EU Emission Target Sparks Controversy

By CHARLES FORELLE
BRUSSELS -- The European Union, which has led the charge among rich countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, frequently casts its goal of a 20% cut by 2020 as a guiding light for the rest of the developed world. If others go far enough, the bloc says, it will even stretch to 30%.
But some argue the EU's pledges are far less ambitious than they seem, and that has become a source of friction at the Copenhagen climate summit. On Tuesday, the top U.S. climate envoy pointed out that the EU counts its 20% cut from 1990, when its emissions were higher than they are today. The U.S. pledge, figured from 2005, is actually steeper going forward, he said.
To get to the 20% cut, the EU takes out its wallet and buys credits on a global carbon market. That means it doesn't have to cut emissions as sharply within the EU. By some reckonings, half of the EU's future cuts could come from credits bought from outside the EU.
On top of that, slower economic growth will make the target easier to reach. Recession means less industrial output and fewer emissions.
European leaders retort that the bloc has put in substantial effort in past years to reduce emissions -- including establishing the world's leading cap-and-trade regime -- while the U.S. has sat back and let its emissions rise. Barbara Helfferich, the environment spokeswoman for the EU's executive arm, says the U.S.'s pledge to cut emissions 17% from 2005 amounts to just a 4% reduction since 1990. "Compare that to our 20%," she says.
The soft spots in the EU's pledge have drawn criticism from environmentalists. Getting to 20% by 2020 requires "minimal effort," says Jason Anderson of the World Wildlife Fund. He says the EU should push as far as 40%.
"Clearly, the EU needs to improve its pledge," says Rebecca Harms, a German member of the European Parliament who is president of its Green Party.
In 1990, the 27 countries that now make up the EU emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 5.56 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. By 2007, that number had fallen 9.3%, or 519 million tons, to 5.05 billion tons. (All the figures exclude emissions from deforestation or changing use of land.) Provisional estimates for 2008 are for an additional 1.5% drop, largely stemming from the recession. In other words, the EU is already more than halfway to its 2020 target.
EU leaders credit environmental initiatives and the cap-and-trade system for curbing big polluters. But another factor is at work: In 2004 and 2007, the EU admitted a total of 12 new countries, 10 of them ex-communist states. By counting emissions from 1990 -- generally before communism's collapse ravaged industrial output -- all but one of those countries (tiny Slovenia) register substantial declines that the EU counts toward the 2020 pledge. The 10 East bloc countries account for two-thirds of the decline in the EU since 1990. Among the 15 Western EU countries, emissions have fallen just 4.3% since 1990.
However, some argue that, conversely, a 2005 baseline favors the Obama administration in international talks, partly because it leaves out the entire first term of George W. Bush. Mr. Bush, as president, resisted imposing economywide emissions caps on the grounds that it would damage the U.S. economy.
The EU gets a fillip from counting "offset" credits toward the pledge. They come largely from a United Nations program called the Clean Development Mechanism. Poor countries don't have to reduce their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. But if individual businesses in those countries do anyway, they can get one CDM credit for each ton of carbon dioxide avoided.

EU companies are the major buyer of these credits, which can be used ton-for-ton in the European cap-and-trade scheme in place of actual cuts. Last year, EU companies bought CDM credits for about 82 million tons, according to EU statistics. That is more than has been cut from smokestacks in a typical year. From 2006 to 2007, the most recent years for which final data are available, the actual cuts in the EU amounted to 59 million tons.
In addition to European companies, EU governments -- like those in other rich nations -- can buy CDM credits to meet national Kyoto targets.
All told, estimates Claude Turmes, a Green Party European Parliament member from Luxembourg active in climate issues, as much as 12 percentage points of the EU's 20% cut could be satisfied by various purchased credits.
Ms. Helfferich, the EU environment spokesman, says credits play an important role. "Climate change is global," she says. "It does not really matter where you emit and for that matter where you make the reductions."
Mr. Anderson of the WWF says the offset cuts skirt the real problem: In the end, "countries need to decarbonize," he says. "Anything you do overseas reduces the changes you do to your domestic industry."
Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle@wsj.com