EU MIGHT CUT GREENHOUSE GASES BEYOND 30 PCT - DIMAS
12.13.07 - Leído 57 veces. Enviar esta notaThe European Union might be willing to cut greenhouse gas emissions deeper than 30 percent by 2020 if other rich nations join a broad fight against global warming, EU Commissioner Stavros Dimas said on Tuesday
BALI, Indonesia; December 13, 2007.- The EU has agreed that it will unilaterally cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and will cut by up to 30 percent if other nations join in.
“The EU set a target of 30 percent provided that other developed countries come along — or even more than 30 percent if it is necessary,” Dimas told a news conference in reply to a question during an UN Dec. 3-14 climate conference in Bali.
The Bali meeting is seeking to decide conditions for launching two years of talks on a new UN treaty to succeed the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, which binds 36 nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Dimas said that it was crucial for the Bali talks to refer to scientific evidence by the UN’s climate panel this year that rich nations need to cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The United States, which is outside Kyoto, opposes any mention of the figures in the preamble to a Bali text setting out the guidelines for negotiations meant to conclude with agreement on a new climate treaty in 2009.
“Science tells us that these reductions are necessary to have an effective fight against climate change,” Dimas said.
WORLD BANK LAUNCHES FOREST CARBON FUND
Emma Graham-Harrison
The new financing mechanism, launched at UN talks on tackling climate change, aims to turn better forest management into a tradeable commodity to try to halt destruction so rapid it accounts for around a fifth of annual carbon emissions.
“If we don’t focus on retaining the world’s remaining tropical forests, we drastically narrow the options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the project’s launch.
“Deforestation and changes in land use are the second leading cause of global warming,” he said, adding the project was just the start of tackling the problem.
He quoted economist Nicholas Stern’s estimate that more than US$5 billion a year was needed to halt deforestation.
A US$100 million “readiness” fund will provide grants to around 20 countries to prepare them for large-scale forest protection under a future climate change deal, also known as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries.
Grants will fund projects including surveys of current forest assets, monitoring systems and tightening governance.
A second US$200 million “carbon finance mechanism” will allow some of these countries to run pilot programmes earning credits for curbing deforestation. The credits will belong to the countries or groups that put up the cash for the fund.
Of the US$300 million, they already have US$160 million pledged from seven developed countries, the World Bank said.
Emissions cuts from forest areas are not yet eligible for formal credits because they were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol’s first round, which runs out in 2012, but they may be able to sell them on voluntary markets.
The projects could include anything from straight foward reforestation and better zoning of agricultural and forest lands, to paying people for environmental services or improving management of forest areas, said the World Bank forest and climate change official Benoit Bosquet.
There is interest from around 30 countries for projects that many in the carbon trading industry and developing nations fighting deforestation hope could provide a model for financing forest protection in a successor deal to Kyoto.
The World Bank had previously said it was in talks with Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and Indonesia, and regional bodies in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
INDIGENOUS CONCERNS
But indigenous and environmental groups say they are worried deals to prioritize the carbon-retaining value of forests might exclude some of the people who have most at stake.
“While the facility can be a good thing, we are very apprehensive on how this will work because of our negative historical and present experiences with similar initiatives,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
An indigenous person herself, she said the forests targeted by the initiative were home to 160 million people who were custodians of forest biodiversity and should be involved in the design and management of the projects as equal players.
“The success of efforts to lower carbon emissions from reduced or avoided deforestation hinges primarily on whether indigenous people throw their full support behind these mechanisms,” Tauli-Corpuz said.
Outside the conference centre, protesters were handing out cartoons of worried indigenous people massed outside a fenced off forest, thinking of their homes, religious sites, food and fuel that were now off limits.
CHINESE SOLAR FIRM SHOWS PROFIT IN CLIMATE FIGHT
Gerard Wynn
Peng is chief executive of China’s LDK Solar, a company he founded barely two years ago, which has cashed in on government subsidies and soaring public demand to go green.
He was already well-off before founding LDK, but had found the family business, in personal protection equipment, a bore.
“It was a stable company. I am a young man. I needed a challenging business. I am 32 years old now. When I founded LDK I was under 30,” he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
“When I travelled around Europe in 2003, the big discussion was renewable energy and I saw a big opportunity in China,” he told Reuters in Bali, where some 190 countries are meeting to try to launch two-year talks on a global climate change pact to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
Many nations, firms and individuals fear the fight against climate change will inflict big personal and financial costs, as the world grapples with reliance on fossil fuels like coal and oil. The talks this week were balanced on how to share the sacrifice between rich and poor countries.
The solar wafers made by LDK Solar are the components of modules that in turn are the building blocks of solar panels that turn sunlight into electricity.
China has reason to take interest in green technologies; it is poised to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of the commonest man-made greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, although it lags behind in emissions per person.
Peng said he owned about 75 million of the company’s approximately 110 million shares, which closed on Monday at US$58.8 each, valuing his stock at over US$4.4 billion.
But he declined to name a figure. “I never calculate (what I’m worth). The share price is up and down,” he said.
In fact LDK shares plummeted in October after a former employee accused the company of over-stating stockpiles of the crucial silicon raw material used to make solar panels.
MAJOR CONTRACT
The company has since recovered, especially with Monday’s announcement of a major contract with solar cells manufacturer Germany’s Q-Cells AG.
Peng reiterated the company’s dismissal of the suggestion that it had over-stated its stocks.
“The accusation has no merit,” he said. “Everything is going well, everything is on schedule. The company is really moving fast. We’re really happy about what we’re doing, we continue our expectations as planned.”
But LDK Solar’s problems are not over from the inventory issue. It is awaiting the outcome of an independent audit and is also the target of shareholder lawsuits following the report.
Peng founded LDK Solar in July 2005, in China’s Xinyu City, and the company listed in New York in June this year.
The latest deal with Q-Cells had given LDK “several hundreds of millions of dollars” in pre-payments, diminishing cash needs as it rolls out a plan to make itself self sufficient in silicon by 2009.
“We have enough cash for our expansion in the short-term. We are very profitable, we are cash-generating,” Peng said.
(Reuters)
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