Denmark slams Keidanren 2020 emissions target, seeks 25% cut for Japan+

TOKYO, May 18 Kyodo -
Denmark, host of a key U.N. climate change meeting in December, criticized on
Monday the Japan Business Federation's call for a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions
target for Japan that is 4 percent higher than 1990 levels, saying the world
wants Japan to pursue a much more ambitious target.

''This is not possible as I see it in the world of the 21st century,'' Danish
Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard told a news conference in Tokyo
after holding talks with the federation.
''The Japanese target must be so ambitious that it forces other economies and
other regions to go to the upper levels of what they can do,'' she said.
During a meeting with Environment Minister Tetsuo Saito in Tokyo, Hedegaard
asked how Japan feels about an emissions reduction target of 25 percent in 2020
from 1990 levels, according to Environment Ministry officials, a sign she
favors a 25 percent reduction target among the six options Japan is
considering.
A government panel has been studying six options for Japan's greenhouse gas
emissions target for 2020 ranging from a 4 percent increase to a 25 percent
reduction from 1990 levels. The federation, the nation's most influential
business lobby known as Nippon Keidanren, said last week it favors an option of
a 4 percent increase.
The panel will collect comments from various sectors before the government sets
a 2020 target in June. Japan has vowed to cut its emissions by 60 to 80 percent
by 2050 from current levels.
Hedegaard told Saito the world is closely watching the ambition of Japan's
midterm target. She said other countries such as the United States can pursue
an ambitious goal if Japan adopts such a goal, according to the officials.
Hedegaard was quoted as telling Saito that Denmark wants Japan to exert
leadership in U.N. negotiations for a successor to the carbon-capping Kyoto
Protocol, which will expire in 2012.
The negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the December talks in Copenhagen,
officially called the 15th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N.
Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Hedegaard brushed aside Nippon Keidanren's concern that a stronger emissions
cut target would undermine Japan's industrial competitiveness, citing Denmark's
data that exports of the country's energy-saving products have grown twice as
much as those of other products, the officials said.
Japan has ''proven'' in recent decades that ''to be serious about energy
efficiency is also a way to gain growth, to create jobs,'' Hedegaard told the
news conference. ''It's not harming our economies. It's other way around,'' she
said.
Meanwhile, to secure cooperation from emerging economies such as China and
India in order to make the Copenhagen meeting successful, Hedegaard said one of
the incentives for the countries would be providing ''extensive technology
cooperation.''
==Kyodo