UK - Labor Administration Finally Admits It Will Miss Emissions Target

[hatrack]

The government will admit today that it will fail to meet its much repeated manifesto commitment on cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Labour had set a target of reducing CO2 levels by 20% by 2010, but Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, will say it is no longer possible. The totemic policy has been an important weapon in Tony Blair's claim to be a world leader willing to go further than others on climate change, and the admission is likely to provoke fury from environmentalists.

Publishing the government's much delayed climate change review today, Mrs Beckett will say the government believes the UK can achieve only a cut of between 15% and 18% of the 1990 UK emissions. Ministers will say this still means the government will reach its separate commitment under the Kyoto protocol of cutting CO2 emissions by at least 12.5%. But even reaching the 15-18% reductions depends on the outcome of complex EU negotiations on caps on emissions by heavy energy users in industry, including the electricity generators.

Labour has three times made manifesto commitments to reach a 20% cut by 2010, but as emissions started to rise in 2003 and 2004, Mr Blair set up a cross-government review to see if it was possible to get back on track. Ministers have been preparing the ground for relative failure for weeks by saying how challenging the target is now.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1741191,00.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. The way the Kyoto target has been met doesn't hold out much hope

for future reductions. Kyoto requires a 12.5% reduction in the CO2 equivalent for all 6 greenhouse gases that are considered. The government's predictions are that the main savings, compared with the base year, will be:

Carbon dioxide: 17.2 Megatonnes carbon equivalent
Methane: 14.3 MtC
nitrous oxide: 7.6 MtC

but that methane saving is already 57% of the base level; and the nitrous oxide 41%. It won't be possible to achieve those kind of savings again in the future - the government estimate is for another 1.3 MtC reduction in methane by 2020, and no further reduction in N20. The reduction in carbon dioxide came almost all from 1990 to 1995 when many coal fired power stations were replaced by natural gas fired ones. The UK's CO2 output is now above its level in 1995, and the government predicts it will fall a little between now and 2010 - but then increase a little. The prediction for 2020 is no better than for 2010.

And the kicker is: the Kyoto figures for a country don't include international air travel, only domestic. Now, UK domestic air travel isn't that much - it's a small group of islands, a bit smaller than California (London to Glasgow is roughly the same as Los Angeles to San Francisco, and those are the 2 large cities furthest apart). But we do, especially recently, do a lot of international air travel - budget airlines have grown immensely, taking us on short breaks to various parts of Europe. And the government is busy planning new runways and airport terminals to support the growth in air travel that it wants. And that growth won't spoil the Kyoto numbers for the UK, so they don't worry about it.

Figures from the DEFRA report.