Japan vows future emissions cut

Japan will aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80% by 2050. Announcing the target, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Japan could match the EU in cuts over the next 10 years, but did not set targets on this timescale.

Fukuda also announced the setting up of a trial national carbon market which could help establish a global scheme.

The news came ahead of next month's G8 summit in Japan, at which heads of government aim to develop a position on future cuts in greenhouse emissions.

Fukuda hopes to use the summit to build a consensus among the G8 countries which currently remain divided on how to approach the period after the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.

He was in no doubt that a united effort seeking major reductions was needed.

"All nations of the world, including our own, must participate in this effort to make it work," he said. However, he refrained from setting short-term targets for national cuts, as the EU has done with its commitment to reduce emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

Fukuda said Japan could match the EU's ambition, and pledged to announce a short-term target in the future. While it is committed to a 6% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2008-2012 under the Kyoto Protocol, recent data showed that in 2005 its emissions were 7.1% above 1990 levels.

Many environmentalists argue that long-term targets allow governments to avoid taking the urgent action they believe is necessary.

National advancement

Fukuda also said the government would launch a trial carbon trading system later this year. It will allow companies to buy and sell what amount to "permits to pollute".

The European Union's version, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), has been in operation since 2005, and around the world there are a number of stock exchanges which trade carbon outside the EU scheme.

Fukuda believes that Japan's participation could speed the development of a global carbon market, which both the UN and the recent Stern Review concluded must be a major component of any unified worldwide attempt to reduce emissions.

The government is keen that hosting the G8 summit should advance Japan's environmental credentials. It played a leading role in the establishment and adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, agreed in the former Imperial capital in 1997.

"We can bolster Japan's standing in international society and strengthen our economy further by taking a leading role in the CO2 reduction revolution," said Fukuda.

But in recent months his government has aroused concern in some environmental circles by pushing a concept of sectoral emissions cuts, where targets would be set for different areas of the economy such as steelmaking, transport or energy.

Further concern was aroused by the agreement reached at last year's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum in Sydney, where Japan, the US and 19 other Pacific Rim countries agreed cuts based on "energy intensity" rather than carbon emissions, and made voluntarily rather than as part of an international package. Both ideas are seen by sceptics as potentially opening doors through which countries and companies could evade restrictions.

Loose bindings

The EU remains adamant - as do many developing countries - that any post-2012 deal is made through the UN process and on a global basis. At a UN climate convention meeting last year in Vienna, there was a good deal of consensus around the idea that emissions should be cut by 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020, which fits in with recommendations from scientists behind last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

More recently, the US administration said it would agree to binding cuts if others did likewise.

The detail of their position means that major developing economies would have to take on some kind of binding commitment. The Democrat-controlled ongress has examined a number of pieces of legislation aimed at curbing emissions.

But last week a bill that would have capped emissions from energy plants and heavy industry was blocked in the Senate, with opponents - mainly Republican - arguing it would wreak economic havoc.

The target for all of this activity is the UN climate summit at the end of 2009, when negotiators hope to have the building-blocks in place for a deal extending beyond 2012. Fukuda's speech suggests that Japan is keen to achieve a deal that makes meaningful reductions in emissions.

But many important players in the US remain to be convinced; and the much more difficult process of negotiating commitments from developing countries has yet to begin in earnest.

-BBC