EU leaders yesterday agreed on what they hailed as the world’s most ambitious climate change targets for 2030, paving the way for a new UN-backed global treaty next year.
The 28 leaders overcame deep divisions at a summit in Brussels to reach a deal including a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent compared with 1990 levels. They also agreed on 27 percent targets for renewable energy supply and efficiency gains, in spite of reservations from some member states about the cost of the measures.
“Deal! At least 40 percent emissions cut by 2030. World’s most ambitious, cost-effective, fair EU 2030 climate energy policy agreed,” EU President Herman Van Rompuy tweeted.
Photo: AFP
The EU wanted to agree on the targets ahead of a summit in Paris in November and December next year, where it is hoped the world would agree to a new phase of the Kyoto climate accords which run until 2020.
The agreement puts the EU “in the driving seat” ahead of the Paris conference, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said. Environmental groups said that the deal did not go far enough to cut global warming.
European leaders haggled late into the night amid a split between richer, greener nations and poorer countries that depend heavily on fossil fuels or on gas from Russia.
Poland had previously threatened to veto a deal, fearing that its heavy reliance on coal would have made it prohibitively expensive to meet the targets. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande had talks with Polish Prime Minister Eva Kovacsz on the sidelines of the summit in a bid to gain her support.
Merkel said the deal would “give Europe a voice and a negotiation position in the international climate talks.”
The accord also promotes new links among member states allowing them to export up to 15 percent of their power output when they are in surplus and import up to 15 percent when they are in deficit.
Van Rompuy said these power transmission interconnection links were a key part of developing the EU’s energy market and would provide insurance against supply disruption. He referenced both the Ukraine crisis and turmoil in the Middle East as good reasons for the EU to act now to bolster its energy security.
The climate deal builds on the EU’s targets for 2020 of a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, a 20 percent boost in the use of renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power and a 20 increase in energy efficiency.
While the new 40 percent target for greenhouse gases and 27 percent for the use of renewable energy sources agreed upon yesterday were as expected, a 30 percent goal for an increase in energy efficiency set in July by the commission was watered down to 27 percent.
Greenpeace said the EU had “pulled the handbrake on clean energy [generation].”
“These targets are too low, slowing down efforts to boost renewable energy [production] and keeping Europe hooked on polluting and expensive fuel,” it said.
British-based humanitarian group Oxfam called for targets of 55 percent in emissions cuts, 40 percent for energy savings and 45 percent for use of renewable energy.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS