Ecology, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Legislation

The EU ambitious commitments to reduce human effect on climate change were adopted long before the UN conference on climate change in December 2009: the EU-15 emissions should be 5 per cent below and the EU as a whole - 9 per cent below 1990 level already in 2007. The EU leaders endorsed in 2007 a 30 per cent reduction objective only on one condition, i.e. provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable emission reductions. The EU-27 pursued to take the 1990-level of emission control with the following main commitments: global warming below 2° C and global emission reduction of at least 50 per cent. Besides, according to the European Commission, the global financial needs for immediate climate actions are at the level of € 5-7 bln for the first 3 years following the future agreement; the EU is ready to deliver its fair share of the global needs.

Guiding EU efforts

The EU went even further on: in the new Commission for 2010-14 for the first time in the Union’s history a new post was created – a EU Commissioner for climate action (Ms. Connie Hedegaard, the Danish representative); at the same time, the EU will keep an environment commissioner, Mr. Janez Potočnik, Slovenian representative) . 

Until the climate commissioner takes the office in the new Commission at start of February 2010, the EU environmental commissioner (Mr. Stavros Dimas, from Greece) and the member states’ environmental ministers are administering the EU climate strategy.

Therefore, the following officials represented the EU at the UN Climate Conference in December 2009:

• six months’ rotating Council Presidency, the Sweden’s Minister for the Environment (the last full-scale “rotating president” before the permanent EU Council President from 1 January 2010);
• the EU Commissioner for the Environment (until the EU new climate affairs commissioner takes place from 1 February 2010),
• and the first half-year in 2010 “climate sector’s” chairman in the Council of Minister’s work, i.e. Spain’s Minister for the Environment.

Although the EU-27 member states’ position on climate change was agreed upon before the December UN conference (at the November Council’s meeting), all the EU-27 member states took part in the conference as members of the United Nations. Interesting enough, there are only three EU member states that have a word “climate” in the names of their ministries: are the rest not ready to accept the challenge? 

International dimension

The climate issues are both international and European in importance: thus, scientific evidences confirm that global warming must be kept below 2° C in order to avoid irreparable damages to nature and humans. And so it is with the “green gas” emissions, which must be cut to 25-40 per cent below 1990 level by 2020.

Therefore several major partners, including the US and China tried to produced already in mid-December 2009 concrete emission targets and actions for the UN Conference on Climate Change (7-18 December 2009). However, the process of making strategy was not an easy one for the EU: a week before the UN Conference, the EU Commission was doubtful about its positive outcomes.   

International negotiations on climate changes were launched at the end of 2007 to draw up a United Nations agreement on tackling climate change for the period after 2012, i.e. after the Kyoto Protocol expires. The European Union has elaborated a strategy for a comprehensive, ambitious, fair, science-based and legally binding international treaty. The EU saw it as a historic opportunity to draw a roadmap to a global low-carbon society, and in so doing unleash a wave of innovation that can revitalise the EU economy ad that of the member states through the creation of new, sustainable growth sectors and “green collar” jobs. The EU has adopted a unilateral commitment to cut emissions 20 per cent by 2020 and is ready to scale up emission reduction to 30 per cent provided that other regions in the world take on their fair share of the global efforts. 

 In the EU international dimension of the climate policy there are some important ingredients too:

• assistance to the developing countries to hold their emissions growth at some 15-30 per cent;
• streamlining the EU climate financing proposals for less developed countries (in part, using revenues from emissions’ reduction from international air and maritime transport);
• measures to stop rainforest deforestation, support reforestation and create sustainable forestry in developing countries (e.g. rainforest devastation must be halved by 2020 and stopped by 2030).

The “Chinese factor”

The incremental costs for developing states’ adaptation and mitigation is in the order of €100 bln per annum by 2020. Therefore, there must be both private and public financial flows to developing countries from the EU member states, in addition to the developing counties’ own efforts.

All existing predictions on economic efficiency of the climate change’s costs show that in order to reduce global temperature at two degrees C, the world economy has “to accept” $100 t/petrol price. With the level of present consumption, the global price for temperature reduction will account for about $40 trillion, which is 50 times the price for eliminating damages when they occurred. 

The most negative in “reduction prognoses” was the fact that both the modern industry, as a whole, and consumers are not adequately equipped to substitute “polluting” fossil fuels with “greener” and cheaper biofuels. As to the Chinese consumers, the biggest share of energy sources stem from fossil fuels, and the potentials for biofuels are quite deem, according to the International Energy Agency.   

However, the lack of consensus at the UN conference was due to the negative approach to emission reductions and costs of pollution abatement from the side of several big states, first of all, China with its 1,3 billion population and extensively growing economy (in 2010 it is expected about 7% growth in GDP). The Chinese Prime Minister did not hide his intentions to proceed with the GDP growth for the benefit of the Chinese people. These intentions did not cope with the UN Climate Panel authorities. 

China’s development runs contrary to the ambition UN targets; here are some examples. About a quarter of China’s youth would like to buy a car in the next 6 months, i.e. the internal market for about 200 mln cars (40-year production for the EU carmakers!). Cars are the man source of pollution in the cities around the world, as well as in China, where air pollution in the cities has grown by more than 50% during 2009. The Chinese are quite aware of their country’s environmental problems, but they stick to welfare priorities.  

Lessons to learn

There are some lessons we can learn from an aborted effort to make “a global climate deal” in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. We have to start with the assumption that fossil fuels have to be “affordable” for the less developed countries; then, a strategy has to be elaborated to make “green energy” cheaper. It leads to the third assumption: additional investments are needed into corresponding research and development projects. Some experts calculated that even a meager 0,2% of countries’ GDP for CO2 “neutral technologies” would increase 50 times the present level of investments. In short, a new strategy is needed, both in the EU member states and in international organisations.