By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Mar 13 2007 (IPS)

The new EU commitment to reducing greenhouse gases emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 relative to 1990 levels is deceptive, leading German scientists say.

The aims announced at the spring summit of European Union (EU) heads of state last week were claimed to be a milestone in global environmental policy. Some experts say the figures are not as good as they sound.

“Just the winding up of large parts of industry in the Eastern European countries, which are new members of the EU, will considerably reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,” Hans- Joachim Luhmann, researcher at the German Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy told IPS.

“For the EU as a whole, these reductions will represent 15 percent less carbon dioxide in 2012 compared to the emissions levels of 1990. That means that the EU has agreed to actually reduce its emissions by only five percent. Such an objective is not really ambitious. This agreement is deceptive.”

The emissions of human made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are considered responsible for global warming and consequently dramatic climate change.

During the EU spring summit in Brussels Mar. 8-9, Europeans leaders also agreed to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020. The EU leaders decided that the share of bio-combustibles in the fuel mix used for transport in the 27 member countries should be increased by 10 percent over the period.

Energy from renewable sources such as wind and the sun, and hydroelectric projects will also be increased by 20 percent by 2020, the leaders announced. But in the face of opposition by Eastern European member states, who claimed that they cannot immediately give up carbon dioxide intensive energy sources such as coal, the leaders agreed on “differentiated national overall targets” for renewable energy sources, taking into account the “different national starting points.”

Some scientists say this differentiation is a mistake. Renewable energy sources can give a major economic boost to the former Soviet bloc countries that are now members of the EU, Claudia Kemfert, director of the energy, transport and environment department at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin told IPS.

In Germany renewables have created 214,000 jobs so far, Kemfert said. “By 2020, this number should increase to 330,000.”

Another source of criticism is the EU leaders’ failure to consider reducing emissions in the key sector of transport, the second biggest source of carbon dioxide in Europe, and which represents roughly a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions in the 15 Western European members of the EU.

According to the 2006 EU report on greenhouse gas emissions, transport is the only sector where emissions have been increasing since 1990. The region’s overall emissions have decreased by five percent since 1990, but transport emissions have increased 26 percent, the report says.

It also warns that without new environmental policy measures, these emissions would increase by 35 percent by 2010.

Green European Parliament member Daniel Cohn-Bendit urged EU leaders Mar. 11 “to tell the people that flights and automobiles substantially contribute to global warming.”

But the automobile industry, especially in Germany, opposes binding objectives aimed at reducing emissions in the short term. The German automobile industry rejected a proposal by EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas in February to set binding reductions of carbon dioxide for new automobiles produced by 2012 to 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km).

The German government proposed a limit of 130 g/km as average value. The present German emissions average is 172 g/km for new automobiles, though some German automobiles such as the Porsche Carrera emit more than 300 g/km.

“There are so many areas in which we waste energy in a completely senseless way and burden the climate,” Dimas told the German Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“A simple measure in Germany could be a general speed limit on highways,” Dimas said. “Speed limits make a lot of sense for many reasons and are completely normal in most EU states. Only in Germany, strangely, is it controversial.”

Kurt Beck, leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party, calls speed limits “symbolic politics”.

In a television interview, Beck said “the fact that German automobiles are so powerful is part of our international (economic) competitive advantages. Both things (high carbon dioxide emissions and powerful, high-consuming engines) come together.”

A study by the German Federal Bureau for the Environment shows that establishing a highway speed limit of 120 km/h would reduce emissions at these highways by nine percent.

The targets announced by EU leaders come without substantive measures to take the steps to meet those targets.

Excerpt: