Germany to Push for Deeper Emissions Cuts - Minister
Date: 29-Nov-05
Country: GERMANY
In a statement coinciding with the opening of a UN conference in Montreal that aims to map what to do about global warming beyond 2012, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Germany wanted Kyoto to form the basis of any future accord.
"A timeframe for talks should be agreed (in Montreal) with the aim of setting out fundamentally more ambitious reduction goals," Gabriel said.
"Kyoto is only a first step which must soon be followed by more demanding steps," he said. "When all nations are ready at the end of the conference in Montreal to join the process then we will have gained a great deal." Germany's ruling coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats took office last week led by Angela Merkel, who was environment minister when Germany signed up to Kyoto in 1997. The Montreal talks aim to target the fight against global warming by drawing the United States and developing nations such as China and India into UN-led agreements beyond 2012.
The United States, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia have rejected Kyoto, under which 40 industrial nations agreed to cut emissions below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
"The Kyoto Protocol is the only international instrument that actually demands emission reductions from countries," Gabriel said. "Through emissions trading it provides a means of making these reductions as cheaply as possible."
The Montreal meeting includes some 189 countries, among them the United States, which back the wider UN climate convention.
The German government's policy may lead to a clash with the German power industry when permissible quotas on carbon dioxide emissions for 2008-2012 come up for negotiation next year.
The power industry in a weekend paper said it demanded free emissions permits based on historic CO2 output for that period under the mandatory EU emissions trading scheme.
This is in contrast to the new government's line which suggests tougher rules to avoid windfall profits which have arisen in the current trading period after the certificates were handed out for free, then rose in price, and were added to power bills as additional costs by the operators.
