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Lithuania joins EU carbon revolt
AFP
VILNIUS
Petroleumworld.com 08 17 07
Lithuania on Thursday joined a growing revolt against European Union caps on carbon dioxide emissions, saying it was taking legal action against what it sees as its unfair 2008-2012 quota.
In a statement, the Lithuanian government said it wanted the European Court to overrule the decision by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to allocate it an annual carbon dioxide emissions quota of 8.851 million tonnes.
The government said that it had decided to act after having analysed the "social and economic consequences" of the allocation.
Carbon dioxide is one of the main gases held responsible for global climate change, and the commission is responsible for approving national governments' bids for carbon dioxide allocations as part of the 27-member EU's drive to curb emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.The commission allocations have a particular impact on industries such as metallurgy, oil refining and power stations which have a high energy consumption and are responsible for nearly half of EU carbon dioxide emissions.
Vilnius had first requested a quota of 16.59 million tonnes, and then tried for 11.017 million tonnes, but the Commission refused to budge.
" Lithuania urged the commission to take into account the special situation of the country," the government said.
Lithuania and the nine other ex-communist member states of the EU have been working to overcome a legacy of slack environmental standards and several have made big strides over the past decade.
However, several governments in the region are concerned that a big clampdown on emissions will hinder their efforts to bridge the economic gap with the older western members of the EU.
Five other ex-communist EU member states -- Lithuania's neighbours Latvia and Poland, plus Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- have already launched legal challenges against their quotas.Lithuania believes the commission failed to take into account the "rapid growth of the economy", the government said.
It also said that Brussels sidelined the needs of Lithuania's cement, fertiliser and oil refining industries, and the fact that the country may face trouble sticking to its emissions quota because of power generation headaches as it lives up to a pledge to shut down its aging Ignalina nuclear power station by 2009.
AFP 16 1503 GMT 08 07Copyright© 2007 AFP. All rights reserved.
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