Peaking in 2015: Sharing the burden between countries
If governments agree to set global targets for stabilising and reducing emissions, along peak year, in line with the IPCC’s scenarios, they will have taken a major step towards resolving the issue – but it is only a first step.
The really big political challenges begin when governments try to agree on how to carve up the responsibility for cutting emissions. Ideally they would create a giant spreadsheet setting out emissions limits for each country for each year from 2010 to 2015 and then on to 2050.
However, the issue cannot be tackled without very deep cuts in the developing world because since 2004, total non-OECD emissions of carbon dioxide have been greater than those of the OECD countries, and if nothing changes, by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries are projected to exceed those from the OECD countries by 57%.[1]
It’s widely accepted that the developed world – which is largely responsible for the carbon in the air today and has more capacity to pay, should make deeper cuts in proportions of emissions than the developing world, where growth is strong but emissions-reducing technologies such as renewable power and measures to increase energy efficiency are less advanced.
Developed countries have formally taken on a range of obligations under the UNFCCC, including showing leadership in tackling their own emissions, transferring technology, supporting capacity building and financing the incremental cost of emissions reductions in poorer nations.
The Kyoto Treaty provides mechanisms for countries to co-operate in reducing emissions and for developed nations to support emissions cuts in the developing world. International Emissions Trading (IET) allows trading of national quotas or allowances between countries and has provided the framework within which the EU has developed its cross-border private sector Emissions Trading Scheme involving over 11,000 energy-intensive installations in 25 countries.
Two further mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI), allow credits from emission reducing projects in one country to be used to meet another country’s Kyoto commitment. Under JI, projects can be hosted in developed countries, and under CDM, in developing countries.
In the period to 2012, projects generating credits for over 1 billion tons CO2e are already in the pipeline, meaning the CDM is likely to provide between $5 and $15 billion in additional funding for mitigation in developing countries.[2]
In the case of a 2009 deal, it’s likely that the CDM would be expanded or completely reinvented to provide one of the most important routes for cutting emissions and funnelling resources and expertise from the OECD world to the developing world.
Conscious of this, some countries have already begun to populate the spreadsheet with targets of their own, moving ahead of a global agreement.
In Europe, for example, EU heads of state have agreed to a 20% reduction in GHG emissions by 2020 on 1990 levels and a 30% reduction if there is a comprehensive post 2012 global deal.
In 2008, the White House set a target of bringing US emissions to a peak by 2025 – a departure from previous refusal to set such a goal but one so far removed from those proposed elsewhere that it was immediately attacked by NGOs as too little too late.
In fact, to achieve the right balance in a world where OECD emissions are the minority, OECD countries will need to achieve massive cuts to offset more modest ones in fast-growing economies such as China and India. And with a 2015 peak as a target, those cuts would need to be heavily front-end loaded.
In the UK, CO2 emissions are already tapering down, from around 600 million tonnes a year in 1990 to around 550 today and falling.[3] And the current commitment is to a 60% cut in emissions by 2050. But in the context of international burden-sharing, this looks modest if the global target is even 50%, let alone 85%, and less ambitious still if the idea is to make emissions peak worldwide in 2015.
In a 2015 peak world, a developed world country might have to look at a 2050 emissions reduction target of 100% on the basis that it would achieve, say, 70% of the cuts within its borders and 30% in developing countries – by facilitating cuts in those countries equal to that proportion of its own emissions.
One metric likely to be highlighted in the debate is the relative size of per capita emissions in developing countries. The argument from those countries which have relatively low per capita energy use and emissions, will be that they should be able to allow their relative share of emissions to rise to accommodate their aspirations for growth and poverty reduction as recognised, for example, in the Millennium Development Goals.
Various terms are used to describe the overall process by which emissions reductions could be co-ordinated. ‘Convergence and contraction’ is a construct in which emissions in developed countries would contract over time and emissions from developing countries would converge to an equal per capita emissions level.
Under ‘Common but differentiated convergence’ developed countries’ per capita emissions would converge to a low level while developing countries’ per capita emissions converge to the same level over the same time period, but decrease after their per capita emissions are a certain percentage above or below the (time dependent) global average. The ‘Triptych’ approach takes into account differences in national circumstances that are relevant to emissions – including those who are heavy emitters as well as those with high growth and low per capita emissions.