"EU leadership in energy for sustainable development" - Speech by EU Commissioner Dimas
Sommaire: "EU leadership in energy for sustainable development" - Speech by EU Commissioner Dimas (10 May 2007: New York)
Speech by Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for Environment, " EU leadership in energy for sustainable development", European Commissioner/German Presidency of the EU side event at the 15th Session of the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development, New York
Mr/Madam Chairman,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to this side event organised by the European Commission and the German Presidency of the European Union.
We have chosen to focus on sustainable energy today above all because it holds the key to controlling climate change. And climate change, together with poverty, is perhaps the greatest threat to sustainable development.
We know that climate change is being driven by the relentless increase in our consumption of fossil fuels that began with the Industrial Revolution. More than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to our use of energy.
On current trends, global energy demand is projected to rise 60% by 2030, and global emissions by 25 to 90% above 2000 levels.
At the same time, as the latest scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tell us, global warming is accelerating. The average global temperature has increased 0.74 degrees over the past 100 years, and it is likely to rise further by between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius this century if we do not rein in emissions.
The international community has to act fast. What we do - or don't do - over the next decade or so will determine whether we manage to bring climate change under control and avert its worst impacts.
If we fail to act boldly enough, climate change is almost certain to reach dangerous levels that will undermine the stability and prosperity of our societies and jeopardise the very survival of small island states and low-lying areas.
We know that climate change will severely affect food production in many parts of Africa. And within just over forty years from now, by the 2050s, more than a billion people in central, southern and eastern Asia could be suffering from shortages of water.
Faced with these enormous challenges it is encouraging that the Commission on Sustainable Development is addressing energy and climate change, as well as air pollution and industrial development, in a fully integrated way.
This integrated approach is absolutely necessary, but it is also something of a breakthrough: until recently policy makers and the business community tended not to make the link, and to focus mainly on energy alone. At last it is being recognised that energy and climate change are two sides of the same coin.
Climate/energy package
The European Union has fully acknowledged this fundamental link. It is central to the integrated climate change and energy strategy that the European Commission presented in January and which was fully endorsed by EU leaders at their summit in March.
The simple truth - one might say the inconvenient truth - is that we have to make our energy systems far more sustainable if we are to stand a chance of preventing the most dangerous impacts of climate change. We need to move rapidly from a carbon-based economy to a low-carbon economy.
This is challenging, but let me underline that it is both technologically feasible and economically affordable. As last week's IPCC report on mitigation makes clear, substantial economic potential exists not only for offsetting the projected growth in global emissions over the coming decades but also for reducing emissions below current levels.
The European Union's package of climate and energy measures shows the way forward. It heralds a new industrial revolution, an unleashing of innovation and creativity, to build the low-carbon economy of the future.
Some of you will already be familiar with this landmark initiative, but for the benefit of those who are not, let me quickly run over its main points.
Our strategy puts the battle against climate change at the heart of a new European energy policy that will also increase our energy security and improve our economic competitiveness.
We have set ourselves clear and ambitious targets - and these are targets that other developed countries could easily take on board too. They rely on clean technologies that are either readily available now or at an advanced state of development. These are, principally, energy efficiency, renewable energies, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage to ensure the clean use of fossil fuels.
• First, we will save 20% of our energy needs by 2020 by improving energy efficiency. To encourage others to do the same we also want to reach an international energy efficiency agreement. Saving energy is by far the cheapest way of reducing emissions.
• Second, by 2020 renewable energy will account for 20% of our energy consumption, while biofuels will have a share of at least 10% of our gasoline and diesel.
• Third, we aim to have carbon capture and storage technology deployed in new power plants from around 2020 onwards.
Besides substantially cutting our greenhouse gas emissions and increasing our energy security, these measures will also contribute significantly to reducing air pollution and its associated health care costs.
Global targets
Our climate and energy package confirms Europe's world leadership on climate change in that it also sets out our proposals for a new global agreement to take effect after the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012.
Preliminary discussions started a year ago. To avoid any policy gap after 2012 it is now crucial that the international community agrees to launch formal negotiations to draft the new agreement at the next UN ministerial meeting on climate change in December in Bali.
For the European Union the aim of the agreement must be to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius - that is, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - above the pre-industrial temperature. The scientific evidence shows that the risk of irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet or of the Arctic permafrost, would markedly increase if the temperature rose much beyond that threshold.
As the IPCC confirmed last week, to have a chance of staying within the 2 degrees temperature ceiling means that global emissions will need to peak by around 2020 and then fall to less than half of 1990 levels by 2050.
Time is not on our side. We have to start getting emissions onto the right track. That is why the European Union is proposing that developed countries commit to a 30% reduction by 2020, and that the more advanced developing countries start to slow their emissions growth as soon as possible.
The EU has stated clearly that we will reduce our emissions by 30% if other nations also commit to making an appropriate effort as part of a new global agreement. As a sign of our determination to see effective international action, we have pledged that we will in any case cut our emissions by at least 20% - even though global negotiations have yet to begin.
With the new measures in our climate and energy package, as well as existing instruments such as our company-level Emissions Trading Scheme for greenhouse gases, we know we have the tools to achieve this reduction.
ETS/global carbon market
And our independent commitment to achieve a cut of at least 20% sends an unambiguous signal to any doubters in industry that the emissions trading scheme, the core of our climate change strategy, will continue well beyond 2012.
We see emissions trading as a crucial tool for achieving emission reductions cost-effectively, not only within Europe but globally. I very much welcome the development of similar schemes that is under way at state and regional level here in the US as well as in Australia.
Our vision is that emission trading systems with comparable levels of ambition should be linked up to form the backbone of a global carbon market that can ensure emission cuts are achieved at least cost. An expanded global carbon market, built on the Kyoto mechanisms with the addition of company-or sector level emissions trading, should be central to the architecture of a new global climate change agreement. Putting a price on emissions is essential to create the incentives for a large-scale
move to the low-carbon economy.
Costs and benefits
Some of you may be asking whether the world can afford to make the deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.
The answer is yes, absolutely. In fact, we cannot afford not to.
The European Commission's own analysis and last year's Stern Review of the economics of climate change come to the same conclusion: the benefits of limiting global warming will far outweigh the costs of taking action.
The Stern Review projects that if we do nothing to control emissions, climate change will eventually wreak damage costing between 5% and as much as 20% of global GDP each year. The enormous economic and social impact of this has been compared to that of the world wars or the great depression.
Tackling climate change is therefore the pro-growth strategy for the long term.
Last week's IPCC report on mitigating climate change concludes that the cost of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius would reduce global GDP growth by less than 0.12 percentage points a year up to 2030 and beyond. Our own analysis puts this figure slightly higher at 0.19 percentage points, meaning that annual global GDP growth up to 2030 would be 2.61% instead of 2.8%.
Either of these figures represents good value if we look at them as an insurance premium against the devastating damage that climate change will cause if we allow it to reach dangerous levels. And the real cost is most probably lower still, since neither figure takes account of co-benefits like improved energy security and reduced air pollution.
Developing countries
The developed countries are historically responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today. The European Union, the United States and other developed countries have a moral duty to continue leading the battle against climate change.
We in Europe are committed to doing so. As I have said, we are proposing that developed countries cut their emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, and we know that reductions of 60 to 80% will be necessary by 2050.
But action by developed countries alone will not be enough to bring climate change under control. Emissions from the developing countries collectively are rising fast. By 2020 emissions from energy and industry are projected to overtake those from the developed world.
We cannot simply stick our heads in the sand and ignore this trend.
An effective global solution for the post-2012 period will therefore have to address emissions from developing countries, except those from the least developed countries which in any case are still relatively low. We in the developed world must help developing countries to start slowing their emissions growth as soon as possible, and then to reduce emissions in absolute terms from 2020 onwards.
I have no illusions about the magnitude of this challenge. But there are many options for cutting developing countries' emissions that would actually deliver immediate economic and social benefits and would not hinder their efforts to grow and escape poverty. Increasing energy efficiency and reducing air pollution are two examples.
We are also going to have to find effective ways to halt deforestation because it is responsible for around 20% of global emissions - second only to the burning of fossil fuels. Political will and ingenuity are needed to devise the incentives that can halt and then reverse this trend within the next two to three decades. This would also give a massive fillip to efforts to stop the loss of global biodiversity.
Among the concrete options available to help developing countries address their emissions, we believe the Clean Development Mechanism should be expanded and new financing approaches should be devised to channel investment into energy infrastructure with low emission levels.
GEEREF
A key contribution in this regard will come from GEEREF, the Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund set up by the European Commission last year.
This innovative global risk capital fund will bring clean and affordable energy supplies to some of the 1.6 billion people around the world who currently have no access to electricity. It will accelerate the transfer and deployment of environmentally sound energy technologies to developing countries and economies in transition. I am confident it will also help to achieve a more equitable distribution of Clean Development Mechanism projects across the developing world.
GEEREF already has funding pledges of 122 million euros and we believe that with this we will be able to mobilise additional risk capital of between 300 million and 1 billion euros in the longer term. This makes it a powerful addition to the European Union's development assistance armoury.
Adaptation
We in the developed world have a duty to help developing countries not only to mitigate climate change but also to minimise its inevitable impacts by adapting to it. Many developing countries are especially vulnerable to climate change and will suffer from it disproportionately for a combination of reasons including their geography, their reliance on rain-fed agriculture and their relative lack of financial resources.
The European Commission is planning to help address this through a new initiative, the Global Climate Policy Alliance, that will support adaptation activities in the least developed countries in particular.
Our goal is to build a political coalition between the European Union and developing countries to support national investments in adaptation and also mitigation. We envisage creating a special funding mechanism to promote fast-track implementation of adaptation activities in the least developed countries and other low-income countries. The European Commission will contribute 50 million euros over the next four years but we expect the largest contribution to come collectively from the European
Union's member states.
The Global Climate Policy Alliance would thus be a valuable addition to the other international initiatives under way to help adaptation in developing countries, such as the Kyoto Protocol's Adaptation Fund, and the decisions taken at last November's UN climate change ministerial in Nairobi.
Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen,
We are all here in New York to advance the world's progress towards sustainable development. But there will be no sustainable development if we do not win the battle against climate change.
The European Union has proposed the global action that can win this battle, and we have fixed targets for shifting our own energy system towards a more sustainable, lower carbon future. As the IPCC has confirmed, the costs of action are modest and manageable. The consequences of doing nothing will be far more severe, in both economic and human terms.
We urge our partners in the developed and the developing worlds alike to work with us to reach a new global agreement that is bold enough to avert the grave threat we all face. Let us use our time in New York to lay the groundwork so that negotiations can be launched in Bali and rapidly completed.
We need to stabilise global emissions within little more than a decade. The time for action is now.
Thank you.
- Ref: SP07-408EN
- Source UE: Commission Européenne
- UN forum:
- Date: 10/5/2007
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