The Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997, is the centerpiece of global efforts to address climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Its first commitment period ends this year, but it has not had a significant impact on global carbon emissions, despite the political capital invested, numerous Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings and considerable economic costs.
It will only get worse. At the Durban COP in December 2011, it was agreed that participating countries would try to agree by 2015 on what they could do after 2020. At current growth rates, the economies of China and India will double to their current size by 2020. , there is a need to add 400-600 GW of coal-fired generation capacity to their power systems.
The reasons for the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol lie in its architecture. It is based on carbon production, not carbon consumption. It has a predominantly European focus. It does nothing to address the immediate problem of global coal burning. It is widely open to free-riding, allows nations to avoid cutting emissions while others do so, and has few enforcement mechanisms. These are deep flaws that make the protocol incapable of slowing emissions, let alone reversing them. Fortunately, other, better, bottom-up approaches hold hope for progress.
carbon footprint
At the heart of the Kyoto Protocol is the idea that developed countries accept caps on carbon production from power stations, industrial installations and the like within their borders. Developing countries take measures but are not required to impose caps. Overall, carbon emissions should have been reduced by about 5% from 1990 levels by the end of 2012.
The main problem with the Kyoto approach is that it does not address the carbon footprint – carbon consumption. The carbon footprint of a country (and an individual) is best measured by looking at the carbon embedded in the goods and services that each consumes. National boundaries do not account for global warming. If an American consumer buys a car, it matters little whether the steel inside it is made in the United States or China.
The difference between carbon production and carbon consumption is not trivial. Take the United Kingdom: from 1990 to 2005, its carbon production declined by about 15%. But when the carbon involved in imports is taken into account, the consumption of carbon increases by about 19%.
From Kyoto’s point of view, this is a victory; This is a disaster for climate change. It explains how emissions may clearly fall in Europe, but globally rapidly developing countries, such as China and India, export energy-intensive goods to Europe and the United States, which together contribute to the world’s gross make up about 50% of the domestic product.
It should come as no surprise that Europe has led the way in Kyoto. Meeting carbon-production targets has been comparatively easy, and they make Europe good. But the actual reasons for the decline in carbon production don’t provide much cause for celebration.
The collapse of the Soviet Union began in the late 1980s – well timed for Kyoto’s use of 1990 as the reference baseline year (see ‘Carbon Ascent’). Prior to this, Eastern Europe was notorious for inefficient, energy-intensive industrial production, much of which – from a Kyoto perspective – simply shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Once the United States opted out of the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement required Russia to come on board so that it could enter into force; It was a stipulation that the protocol must be ratified by at least 55 countries, which covered 55% of global emissions in 1990. Russia brought in a lot of ‘hot air’ – emissions reductions that were inevitable.
Better still, from a Kyoto compliance standpoint, Western Europe was also de-industrializing, switching from energy-intensive production activities to service industries, partly because Chinese exports were overtaking industries in Europe.
Most of it would have happened anyway. Europe’s green policies have made little difference, and the economic crisis has made it even easier to reduce its carbon output. The European Union’s (EU) climate-change package of 2008 focused on the short term. By 2020, it aims to reduce EU carbon emissions by 20%, increase energy production from renewables by 20% and increase energy efficiency by 20%.
Aside from the economic illiteracy of believing that everything adds up to the magic number of 20, the effect has been to focus almost all resources on current renewable-energy technologies – wind, rooftop solar and a small number of biomass.
These measures were intended to reinforce the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) 4, which has produced a short-term, volatile and low price for carbon when a medium to long-term, stable but rising carbon price is needed.
