A report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) shows the EU is more than halfway to its target of cutting emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The report reveals that emissions across the 27-nation bloc fell by 11.3% during 2008. The EEA accepts that the global economic downturn played a key role in the reduction.
Notwithstanding the apparent progress towards reaching the 2020 target, campaigners are calling on the EU to set more ambitious targets in order to tackle climate change. EEA executive director Professor Jacqueline McGlade said, “Although we are expecting an even sharper decline in 2009, caused mainly by the recession, we need to ensure that the downward trend in emissions continues and that Europe boosts its climate investments."
Europe's new Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard recently argued that the EU should commit itself to a unilateral cut of 30% by 2020.
Currently, EU policy is to adopt the 30% goal only if other major emitters, such as the US and Japan, agree to make similar reductions.
Although Damien Morris from Sandbag, a carbon trading campaign group, is supportive of the push for the higher target, he added that target-based policies were scientifically incoherent. He explained that, "The problem is the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere along the way to any target." He said campaigners were calling on policymakers and politicians to switch from a target-based policy to schemes that focused on carbon budgets.
Furthermore, Mr Morris said the latest EEA figures were unimpressive since a huge slice of the 11.3% reduction was achieved long before the Emissions Trading Scheme got underway (the EU's main mechanism to reduce emissions).
Mr Morris observed that much of the reduction was made even before the Kyoto Protocol was ratified and that improvements in energy efficiency were driven by financial reasons, not environmental policies. For example, he said companies were reducing their expenditure on rising energy costs in order to protect profit margins.
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