Wallström predicts US movement on Kyoto

By Karen Carstens

Date: 03/06/04

TALKS are now under way between the aviation and shipping industries and EU officials on curbing the carbon dioxide (CO2) output of both sectors, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström said at the EU's annual 'Green Week' conference yesterday (2 June).

Both industries were deemed too complex to tie into the EU's emissions trading regime, which kicks off on 1 January 2005. It will force installations, including power plants, steel makers and other energy-intensive industries, to obtain allowances to emit CO2. Firms unable to keep within their CO2 caps will have to buy extra emissions permits from companies that stay within their targets, thereby creating a market incentive to cut emissions.

Wallström defended this 'cap-and-trade' system, which has come under fire from the George W. Bush administration in the US. "I don't think there is anything wrong with the Kyoto Protocol [on climate change] … I think it is ingenious," said the Swede.

"The flexible mechanisms were proposed by the president's father himself," she added, referring to former US president George Bush.

"This whole issue of climate change will stay with us for generations. Of course, we will have to change the Kyoto Protocol - it will have to be adapted over time to a new reality."

The 'flexible mechanisms' are a series of tools designed to help industrialized countries meet their emissions targets by achieving or acquiring reductions more cheaply abroad - often in developing countries.

Wallström also cited regional climate change initiatives in the US, which she claimed will eventually force Washington to jump on the climate-change bandwagon.

"There is a lot of action at state level," she said.

"Ten north-eastern states may soon be working together with several provinces in Canada - if they join forces, they will be the third-biggest emitter in the world. So I think there is a move [towards Kyoto] - not from the [Bush] administration at this point, but I think that they will come on board."

Wallström declined to speculate, however, at exactly what point this might happen.