Blair Says Saving Energy Is Faster Fix Than C02 Trade

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said saving energy and forests will yield faster reductions in greenhouse gases than trading carbon-dioxide allowances.

Blair, one of the biggest advocates of capping and trading emission credits when he led Britain from 1997 to 2007, said global carbon markets will pay off after 2020. He spoke to reporters at a July 3 press conference to introduce today's report from the London-based Climate Group, which includes governments and businesses focused on global warming.

"If you want to meet a target that's just over a decade away, there are things that we know that work, that we have to do now," Blair said. "Otherwise, we won't get there."

Blair, now a senior adviser at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the New York-based bank, said the carbon market "will take time to develop, and it will yield a significant benefit."

Investors represented by the International Emissions Trading Association are fighting proposals to limit or kill the United Nation's offset program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism. The system creates credits that the World Bank says accounted for 26 percent of the $126 billion of permits traded in the global carbon market in 2008.

China, the world's most populous nation, said in May that developed countries need more-ambitious proposals to reduce global-warming emissions for international climate negotiations culminating in Copenhagen to succeed this year.

Competing Targets

They should agree to trim greenhouse-gas output by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, the nations said. The European Union, the largest bloc of industrialized countries at the negotiating table, has asked for a 30 percent drop in the period. A draft U.S. law would trim discharges 17 percent in 2020 from 2005 levels, or about 5 percent compared with 1990.

"I'm not suggesting you don't have a target," Blair said. "I'm simply not pinning myself to the precise percentage."

Achieving the goals will require a combination of government and non-government investment, he said. "As the carbon market develops, then the private sector will be increasingly important."

The Climate Group report says the world needs to spend about $1 trillion a year through 2050 to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). That's 1.4 percent of the world's gross domestic product.

The world will get more serious about climate protection this year, Blair predicted. Energy and climate will be high on the agenda when leaders of the Group of Eight meet this week in Italy. A draft G-8 document last week said greenhouse-gas output should peak by 2020.

‘Serious Action'

The gathering, including President Barack Obama, also will discuss a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. