EU Praises "Exemplary" Serbian Emissions Plan, Even Though Emissions Will Rise 15%

Serbia’s new climate pledge for the coming UN summit in Paris has been hailed by the European commission as an “exemplary” step towards EU accession, even though official figures show that it involves a 15% increase in the country’s emissions by 2030. A Serbian headline pledge to cut emissions 9.8% by 2030 – as measured against 1990 levels – was announced on Thursday at a press conference in Belgrade, with the commission’s vice-president for energy union, Maros Sefcovic.

But according to a Serbian government report for the UNFCCC in April, Serbia’s emissions have already fallen by a quarter since 1990, because of the collapse of heavy industry after the communist era.

“Emissions of greenhouse gases in 2013 decreased by 3.5% compared to 2010, and 25.1% in relation to 1990,” the paper says. A 9.8% cut in emissions would thus allow a de facto 15.3% rise. EU sources confirmed that Serbia’s pledge could be even worse than it appeared, as the 1990 baseline figures counted high-emitting Kosovan coal plants, which will almost certainly not be included in the 2030 statistics.

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‘The Serbian offer is a joke, but no one’s laughing now that the commission says it is an exemplary step on the path to EU membership,” said Garret Tankosić-Kelly, principal of SEE Change Net, a Bosnian thinktank, focused on sustainable development in the Balkans. “How is the rest of the world supposed to take EU climate promises seriously, when it is demonstrably allowing its candidate countries to cook the books of their climate policies, hoping that no one will notice?”

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/11/european-commission-hails-fiddled-serbian-climate-pledge