Posted on 25 June
2009 - Brussels / Luxembourg – European
environment ministers have sidestepped the
key emissions reduction strategy of classifying
carbon dioxide as a pollutant during consideration
of new laws to limit industrial pollution.
The move further questions Europe's claim
to be a leader in climate action, with California
requiring carbon pollution mitigation for
the last two years and reclassification
under consideration elsewhere.
The EU Environment Council
reached a common position on the new Industrial
Emissions Directive. The draft law overhauls
the framework for controlling pollutants
such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides
and dust from thousands of industrial installations
across Europe, combining and strengthening
seven earlier pieces of legislation.
WWF is calling for carbon
dioxide standards to be added to the proposal,
in order to respond adequately to the increasing
scale and urgency of the global climate
crisis. Such a move could cut Europe’s total
greenhouse gas emissions by around a quarter
over the next two decades. But EU ministers
failed on this occasion to seize the opportunity.
“Environment ministers
skipped aimlessly past what is an obvious
game-changing move. In the face of increasingly
stark warnings from scientists, Europe has
missed a straight-forward opportunity, using
a proven regulatory tool, to plan the phase-out
of dirty coal-fired power stations,” said
Mark Johnston, Coordinator for Power Plant
CO2 Standards at WWF. “Such a move, which
is still possible later this year, would
inject a huge confidence boost into the
slow-moving global negotiations.”
Emission performance
standards have been used successfully by
European law-makers for more than two decades,
leading to dramatic environmental improvements
on issues like acid rain and smog.
According to WWF, CO2
standards should apply to the largest category
of power plants – approximately 400-500
installations – which account alone for
around 25% of Europe’s total emissions.
Compared to other sectors, electricity has
the greatest potential to decarbonise rapidly.
Such standards would
mean, for example, that no new coal-fired
power plants could be built without carbon
capture and storage (CCS) technology and
that existing plants must use CCS by a given
year, e.g. 2025, or close down. As an alternative,
electricity companies could expand renewable
energy and energy efficiency programmes.
In Europe today, around
50 conventional large coal-fired power stations
are currently being proposed with no guarantee
of carbon sequestration. If all are built,
Europe will find it impossible to achieve
its mid- and longer-term climate targets.
In 2007, the EU agreed
to cut by 30% CO2 and other greenhouse gas
emissions by 2020, linked to the Copenhagen
agreement. Yet the EU institutions are failing
to say specifically what mix of policies
will be used to deliver the target domestically,
as the 2008 climate package only delivers
20% and allows for a lot of offsets.
The lack of clarity
regarding Europe’s Copenhagen implementation,
including further emissions cuts between
2020 and 2050, is holding up investments
in low-carbon technologies while allowing
high-carbon investments, such as new coal-fired
power stations, to proceed unhindered.
The draft law will now
have to go through second reading, and will
be discussed by the European Parliament
and Council during the run-up to and after
the Copenhagen climate summit.
