8:08 AM Jun 28, 1996

NORTH NEEDS MORE GHG REDUCTION MEASURES

Geneva 28 June (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The majority of the industrialized countries would need to take additional measures in order to return their carbon dioxide emissions to their 1990 levels by year 2000, according to a document for the Conference of Parties (COP2) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major contributor to global warming and adverse climate change. Other greenhouse gases (GHG) responsible for global warming include methane (CH4) and nitrous-oxide (N2O).

The report, "Second compilation and synthesis of first national communications from Annex I Parties", is by the secretariat of the FCCC -- an Executive Summary, a main report and the tables of inventories of anthropogenic emissions and removals and projects for year 2000 -- and is for the COP2.

The report says that a comparison, using the Global Warming Potentials for all GHGs combined, but excluding land-use change and the forestry sector, indicates that several of the Annex I Parties could have difficulties in returning these emissions to their 1990 levels in year 2000.

The inventory data for 1991-1994 submitted to the secretariat so far by several of the Annex I parties seem to justify this concern, the report says.

"Although an initial rise is not consistent with the aim of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000, it suggests that additional efforts may be needed in the remaining years.

"Nevertheless, during the IDRs (in-depth reviews), some indications were given that in a number of Parties which projected growth in emissions, return to their base year levels was felt to be within reach," the report adds.

COP2 is meeting in Geneva from 8-19 July and among others it is due to review the implementation of the Convention, signed at the Rio 'Earth Summit' (UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992), and the commitments in Article 4 of that Convention.

At Rio and in the FCCC, the developed countries (the OECD countries and the former centrally planned economies of eastern Europe and Russia), the Annex I parties (short-hand for the list of countries in Annex I of the FCCC) agreed to take measures aiming to return by year 2000 their CO2 and other emissions to the 1990 levels.

They also agreed to submit inventories of their emissions, and measures being taken or under way to return their CO2 and GHG emissions to their 1990 levels.

These individual country reports, submitted before 1 May 1996, and a compilation and a synthesis report prepared by the secretariat, will be before the COP2 which will review them.

Aside from the report reviewing the implementation of the Convention Commitments of Annex I parties, the COP2 will also have before it the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change -- an executive summary by the IPCC, and the reports of its three working groups.

One of these working groups, the Working Group 3 (WG3) which went into the social costs, became enveloped in controversies over its methodology and approach including what became known as the "unequal valuation" of life and property in the North and the South. The executive summary by the IPCC modified several of the WG3 conclusions, virtually repudiating the "unequal valuation of life", but nevertheless allowed the summary and the report to be published.

But the recent publication of the report of WG1, namely scientific report about the climate change, has also now come under criticism.

The energy lobby (which is fighting recommendations and measures for cutting back on oil and other carbon fuel sources) has complained that the WG1 changed some of the conclusions in the report.

But from the other side, the WG1 report has also been attacked by environmental NGOs as having yielded to pressure of big business and abandoning the possibility that GHG concentration levels could ever be restored to the 1990 levels.

The accusation that the WG1, chaired by Sir John Houghton (former head of the British Meterological Office) had bowed to pressure from big business and abandoning the possibility of returning GHG emissions to 1990 levels was made at a press launch of the IPCC's Second Assessment Report in London early this month.

Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute (GCI) who made the accusation said later that WG1 had dropped "the possible fossil fuel consumption path or scenario which eventually stabilizes concentration of C02 in the atmosphere at the 1990 figure of 350 parts per million, although this was included in the 1994 assessment report

Sir John however said then that the scenario had been dropped because it was regarded as "ludicrous" since it meant that CO2 emissions would have to be negative for an extended period in the next century.

But Meyer said this would not be necessary if CO2 reductions were made early enough.

The WG1 was also attacked for having given prominence to the controversial work of two energy economists (Richard Richels from the Electric Power Institute, EPRC, in California and Jae Edmonds of the Battelle Institute in Washington). These two economists have called for CO2 emissions to be delayed for 30 years on the ground that improved technologies will be available by then.

Meyer said the views of these two economists, incorporated in the WG1 report, had not even been accepted by the WG3 of the IPCC, and their views have no place in the science working group.

When, whether and how emissions should be forced down is a political decision, and not part of a process of scientific description, Meyer complained.

He notes that at the time of COP1 at Berlin last year, the attempts of the WG3 (economists working group) to slow down the measures needed in the industrial countries to return their emissions, through an unequal valuation of life and property damage in the North and the South and to suggest that the South needs to take measures, resulted in an outcry led by India and other developing nations.

This forced modifications in the executive summary of the WG3 report, after the WG3 economists of unequal valuation concepts would not back down, in such a way as to repudiate the findings in the body of WG3 report.

Now, the effort to slow down actions have come in a different way, he says, but hopes that despite changes in governments in several developing countries like India, the strong stand they took would not change at COP2.

Meyer also views as suspicious, the dropping of the stabilisation at 1990 scenario, since the new report introduces a new scenario involving CO2 stabilization at 1000 parts per million or three times the current level and four times the pre-industrial one.

"We don't know what the consequences of reaching this 1000 parts per million level would be," Meyer says. "It cannot be regarded as a real representation of a viable upper margin under which the policy debate on CO2 reductions should take place. The IPCC scientists don't even give estimates of the temperature rise this might entail."

