BERLIN, Aug 21. (Xinhua) -- The Confederation of German Industry (BDI) has warned the European Union (EU) Commission on Tuesday against unilaterally adopting more ambitious Carbon Dioxide (CO2) reduction goals for the bloc.
"Stricter EU climate policy goals are useless (on their own). We oppose unilateral actions by the EU", Holger Loesch, deputy director of the BDI, told press in Berlin. According to Loesch, it was naive to believe that Europeans could compensate for the abrupt exit of the United States from the Paris climate agreement given that the more populous EU already only accounted for 10 percent of global CO2 emissions compared to a 16 percent U.S. share.
The comments by the industry representative were made in response to an announcement by EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete that Brussels would seek to further increase the amount of binding greenhouse gas emission reductions in member states from 40 percent to 45 percent between 1990 and 2030. "It is my intention to confront member states with this issue shortly", Canete told the German press agency (dpa) on Tuesday.
However, Loesch cautioned the EU against biting off more than it could chew on climate policy. "The citizens of Europe and its businesses are in need of certainty as to how the existing ambitious targets can be met in an efficient manner", the BDI deputy director argued.
"Effective and affordable climate protection measures can only succeed if they are based on real international cooperation", Loesch said. As a consequence, the Brussels-based commission would be better advised to focus on achieving the targets already set rather than continuously lifting raising the bar for EU members.
Loesch noted that more ambitious CO2 reduction targets were not on the agenda of the upcoming global climate conference in the Polish city of Kattowitz. Instead, delegates attending the summit had yet to agree on concrete measures to implement the 2015 Paris agreement which has now been signed by all United Nations (UN) states except for the United States.
The United States is the second largest national producer of CO2 emissions in absolute terms and the world's single largest producer thereof on a per capita basis. Nevertheless, U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that his administration would end government campaigns to promote energy saving for his country's citizens, such as subsidies for fuel-efficient vehicles.
