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SayWatt
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Post subject: G8 to Push China, India for Energy Monitoring
 Posted: Jun 07, 2008 - 07:08 PM CST
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The Group of Eight industrialized countries may try to convince China and India to agree to monitoring of cuts in energy use that Japan says will fail without support from the world's fastest-growing economies.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari and officials from other G-8 countries will meet Zhang Guobao, head of China's State Energy Bureau, South Korean Knowledge Economy Minister Lee Youn-Ho and Indian officials in the northern Japanese city of Aomori to discuss energy conservation. India and China have refused to commit to long-term pollution goals, saying economic growth is a priority.
``China and India are key,'' Amari told reporters in Tokyo this week. ``Without commitments from those two nations, any strategies will be meaningless.''
The 95 percent gain in crude oil prices in a year forced India to raise fuel prices this week, while China volunteered last year to cut emissions of gases blamed for global warming. G- 8 environment ministers pledged on May 26 to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2050. This weekend's meeting may help officials struggling to prepare the groundwork for a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
``Setting targets that somehow limit emission volumes will be hard to achieve at this moment,'' said Kenichiro Yamaguchi, chief consultant with the Global Warming Research Group at Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc. ``A key for setting numerical targets would be how much developed nations can accommodate demands of developing countries in transferring conservation technology.''
Alternative Energy
The G-8 -- the U.S., Japan, Canada, Germany, France, U.K., Italy, and Russia -- and China, India and South Korea, account for about 65 percent of global energy demand. Ministers will discuss exchanging technology for alternatives to oil, such as wind and nuclear power.
The International Energy Agency today said the world will need to spend $45 trillion on developing clean technologies in order to meet the G-8's target of halving global emissions by 2050. Nabuo Tanaka, the Paris-based agency's executive director, called for ``a global energy technology revolution,'' according to a statement released in Tokyo.
India `Reluctant'
The 11 countries will also seek agreements on national and industry targets for cutting consumption under a body to be called the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation, which the G-8 plans to create by the end of this year, according to Japan's trade ministry.
``China has already set its energy-conservation target, so it's unlikely to resist establishing new targets,'' said Koichi Sasaki, a senior researcher at the Institution of Energy Economics in Tokyo. ``India is more reluctant to introduce numerical aims for conservation. It regards it as too early because its economy is still taking off.''
India and China's failure to agree on long-term targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions has been a stumbling block in negotiations for a new climate treaty, set to be completed in Copenhagen next year.
India's economy expanded 9 percent in the year ended March 31, the least since 2005. Growth may slow further to about 8.5 percent in the current financial year, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in New Delhi on May 30. China's economy is expected to expand 10 percent, according to 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Biggest Polluters
The 1997 Kyoto treaty requires its 37 signatory nations to cut emissions by a combined 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The U.S., the world's biggest polluter, followed by China, rejected the accord as unfair because it set no emission reductions for developing nations.
``Energy conservation and cutting emissions are closely connected,'' Sasaki said. ``If the 11 nations can agree on establishing energy conservation targets, in my opinion, that's sufficient. Whether they can agree on emissions targets at next month's summit is something different.''
The G-8 ministers will also call on oil exporters to raise production, with oil trading above $120 a barrel. Increasing output is the key to controlling spiraling prices, Korea's Ministry of Knowledge Economy said yesterday in a statement.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces more than 40 percent of the world's oil, has no plans to change output before its scheduled meeting in September, Qatar's Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said on May 22 in a phone interview from Doha.
``Oil producers said the spikes aren't their problem, but that's not true,'' Japan's Amari said. ``It's a problem for both suppliers and consumers. We need to share a sense of urgency.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home |
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