The IPCC scientists, he says, as a result of external pressures have now seriously weakened their position in 1990, when they said immediate reductions of the order of 60-80 percent in rate of GHGs were necessary if 1990 concentrations were to be maintained.

The FCCC's objective is to limit atmospheric concentrations of GHGs to levels that do not dangerously affect climate system and "the only levels about which we can sure this is true, are levels we know... higher concentrations involve an acceleration into a danger-zone of increasing climatological instability and uncertainty".

The COP2 negotiations, the GCI says, is no longer whether climate change is taking place. The IPCC has agreed that it is taking place, and that it is largely due to human activities.

"The key issue at COP2," he says, "is where the burden of making reductions on emissions should be placed: with the energy-intensive countries who are economically benefitting from causing the climate change or with the lower-energy-using countries who will suffer its effects."

The significance of the scenario changes in the IPCC report, Meyer says, is to change the boundaries within which governments at COP2 will work and "they will no longer even consider maintaining the world's climate within the range that we know."

"This is the result of an abuse of the scientific process by people and corporations intent on avoiding their responsibility for the damage they are likely to cause and it is contrary to intelligent self-interest," Meyer says.

Another critic of the latest scientific assessment of the IPCC is Ernst von Wizsacker, Director of the Wuppertal Institute on Climate and Energy who says that the IPCC's Second Assessment Report reflects "a lamentable shift from an unbiased scientific assessment to an economy-driven assessment of what can best be done under the given circumstances."

"With some tolerable changes in the economic framework," says Wizsacker, "it is technically feasible to double economic wealth worldwide while simultaneously halving resource use including GHG emissions. However, even the technocratic message is now in danger of being demolished by the wave of economic globalization that currently undercuts all democratic mechanisms."

On the Art 4 commitments of the Annex I countries, the FCCC secretariat's report says that for several of the parties, the enhancement of sinks, in particular forests, is an important part of their efforts aimed at limiting total net emissions.

Policy instruments available to governments over climate change activities, it notes, is a function of the constitutional powers of the central and state governments of a country. Political systems also influence a country's approach to mitigation and implementation of policies and measures.

The secretariat report notes that in the economies in transition (EIT) -- the former east european socialists and Russia -- there has been a sharp drop in GDP. This is the result of the switch to market economies initiated earlier in the decade, and the ensuing deep economic crisis, collapse of traditional foreign markets and a sharp decrease in domestic consumption and industrial output. As a consequence some of the Parties have also removed energy subsidies, and GHG emissions have decreased significantly.

The EIT countries have been characterized by a high share of industry in national income, with a resulting high energy intensity per unit of output and high dependency on energy imports or indigenous fossil fuel resources. Governments in many of these countries promote energy efficiency to decrease dependence on imported fuel and enhance energy security.

But these structural changes in their energy and industrial sector are yet to result in concrete energy savings.

"Overall," the FCCC secretariat's synthesis report says, "national communications and IDRs reveal a growing consensus that climate change causes are intrinsically related to energy policies and that gains in energy efficiency make sense in economic terms while also improving a country's emission profile.

"As economies overcome recession periods, climate change concerns, together with improvements in energy efficiency and more rational use of natural resources, are gradually being considered in conjunction with more strategic issues such as national energy security and diversification in supply sources."

The report says that using the IPCC's 1994 Global Warming Potential (GWP) values, CO2 has been confirmed as the most important anthropogenic GHG for the reporting parties -- 80.5% of total emissions in 1990, excluding land-use change and forestry.

Fuel consumption was the largest source of Co2 emissions (96.6%), with most emissions coming from energy and transformation industries and transport.

Managed forests were the largest carbon sink. No removals for gases other than CO2 were reported.

The largest source of CH4 emissions was fugitive fuel emissions (37.8%), while the largest source of N2O emissions was agriculture (fertilizer use) 43.8%, followed by industrial processes, 29.9%

Removal of subsidies in, for e.g., energy and agriculture sectors, were reported to reduce CO2, CH4 and N20. Deregulation, especially in the electricity sector, was reported as a central factor causing reductions in several Parties.

A number of Parties have indicated the need for policies and measures requiring international cooperation, in particular in the area of taxes.

Five Parties - Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden -- had unilaterally implemented taxes aiming at reducing CO2 emissions -- taxing CO2 only or both CO2 and energy elements. But these taxes had a number of exemptions for reasons of competitiveness -- seen as necessary so long as such taxes were not applied in other countries.

Analysing the projections of CO2 and GHG emissions and overall effects of policies and measures, the report says that the IDRs (in-depth reviews) had demonstrated that for a number of Parties, higher GDP growth, lower energy prices and a different implementation rate of policies and measures from that previously assumed are causing higher-than-anticipated growth in CO2 emissions.

The IDRs also indicated that most Parties could face additional increases in CO2 emissions after 2000 as a result of economic and or population growth. In a number of Parties, the increases were attributed to a freeze on new nuclear power capacity or decisions to phase it out, as well as more self-reliance in electricity production.

When all projected emissions (excluding land use change and forestry) are totalled using the IPCC-1994 GWP for all Parties, 16 of them (Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and eight EITs) accounting for 42% of the aggregated 1990 inventory figure, projected stabilization or decrease.

Fifteen Parties accounting for 55% of the aggregated 1990 inventory, projected an increase. Three of these -- Japan, New Zealand and the USA -- accounting for 42% of the aggregated 1990 inventory, projected an increase of two percent or less.