Saturday round-up: Europe’s CO2 cut costs fall

Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, suggests that Europe should cut its CO2 emissions further now the cost of doing so has fallen. Credit: Simon Wedege

After finding that it will be cheaper than originally thought to reduce greenhouse gas output, the European Commission has invited its member countries to debate deeper emissions cuts. According to Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 will cost €32 billion less than suggested in 2008. That puts the cost at €48 billion per year or 0.32% of the European Union (EU)’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is one measure of its economic output. Consequently Hedegaard floated the idea of reducing emissions still further, by 30% from 1990 levels by 2020, on Wednesday.

The recession is the main reason for this reduced cost. A week ago the European Comission announced that verified EU emissions of greenhouse gases in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) in 2009 fell by 11.6% from 2008. “Due to the crisis the significant drop in emissions does not come as a surprise,” Hedegaard said. Two other reasons include cheaper supplies of natural gas, which produces less CO2 when burnt than coal, and more expensive carbon credits in the ETS, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas production.

As a consequence of this fall in emissions, the cost of reaching the 30% target is now estimated at €81 billion per year, €11 billion more than the 20% target was expected to cost two years ago. In fact, the EU has been committed to a 30% cut if other countries commit to a “fair share” of emissions since 2007. However the recession also looks set to play a role in whether European countries take up this opportunity, with Hedegaard emphasising that it is currently more of a concern than further CO2 cuts. “The decision is not for now,” she said.

A day earlier, the US Energy Information Adminstration predicted that worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide emissions would actually rise nearly 14% from 2007 to 2020, going from 29.7 billion to 33.8 billion metric tons. Its outlook reaches to 2035, when it says these emissions will reach 42.4 billion metric tons, a 43% percent increase from 2007. It forecasts that much of that increase will come from strong economic growth in developing countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels.

The US Energy Information Administration predicts that worldwide CO2 emissions from power generation will increase by 43% from 2007 to 2035. This will largely be driven by developing (labelled as non-OECD) countries. Credit: EIA

Increased temperatures caused by such CO2 levels could play havoc with North American small mammal populations, which US researchers this week say are delicately poised. The balance between species like mice, gophers and chipmunks was seriously impacted when the world came out of an ice age around 12,000 years ago, according to Jessica Blois of the University of Wisconsin and co-workers at Stanford University. They used fossils spanning the last 20,000 years that they excavated from a site known as Samwell’s Cave in Northern California to assess how the populations of these animals had changed. They published their results in top science journal Nature on Sunday.

A selection of teeth and claws from a variety of animals, all excavated from Samwell Cave in North California. All but the claw at lower left are from the Late Pleistocene epoch, around 12,000 years ago. Credit: Jessica Blois

Unlike larger species such as the mastodon and mammoth, which died out during that warming period, smaller mammals fared comparatively well. However, on closer inspection significant changes appear, Blois said. “Even though all of the species survived, small-mammal communities as a whole lost a substantial amount of diversity, which may make them less resilient to future change,” she said. One of the most successful species was the deer mouse, which is not as effective at mixing up soil as burrowing mammals, or at distributing seeds as squirrels. Future warming may see the disappearance of animals that have important roles in the ecosystem in favour of species like the deer mouse, the researchers say. “The small-mammal community that we have is really resilient, but it is headed toward a perturbation that is bigger than anything it has seen in the last million years,” added her Stanford colleague Elizabeth Hadly.