Achieved the European Climate Target. But Does It Burn Less Carbon?


Hindsight A series by the Headway team that looks at predictions and promises from the past.


As the 2009 global climate summit in Copenhagen approached, the European Union raced to declare an ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bloc leaders worked to temper the competing interests of more than two dozen members and settled on a three-part plan, nicknamed the 20-20-20 Commitment, which they promised to fulfill by 2020: The bloc would reduce its emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels, to convert renewable energy to electricity. to 20 percent of its use and to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent.

By the 2020 deadline, the European Union had met two of its three targets – a major example of emissions fulfilling its climate commitment. Overall emissions were 24 percent lower than in 1990, according to the bloc’s accounting, and renewable energy was about 20 percent of electricity use. But many climate scientists and others involved question the European Union’s accounting.

There were hurdles in the European Union’s plan to reduce carbon production. When it started in 2005, the bloc’s emissions trading system was the world’s most ambitious effort to put a price on polluting with carbon. But initially, that price was as low as some thought the system was. worse than useless. By 2013, concerns about the viability of the system were so severe that the European Parliament stepped in to raise the carbon price. England went further, fixing the minimum price Carbon for power producers These changes have led to a shift: Coal has fallen from 40 percent of the UK’s electricity production in 2013 to 7 percent in 2017.

As the use of coal decreases across Europe, energy sector shifted to renewable sources. But this created its own controversy.

“A fundamental mistake was made in the beginning and we are still suffering,” said Bas Eickhout, a Dutch politician and member of the European Parliament. In 2009, Eickhout was a scientist whose research pointed to the importance of strict standards for sustainability. She was horrified when the European Union chose this. counting biomass energy as a renewable, carbonless resourcesimilar to wind and sun.

Most of the biomass comes from wood. cut down forests and pelletizing the material. Because pellets can be burned in existing coal-fired power plants, they provide an easy and relatively inexpensive way for countries to reduce their emissions – on paper at least.

The Intergovernmental Panel on the European Union and Climate Change – the main scientific body on climate change – counts carbon emissions not from where the material is burned, but from the biomass from which the trees are cut. This means that accounting for the block does not affect the carbon footprint of converting trees to wood pellets, transporting them across the ocean or burning them for fuel.

Trees can regrow, which is why the European Union considers biomass renewable. But critics argue that the true emissions impact has been underestimated. Seth Ginther, executive director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, a trade group, said the southeastern United States, where most of the world’s biomass is now harvested, has really increased its forest stock over the past 50 years. But trees planted for timber are not as effective at storing carbon as native forests, and it can take many years, some estimates a century, for newly planted forests to accumulate as much carbon as mature forests. And may the burning wood less efficient from burning coal; releases more carbon to the atmosphere per megawatt produced.

Europe’s renewable energy production has doubled since 2004. While solar is growing fastest, by 2016 biomass is almost 60 percent partly thanks to EU subsidies, the American wood pellet industry nine million tons in 2018 from 0.3 million tons in 2009. Due to the high energy cost in Europe last winter, 2021 is the first year that biomass burning is profitable without government subsidies.

The European Union’s best chance to address these criticisms came after the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. There, the bloc committed to reducing emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030; In 2021, this target has been increased to 55 percent.

To fulfill these promises, the European Union revised its renewable energy policies in 2018 and is in the process of doing so again. Revisions limit the use of woody biomass for energy and its extraction from biodiverse forests, although some environmental groups say proposed standards are still not sufficient.

Europe is still moving faster on ambitious climate targets than other countries, including the United States. A United Nations report Released in October found He said that even if every country in the world achieves its current goals, by the end of the century the world will still see a warming of 2.7 degrees Celsius, which will “lead to catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate.”

From this perspective, was the European Union’s 2020 target ambitious enough? “It depends on your definition of ambition,” said Yvo de Boer, secretary-general of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2006 to 2010. “Considered that it is probably not ambitious enough from the perspective of avoiding dangerous climate change. But I think it was seen as politically ambitious enough and a critical step in the right direction.”


progress It is an initiative of The New York Times that explores the world’s challenges through the lens of progress.

The Headway initiative is funded by donations from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a financial sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a fundraiser of Headway’s public square.




Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *