Europe Greenhouse Gas Goals

Europe Greenhouse Gas Goals



March 2007 - Late today, the 27 
European Union member governments approved a new target to cut 
their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 
the 1990 level in 2020. The agreement was reached at the 
Spring Council meeting of EU heads of government. 
The continent of Europe currently generates 15 percent of the 
world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas 
responsible for climate change. 
"After the broad-ranging debate, we reached an agreement about 
the general reduction objective," said German Chancellor 
Angela Merkel, whose government currently holds the EU 
presidency. 
President of the EU Council German Chancellor Angela Merkel 
calls the Spring Council to order. 
The new target was recommended in January by the European 
Commission, the bloc's executive branch. 
If other non-EU states are prepared to collaborate, a target 
of 30 percent will be considered, Chancellor Merkel said. 
Merkel stressed the importance of applying the same standards 
to everyone when targets are being set, and that the EU must 
motivate other countries to follow suit. "Europe will not be 
able to tackle the problem on its own," she said. 
Any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is ambitious, Merkel 
said. The Kyoto Protocol demands that the European Union cut 
CO2 emissions by eight percent between 1990 and 2012, over a 
period of 22 years. 
The climate protection goal adopted tonight would require the 
EU to cut emissions by a further 12 percent between 2012 and 
2020, within only eight years. 
By the beginning of 2007, the EU had managed to achieve 1.2 
percent of the eight percent reduction agreed under the Kyoto 
Protocol. 
The European economy needs predictable and reliable climate 
protection targets. Without them, said Merkel, businesses 
would not able to start investing in new technologies. 
Chancellor Merkel said, "We have to start re-thinking things, 
we have to start thinking differently." 
The Neurath power plant in the German state of 
Nordrhein-Westfalen burns brown coal. In 1964 it was the 
largest power plant in the world. 
Before the EU’s Spring Council, the Chancellor met with 
European social partners and Commission President José Manuel 
Barroso for the traditional Social Summit. 
President of the Confederation of European Business, 
Ernest-Antoine Seillière, stressed that new climate protection 
regulations must not endanger the international 
competitiveness of companies. 
The Chancellor, who is currently also President of the EU 
Council, conceded that binding climate protection targets 
could represent a risk for jobs in Europe but she stressed 
that, at the same time, new technologies offered the chance of 
new jobs. 
For example, she cited a traditional metal-processing plant in 
Magdeburg, Germany, which had switched to producing wind 
turbines and now enjoys new-found prosperity. 
On the agenda during discussions with employer and employee 
representatives was the question of whether or not a binding 
target should be set for the share of renewable energy in 
energy supplies as a whole. 
There are still differences of opinion between the EU's Heads 
of State and Government on this issue. 
Environmental groups BirdLife International, the European 
Environmental Bureau, and Transport & Environment, are 
appealing to the Spring Council meeting to reject a proposed 
mandatory biofuel target. 
The three NGOs believe that the heads of government should 
instead adopt the recently proposed lifecycle greenhouse gas 
emission reduction targets for transport fuel, which would 
differentiate between biofuels according to their 
environmental performance and would only support the best 
performing ones. 
Despite repeated and consistent warnings about the potential a 
mandatory biofuels target has to harm the environment, in 
January the European Commission proposed a 10 percent 
mandatory target for biofuels as part of its energy package. 
This means that one-tenth of fuel used in the EU must be 
produced from plant material. 
The package recently received support from the Energy and 
Environment Councils. 
Oil palm plantation in Malaysia. Native forests are cleared 
for these plantations, threatening the survival of forest 
dependent species. 
To illustrate the threat of unconditional public support for 
biofuels, the NGOs cite the example of biofuels-driven 
projects which risk creating vast plantations by clearing 
tracts of tropical rainforest. Recent controversies have 
surrounded this kind of project in Indonesia and elsewhere. 
"We call for a strong response from the European Council to 
the challenge of fighting climate change," said John Hontelez 
of EEB. 
"The EU should set itself a binding target of 30 percent 
greenhouse gas reductions by 2020, compared with 1990. And it 
should also set ambitious binding targets for the introduction 
of renewables," Hontelez said. 
"But we don't want this to include a target for biofuels that 
will result in major environmental and social problems. We 
should focus much more on energy efficiency and truly 
sustainable renewables, such as wind and solar power. The 
transport sector in particular should invest in energy 
efficiency and cleaner mobility alternatives," he said. 
"Europe's approach to alternative fuel sources like biofuels 
has been to promote them regardless of whether or not they're 
good for the environment", said Jos Dings of T&E. "EU leaders 
should scrap the biofuel target and instead go for the 
lifecycle greenhouse gas approach the Commission has proposed 
in its January review of the Fuel Quality Directive." 
"This approach requires fuel suppliers actually to improve 
their climate performance, rather than just blending in a 
product with uncertain environmental consequences," said 
Dings. 
Ariel Brunner of BirdLife International said, "As an absolute 
minimum, we urge Europe's political leaders at the Spring 
Council strongly to support mandatory certification of 
biofuels, covering, beyond greenhouse gas balance, also their 
other environmental impacts such as on biodiversity and 
freshwater supplies." 
Merkel said that the question of how much to spend on climate 
protection would have to be weighed carefully. In her view, it 
is either a question of high costs being incurred by a higher 
frequency of climate-related incidents, or a question of 
investing money instead in a reliable framework to prevent 
such damage. 
Merkel argued for a cost-efficient solution which would be in 
the interests of future generations. 





 

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