EU Will Meet Kyoto Carbon Targets Two Years Early - Reuters

BRUSSELS - The European Union will meet its Kyoto Protocol obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, two years before the global environment treaty's final deadline, a report by the EU executive showed on Thursday. The European Commission said projections indicated the 15 "old" EU member states would lower their combined emissions of gases that scientists say cause global warming to 9.3 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.

"This clearly fulfils the 8 percent reduction target from 1990 levels that the protocol requires the EU-15 to achieve during 2008-2012," the Commission said in a statement. Kyoto has a binding agreement that requires the EU 15 to lower emissions as a whole.

The 10 newest EU members were not a part of the bloc at the time the agreement was thrashed out. Of those countries, only Malta and Cyprus do not have required reduction targets. Emissions from the full 25-nation bloc would be cut by more than 11 percent from the 1990 level in 2010, the report said.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas warned states to keep working. Seventeen EU countries were projected to meet their emissions targets, while the others were "in the process of identifying further actions," the Commission said.

EDIT


http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/33789/story.htm

How do you think Germany, Poland, Hungary and the others could meet their Kyoto goals? Why do you suppose they held out for 1990 emissions levels to be the base line? They're not stupid, they knew that simply closing the dirty, money losing communist era factories would result in them meeting most of their Kyoto goals. In fact most of them were made prior to the treaty ever being signed since those factories were closed in the early to mid 90's.

I wish more people here would ask about the whys and hows behind it before fanboying it. Still, I guess rigged target numbers are still better then no target numbers.

It was DDR not GDR. Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

In the period between 1990 and 2003.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table14.xls

(Note that this spreadsheet and the discussion below, includes some non EU countries.)

The cloture of inefficient plants in the former East Germany is clearly seen in the spreadsheet. However, the matter of emissions is physics. How it came about is not such a big deal. The fact is that it happened. The combined German state reduced coal consumption by 250 MMT in that period, which was not a victory only for the German people, but for humanity as a whole.

Great Britain reduced it's coal consumption by 50 MMT. The chief reason for this was the discovery of natural gas reserves in the North Sea and the expanded use of combined cycle (highly efficient) power plants. (Great Britain this year for the first time in many years has become a net importer of natural gas, and the operating costs of these plants are expected to rise substantially in the next decade.)

France is next on the list, having reduced it's coal consumption by 13 MMT. (France wasn't burning all that much coal in 1990 either, having already replaced most of it's coal burning electricity plants before then - the big reductions in coal consumption came in the 1980's.)

Only Greece (which sells lots of electric power to Italy), Portugal, Turkey increased coal consumption in this period. Italy, Denmark, Norway, and a few other countries remain essentially unchanged in their coal consumption over this period, but they are minor players.)

Some of the coal in the EU has been replaced by natural gas, of course, which is a dirty fuel contributing to global warming, but it is less of a contributor than coal, since modern combined cycle plants are efficient. However the shit is about to hit the fan, in the sense that natural gas prices are climbing rather dramatically.

During the period in 1990-2003, natural gas consumption in Europe has increased by almost 70%. Some of this natural gas, of course, is used for heating and cooking. Conventional thermal generated electricity in Europe increased by 27% while coal consumption was decreasing. This gives an idea about the role of natural gas in European electrical generation. (It also gives an idea about what further reductions are possible - the "path of least resistance," natural gas, is about played out.)

The increase in production of nuclear electricity in Europe kept pace with thermal production, increasing 24% in this period.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee3.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table61.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

the conversion to NG, and the closure of
Soviet {and other old} industry, would
have happened, with or without Kyoto.

Europeans were told that, about Kyoto,
Europe will not have to do anything to meet
the Kyoto reductions.