Can the EU help with global warming?

Climate Change is now at the very heart of EU policy-making with a strong emphasis on putting the EU on track to a low carbon energy future. The EU believes that to prevent dangerous climate change, average global temperature increases should not exceed two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The EU strongly supports the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The EU believes that urgent further global efforts are needed in order to tackle climate change effectively. The EU negotiates as a single body at the UN Climate Change meetings. Outside the international negotiations framework, the EU also co-operates with a wide range of third countries on initiatives to address climate change.

The European Climate Change Programme covers an extensive range of policies and measures at EU level to tackle climate change.

The Portuguese Presidency led the EU delegation. It successfully launched discussions on a comprehensive, global and long-term framework for addressing climate change which is up to the task of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level which avoids dangerous climate change.  The launch of climate negotiations at Bali was a critical staging post in the global effort to agree how to move to a global low-carbon economy. There is now a broader and deeper sense than ever before of the urgency of this task. For the first time all the countries of the world agreed to start negotiations on a new climate deal after the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends in 2012.

The EU is now further developing its medium and long-term strategy on climate change, to contribute to these discussions. The UK uses  the EU’s leverage to move climate change up the political agenda through third country summits, including with China, India and Russia. Climate change will remain an important element of future EU co-operation with these countries, and all major energy-consuming countries.

The ground-breaking EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been operating since 1 January 2005, and Phase II began on 1 January 2008. It currently covers around 1000 installations in the UK and more than 12 000 across the EU.

The UK strongly supports emissions trading as a cost-effective means of achieving climate change objectives. The UK will work with the Commission and other member states to influence the development of the ETS, to ensure that it delivers important environmental benefits and operates as an economically efficient trading market that maintains the competitiveness of UK industry.

The UK Government is committed to taking action to reduce the impact of aviation emissions on climate change. It considers the best means of achieving this is to work with the European Commission and other Member States. In December 2007, the EU agreed to extend the scope of the EU ETS to include emissions from the aviation sector. From 2012 emissions from all flights entering and leaving the EU would be covered by the scheme.