Wed 10 Jan 2007
The European commission today unveils an energy blueprint that calls for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, more use of renewable sources and increased competition.
Commissioners are expected to endorse a plan that calls for all developed countries to cut 1990-level emissions by 30% by 2020. At the same time, the commission is set to propose that the EU set a target to cut its own emissions by 20% during the same period, with the possibility of increasing that target if the international community agrees to a broader cut. Environmentalists criticised the commission for setting an internal target below the one it seeks for the world as a whole. “We think that this is a political and scientific blunder,” said Mahi Sideridou, the climate policy director at Greenpeace in Brussels. Source
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January 13th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Letter in yesterday’s Guardian:
The EU’s strategic energy plan (Report, January 11) is a double whammy for developing countries. They will suffer ever worse climate disasters, desertification and flooding as a result of inadequate targets for reducing emissions from many of the world’s richest nations. And they are set to lose millions of hectares of rainforest, grasslands and farming land so that Europe can meet a 10% biofuel target. Already, up to 20m hectares of land face being converted to oil palm plantations in Indonesia alone, and forests across Latin America, Africa and Asia face destruction as Europe pushes up world market prices for soya, palm oil and sugar cane.
While wind and solar are truly clean energy forms and offer real emission cuts, the energy plan contains no specific mechanism to support them. Nor does it suggest any credible ways of reducing energy demand. Mandatory targets are proposed only for biofuels. Yet biofuels linked to deforestation and peat drainage can have far higher carbon emissions than the fossil fuels they replace: a recent study shows that palm-oil biodiesel from south-east Asian peatlands has 10 times the emissions of mineral oil.
Commissioners have ignored the European parliament’s demand for strict environmental safeguards, and an open letter from hundreds of Latin American NGOs, demanding that Europe must not solve its problems at the expense of the environment and communities in the global south. If the commission’s plans are endorsed, this will almost certainly speed up the destruction of the Amazon and of other ancient forests across the globe, and leave millions of poor people without land to grow food.
Almuth Ernsting
Aberdeen