EU to turn up heat over climate change changeVow to pressure US over climate control

Date: 19/11/1998

By Renée Cordes

EUROPEAN Commission officials have vowed to step up pressure on Washington to set domestic ceilings on greenhouse gas emissions in the run-up to the next global climate change conference in late 1999.

Although the EU and US remain deeply divided over the extent to which countries should be allowed to trade the right to pollute, aides to Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard say they have detected a shift in American attitudes.

Above all, they are increasingly confident that Congress will ratify the White House's decision to commit itself to the targets for limiting emissions agreed in Kyoto last year - a prospect which seemed unlikely before last week's conference in Buenos Aires.

"You can see the beginning of a change in the American attitude," said Bjerregaard's spokesman Peter Jorgenson. "We are quite certain that in a couple of years from now the Americans will ratify this and in the next two climate conferences, we hope to solve all outstanding problems."

In the coming months, the two sides will try to hammer out a compromise setting out the rules under which countries could buy and sell the right to pollute in order to meet gas-reduction targets laid out in the Kyoto protocol.

EU officials expect a series of "high-level" talks with their counterparts in Washington between now and the next international climate change conference, which is scheduled to take place late next year.

The EU believes governments should meet domestic ceilings for emission reductions before they are allowed to trade the right to pollute. However, the US, which is the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, has been pressing for the unrestricted use of "flexible mechanisms" including emissions trading.

"The European Union is not against emissions trading but it is not the only game in town," said Bjerregaard. Instead, she argues that countries should be forced to use more environmentally friendly energy.

Environmental policy leaders from 170 countries agreed on a timetable last week for drafting rules on reducing greenhouse gases.

They also adopted an action plan calling for the use of technology transfer and other investments to help developing nations meet targets and pledged to devise rules on emissions trading.

Green activists say that while some progress was achieved at the Buenos Aires conference, they are disappointed that governments were not able to reach agreement on specific gas-emission reduction targets.

"There is a step toward common ground but progress is so slow that it's worrying," said Finnish Green MEP Heidi Hautala.

"The so-called action plan they have agreed, irrelevant of the 140 points, has nothing binding so it would be better to call it a non-action plan."

Until the Kyoto signatories narrow their differences, industry will be unable to consider exactly how emissions trading could be put into practice.

"It is not clear who would be involved," said Claude Culem, head of economic studies and energy policy at the European Chemical Industry Council.

"Under the Kyoto agreement, national governments should engage in trading but, when you seriously think about it, you really need the involvement of business to make it work."