European Ambitions Hit a Wall of Carbon—Business, Industry Pare Back EU Climate Goals

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http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/global_climate_change_lobby/articles/entry/1859/

European Ambitions Hit a Wall of Carbon

Business, Industry Pare Back EU Climate Goals

By Brigitte Alfter | December 06, 2009

Copenhagen — The press room fell to a hush as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then-president of the European Union, took the podium at a Brussels summit in March 2007. Merkel was announcing the EU’s new climate package, easily the world’s most impressive commitment so far to reducing climate change. As journalists scribbled, Merkel laid out what would become known as the EU’s 20-20-20 plan: to cut CO2 emissions by 20 percent, increase energy efficiency by 20 percent, and expand renewable use to 20 percent of energy by 2020. If an international agreement were reached, Merkel announced, the http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/ec/93135.pdf">goal of CO2 reduction could even be raised to 30 percent.

It was an inspiring moment. “Europe has a pioneer role,” Merkel announced. “We believe that this role is necessary, not least in order to inspire and convince partners outside of Europe to similarly ambitious targets.” For Merkel, who had to unite EU nations behind a plan when she was Germany’s environment minister, the speech marked the culmination of years of dedication to curbing global warming.

Shepherding 27 countries toward an agreement had not been easy. Yet there had never been any question about the obligations of the EU — the world’s http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/global_climate_change_lobby/map/">second-largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases — to reduce greenhouse emissions. The European ambition was not just the result of broad concern about the environment, but also about pride in being the world leader on the issue. The real concern now was how to distribute the burden of responsibility among EU nations, whose membership spans countries from Estonia and Romania to Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.

A Plan with Loopholes

Or so it seemed. As debate grew, it soon became clear that the scale of the EU’s ambitions was, in fact, an open question. Critics, for example, noted that the EU agreement assumes the year 1990 as a base level of comparison for reductions. Yet because emissions were significantly reduced in the 1990s after the collapse of industry in large parts of Eastern Europe, did counting those reductions accurately reflect the EU’s overall attempts to cut CO2? According to the British climate organization http://sandbag.org.uk/files/sandbag.org.uk/EUambition_final.pdf">Sandbag, with 1990 as a base, even a 30 percent reduction by 2020 would account for only a 10 percent reduction in European emissions from current levels.

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