Dismay as Japan decides to water down CO2 target
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China, the EU and environmentalists criticized Japan at UN climate talks yesterday for slashing its greenhouse gas emissions target after its nuclear power industry was shuttered by the Fukushima disaster.
The Japanese government yesterday decided to target a 3.8 percent emissions cut by 2020 versus 2005 levels. That amounts to a 3 percent rise from a UN benchmark year of 1990 and the reversal of the previous target of a 25 percent reduction.
“Given that none of the nuclear reactors is operating, this was unavoidable,” Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara said.
Japan’s new policy was widely criticized in Warsaw, where some 190 nations are meeting from November 11-22 to work on a global climate pact, due to be agreed in 2015.
China’s climate negotiator Su Wei said: “I have no way of describing my dismay” about the revised target.
“This is not only backward movement from the Kyoto Protocol, but also a startling backward movement from the Convention,” Su said.
Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Japan pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent to 1.186 billion tons a year on average over the five years to March 2013.
The European Union also expressed disappointment and said it expected all nations to stick to promised cuts as part of efforts to halt global warming.
“It is regrettable,” Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, said. But she predicted that Japan’s planned investments in energy efficiency and renewable power would prove that the target could be toughened.
“This move by Japan could have a devastating impact,” said Naoyuki Yamagishi of environmental campaign group WWF Japan. “It could further accelerate the race to the bottom among other developed countries.”
Japan’s decision added to gloom at the Warsaw talks, where no major countries have announced more ambitious goals to cut emissions, despite warnings from scientists about the risks of more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
Poor nations want the rich to commit to deeper emissions cuts while providing more finance to help developing nations deal with the impacts of climate change, a major issue at the talks after the Philippines was devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful ever recorded.
Australia has been criticized for watering down its climate policies, and Brazil reported on Thursday a rise in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon, releasing more CO2 that had been stored in trees.
Natural-gas consumption by Japan’s 10 utilities was up 8.4 percent in October from a year earlier and coal use was up 4.4 percent as the companies used more fossil fuels to compensate for the nuclear shutdown, industry data showed yesterday.
“Our energy mix, including the use of nuclear power, is currently being reviewed. In that context, we decided to set this target at this point,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said of the new goal.
Hiroshi Minami, Japan’s chief negotiator at the UN talks, said the new goal “is based on zero nuclear power” in future. He said the original target was based on a nuclear share of more than 40 percent of electricity generation.
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