Russia Urged To Join EU's Greenhouse Gas Scheme.

Russia should join the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in order to profit both financially and environmentally from its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). Such a move could also help the EU to meet its carbon reduction targets under the Kyoto treaty.

"There is a lot of potential there for the EU and Russia", said Birol in an interview published on Nov. 10 by the Financial Times, adding: "[President Putin and the EU] have a very strong dialogue on environmental issues already". While it would not be possible for Russia to join in the first stage of the EU scheme, which starts in January 2005, it might be possible for it to participate in further stages, from 2008. According to IEA projections, Russia should have about 640m tonnes of carbon credits to trade by 2010. That could translate into as much as $10 bn in windfall revenues for Russia, according to Point Carbon, a consultancy.

IEA projections for the EU show that if current trends continue, the 25 IEA member-states will need to buy in carbon credits from countries outside the bloc if they are to meet their carbon reduction targets in future years. Under the EU's emissions trading scheme, industrial installations that produce carbon dioxide are capped at a certain level of gas emissions. If they produce more than that, they must face fines or buy in allowances - or "carbon credits" - permitting them to produce more. Installations that produce less gas than their cap can sell these allowances, or credits. Japan could become a major market for Russian credits (see gmt19cNov8).

Birol also urged Kyoto signatories to draw up a strategy for including developing countries such as China and India, whose greenhouse gas emissions are projected to rise rapidly. These countries are not currently obliged to reduce their emissions under the protocol. In developed countries, he said, there were many opportunities for reducing the amount of energy used through simple measures such as more efficient electrical equipment.

Encouraging the take-up of these technologies among consumers, however, might require government subsidies, he said, which he would urge ministers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to consider next year.

The Pew Centre for Global Climate Change in the US, where the government has rejected the Kyoto accord, published a study on Nov. 9 showing "observable impacts of climate change" in north America, where it said animals and plants had been struggling to cope with the impact of global warming. The Pew Centre said: "While some animal species are already changing their ranges to adapt to warmer temperatures, future global warming is likely to exceed the ability of many species to migrate or adjust".

Differing international approaches to climate change were highlighted by a clutch of reports giving contradictory views on global warming. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report, published on Nov. 9 by the eight countries with Arctic territories, found the Arctic to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, threatening fisheries, indigenous people and species such as the polar bear. The report was welcomed by US senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, whose bill to address global warming was narrowly defeated by Congress last year. Senator McCain said: "This crucial work will aid in our efforts to secure a mandatory cap on the emission of greenhouse gases in the US".

The ACIA report is the fruit of four years' work by more than 250 scientists, commissioned by the Arctic Council - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US. But the International Policy Network, a development think-tank, said the Arctic was likely to cool rather than warm in the next 50 years and sea levels were not rising. Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy of Future Studies, said predictions of rising sea levels and other effects were "fatally flawed".