Earth Equity News

Poland Leads Charge to Delay European Climate Reforms. By James Kanter, NYTimes, October 6, 2008. "The EU created the world's largest emissions trading market in 2005 to force heavy industries to cap their pollution levels. Next on the EU agenda: switching to 20 percent renewable energy and cutting greenhouse gases by 20 percent by the end of the next decade... Unsurprisingly, European industries for which this would be most costly -- like steel manufacturers -- have been strenuously lobbying to water down the measures. But what is more ominous for the future of European climate leadership is that some countries, led by Poland, are now putting up a fight themselves... Poland generates almost all its electricity from highly polluting coal. If the price of emitting goes up dramatically, that would force Polish utilities to spend more on complying with the regulations than utilities in, say, France, where the majority of electricity comes from nuclear power, which produces little C02. A week ago, Poland reached an accord with Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania that called for a more gradual approach to the reforms. In a joint statement, ministers from those five countries said that making it too expensive to use coal (which can be mined domestically in some EU countries) would only serve to weaken their energy security by pushing them to use natural gas. While natural gas may be less polluting than coal, it would make these countries -- former Soviet bloc states -- more reliant on gas imports from Russia."