With the colorful Euro currency, passport-free borders, and consensus-driven policy making, I’ve always been delightfully interested in and yet slightly apprehensive of the European Union. (That’s what you get with an International Studies major, I suppose.) But regardless, the EU just got much cooler in my book. On Tuesday, European Union Commission ministers unanimously approved a series of proposals that resolved for the Union to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020, and by 30% if other developed nations agree to jump on board. With the EU now made up of 27 countries with over 490 million people emitting over 6,ooo million tons of greenhouse gases, this move is ambitious, bold, and necessary.
In 2002, the “EU-15″ (member states before its expansion in 2004 including: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) ratified the Kyoto Protocol, with the overall EU target to reduce emissions 8% (from 1990 base levels) by 2012. The EU-15 divided the task of meeting this target by assigning each member state a national target reduction level; and, unsurprisingly, there has been mixed degrees of success; some nations are making progress while others are falling behind in achieving their targets. Nonetheless, the proposal reports that the EU will still meet its 8% reduction target by the deadline (assuming completion of planned actions and additional non-domestic measures are taken) and that European GHG emissions are, in fact, decreasing (though very slowly) since the Protocol.
Yet since the 2002 Kyoto ratification and national emissions reductions have been set, 12 new nations have joined this European fiesta. Now that the EU has 27 member states, what does the fight against climate change look like? The new states are certainly not off the hook; and neither are candidate countries. Each new member has committed to national targets, most of which range from 6-8%, similarly to the overall EU Kyoto target. In fact, new EU projections show that if all planned actions are taken, the total EU-25 (Bulgaria and Romania just joined the EU on Jan. 1st of this year, so they weren’t included in this account) emissions reduction could even reach 10.8% in 2010. That’s not to say that this will be easy (far from it), Romania is already struggling to meet Kyoto emissions standards, check out this scary post-Soviet metal factory as an example.
But now EU Environment ministers say that Kyoto is not enough and that the EU is prepared to take the lead in the international community to cut GHG emissions FAST, with hopes that other developed nations will follow suit. According to a BBC article prepared by members of the Commission, the EU could accomplish these new, ambitious goals through a variety of means: “faster adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles, tougher and better labelling on appliances, better building insulation and more energy-efficient power generation and transmission […], strengthening and expanding the EU carbon trading scheme, […increased spending on] energy research [and implementing] an action plan on energy efficiency, and many more projects like regulating specific business sectors’ emissions (like aviation and transport), as well as using carbon sinks.
Yet, with the lingering questions surrounding the accomplishment of Kyoto’s base targets, what is the EU doing? It may be that the definitiveness of the IPCC’s latest report has provided leaders with the confidence and urgency to take steps never before taken and at rates previously unimaginable. I am curious to see how the EU will follow through with these ambitions and set it to action to curb global climate change. I surely hope that the EU’s autonomous commitment to drastically cut GHG emissions will catch on (quickly!) in other developed nations’ agenda and make this part of a global solution. The report also addresses the role of developing nations in the climate change arena quite well, but that is material for a whole separate post.
Just to clarify, the adoption of these proposals on Tuesday doesn’t mean that it’s actually happening yet. The Commission has conceptually agreed to this 20% by 2020 target, but we have to wait until March 8-9th to see what happens. At that time, a summit of EU environmental ministers will meet in Brussels to give the final word on the proposals and (fingers-crossed!) create a tangible energy and climate change strategy to meet the goals of this new, cool, and monumental EU initative.
Until then, go Europa!
