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(108,903 posts)
Fri Jun 20, 2014, 06:34 AM Jun 2014

Rising German Coal Use Imperils European Emissions Deal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/rising-german-coal-use-imperils-european-emissions-deal.html

The European Union’s attempt to cap greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 16 years is threatened again as rising pollution from the bloc’s biggest economies show even developed nations want to burn cheap coal.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, boosted consumption of the fuel by 13 percent in the past four years, while use in Britain, No. 3 in the region economically, rose more than a fifth, statistics from oil company BP Plc show. While Germany pledged to cut heat-trapping gases 55 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels, it’s managed 25 percent so far and is moving in the wrong direction, according to the European Environment Agency.

The EU is seeking to craft a deal in October that would cut greenhouse gases 40 percent by 2030 in the world’s biggest effort to combat global warming since the Kyoto climate treaty of 1997. Countries including Poland, which relies on coal to generate more than 80 percent of its power, want to guarantee their right to use the fuel before signing off on targets they say penalize lower-income nations.

“Both the U.K. and Germany are on a collision course with Poland,” Maciej Bukowski, president of the Warsaw Institute of Economic Studies, which has advised Poland on greenhouse gas cuts, said by phone June 17. “To cut emissions, it needs to spend a lot of money up front,” he said, predicting a 50 percent chance the October deadline will slip.
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