Gov't panel unveils 6 options for Japan's 2020 emissions cut target

+

TOKYO, Feb. 12 Kyodo -
A government panel on Thursday unveiled six options for Japan's greenhouse gas
emissions target for 2020, ranging from a 7 percent increase to a 25 percent
reduction from 1990 levels.
The six options are a 6 percent growth, a range of a 2 percent reduction to a 7
percent increase, a 4 percent decline, a 1-12 percent decrease, a 16-17 percent
contraction and a 25 percent reduction.
Taking the six options into account, the government will step up studies on a
national midterm emissions reduction target, which Prime Minister Taro Aso has
said Japan will announce by June.
The panel, led by former Bank of Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui, presented the
options to a meeting of the Council on the Global Warming Issue, an advisory
body to Aso.
Aso said a new carbon-capping pact must involve all major emitters including
the United States, China and India, and that Japan's 2020 target must be
feasible and win broad support from the public.
''We don't mean to draw up scenarios that are groundless and not based on
science, even though we talk about 40, 50 (percent cuts) or other bullish
figures,'' Aso told the meeting, part of which was open to the press. ''We want
to present one (target) that is feasible for Japan.''
A 2020 target is crucial for Japan and other countries because it is a major
focus of U.N. negotiations for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which
expires in 2012. The negotiations are scheduled to conclude at a key U.N.
climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
Of the six options, the first three are based on the assumption that Japan will
make ''equal'' efforts with other developed countries toward the goal among
industrial nations as a group of slashing emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from
1990 levels.
The 1-12 percent reduction is based on equal amounts of spending for cutting,
for example, 1 ton of greenhouse gases, while the 16-17 percent cut stems from
equality in costs to curb emissions per gross domestic product. The last option
simply calls on Japan and other industrial nations to reduce emissions by 25
percent each.
Fukui said his eight-member panel will further study the six options, such as
how much costs they would involve, and that the panel will complete full
analyses on them by early April.
Environmentalists criticized the six options as not being ambitious enough to
address global warming because only one of the six is in line with a reduction
range referred to by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC recommends that developed countries as a
group cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 25-40
percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
''Prime Minister Taro Aso wants to win an election this year, and the midterm
target debate is his chance to present himself as a true global leader who
brings his country forward,'' said Kim Carstensen, director of the Global
Climate Initiative at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International.
''However, with the weak targets put on the table now he will be seen as a
laggard in the U.N. climate talks who also fails to set his country on track
for a green economy boom,'' Carstensen said.
Japan -- the world's fourth-biggest emitter after the United States, China and
Russia -- has already pledged to slash its emissions by 60 to 80 percent by
2050 from current levels.
Among other industrialized economies, the European Union is committed to
cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. Australia says it
will rein in emissions by 5 percent in 2020 from 2000 levels.
U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to slash emissions to 1990 levels by
2020 before reducing them a further 80 percent by 2050.
==Kyodo
2009-02-12 22:26:44