that a third of the 10 per cent should come from non-agri-fuel sources, effectively electric powered transport. Final agreement is still held up by Italy’s demand for the target to be reviewed in 2014.
Reuters, Bloomberg 5/12/08
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