FT.com / World - Germany in push to set G8 emissions target

FT.com / World - Germany in push to set G8 emissions target

Germany in push to set G8 emissions target
By Alan Beattie in London and Hugh Williamson in Berlin

Published: April 13 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 13 2007 03:00

Germany, this year's chair of the Group of Eight rich countries, has pushed the group to set a tough target for reducing carbon emissions, the first time it has been asked to commit to an explicit reduction.

But environmentalists said the World Bank, which the G8 has asked to finance the shift away from carbon use in the developing world, was continuing to ramp up lending for oil and gas.

A February draft of the final communiqué of the June heads of government meeting, obtained by the Financial Times, says: "Global warming caused largely by human activities is accelerating . . . beyond a temperature increase of 2 degrees C, risks from climate change will be largely unmanageable."

The draft said the G8 would "contribute our fair share" to limit global warming by ensuring global greenhouse gas emissions peaked in the next 10-15 years and then cutting them 50 per cent by 2050 from 1990 levels.

The US has dismissed calls for limits as "rhetoric". People in Berlin familiar with the German position said the 2°C limit to global warming remained in more recent drafts of the communiqué, but was facing "extremely strong opposition" from Washington, which was fighting its inclusion in the final draft.

The Germans and the British "would like to retain this language, but it will be very difficult", one person said.

The G8 has in the past called on the World Bank to fund greener energy generation in the developing world. Analysis of the bank's data for its lending in 2006 by the Bank Information Center, a Washington-based campaign group, showed lending to the fossil fuel industry rose by 93 per cent in 2006, compared with an increase of only 46 per cent in lending for renewable energy and conservation projects.

"There is a disconnect between what the G8 keeps saying and what the World Bank is doing," said Graham Saul, director of international programmes at the BIC. "Funding the expansion of the oil industry is a role the bank has played since the 1970s and it has been a great cash cow for them."

Jamal Saghir, director of energy for the World Bank, said the upward trend in the share of the bank's lending for control of carbon emissions was clear.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency projects had risen to 37 per cent of the World Bank Group's energy portfolio from just 14 per cent in 1994. "The bank is a world leader in lending for renewable energy and energy efficiency," he said. It had matched and beaten the target it had been set of increasing such lending by 20 per cent a year, Mr Saghir said.

The bank group as a whole includes its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, which has funded several controversial oil and gas pipelines in the developing world.

The G8 heads of government meet in June to discuss climate change, the world economy, trade and foreign policy. The communiqué also contains a strongly worded attack on "investment protectionism", which it says is imperilling the continued integration of the global economy.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007