- Reductions promised - but a massive increase
predicted
-
- Days after the end of the Buenos Aires
conference on climate change, there is a sombre warning from the world's
biggest polluter.
-
- The US Energy Information Administration
(EIA), part of the American government's Department of Energy, has published
a draft version of its 1999 annual energy outlook.
-
- The outlook predicts that US emissions
of carbon dioxide (CO2) from energy use will rise by 33% by 2010, compared
with their 1990 level.
-
- And by 2020, the outlook predicts, CO2
emissions will have almost doubled, to 47% up on 1990.
-
- CO2 is the main gas caused by human activity
which climatologists say is responsible for global warming, known also
as the greenhouse effect.
-
- Under the Kyoto Protocol, an international
agreement drawn up last year, the industrialised world agreed to cut its
emissions of all greenhouse gases to 5.2% below their 1990 levels by about
2010.
-
- Mission impossible ?
-
- The US announced in Buenos Aires that
it was signing the Protocol - the last major industrial country to do so.
-
- That means it is legally bound to cut
all its greenhouse gases by 7% - which will almost certainly be impossible
if the EIA prediction is accurate.
-
- A former US climate negotiator, Robert
Reinstein, said earlier this month that his country could not live up to
its Kyoto commitments.
-
-
- Mr Reinstein, who was the chief American
negotiator at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, said the US had signed up to something
impossible.
-
- The EIA says emissions are likely to
rise so fast because energy demand will itself rise.
-
- The agency also expects nuclear power
to decline, and thinks there will be only a slow growth in the use of renewable
energy, such as wind and solar power.
-
- In making its predictions, it has taken
into account the plans already made by Washington for stabilizing greenhouse
gas emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000.
-
- By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
-
- Days after the end of the Buenos Aires
conference on climate change, there is a sombre warning from the world's
biggest polluter.
-
- The US Energy Information Administration
(EIA), part of the American government's Department of Energy, has published
a draft version of its 1999 annual energy outlook.
-
- The outlook predicts that US emissions
of carbon dioxide (CO2) from energy use will rise by 33% by 2010, compared
with their 1990 level.
-
- And by 2020, the outlook predicts, CO2
emissions will have almost doubled, to 47% up on 1990.
-
- CO2 is the main gas caused by human activity
which climatologists say is responsible for global warming, known also
as the greenhouse effect.
-
- Under the Kyoto Protocol, an international
agreement drawn up last year, the industrialised world agreed to cut its
emissions of all greenhouse gases to 5.2% below their 1990 levels by about
2010.
-
- Mission impossible?
-
- The US announced in Buenos Aires that
it was signing the Protocol - the last major industrial country to do so.
-
- That means it is legally bound to cut
all its greenhouse gases by 7% - which will almost certainly be impossible
if the EIA prediction is accurate.
-
- A former US climate negotiator, Robert
Reinstein, said earlier this month that his country could not live up to
its Kyoto commitments.
-
-
- Mr Reinstein, who was the chief American
negotiator at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, said the US had signed up to something
impossible.
-
- The EIA says emissions are likely to
rise so fast because energy demand will itself rise.
-
- The agency also expects nuclear power
to decline, and thinks there will be only a slow growth in the use of renewable
energy, such as wind and solar power.
-
- In making its predictions, it has taken
into account the plans already made by Washington for stabilizing greenhouse
gas emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000.
-
- Gains soon wiped out
-
- But it does not take account of new policies
that may be introduced now the US has signed the Kyoto Protocol.
-
- The EIA accepts that improved technology
will mean more fuel-efficient cars and aircraft.
-
- But it says the gains will be offset
by the increase in road and air travel.
-
-
- It expects the price of natural gas to
increase only modestly, while the price of coal is predicted actually to
drop.
-
- The EIA expects the price of a ton of
coal to fall from $18.14 in 1997 to $12.74 in 2020, partly as a result
of "competitive pressures on labor costs".
-
- The relative cheapness of natural gas
and oil are expected to make it hard for renewable energy to penetrate
the market.
-
- And while the US was importing just under
half the oil it used last year, that figure is expected to rise over the
next two decades to almost two-thirds.
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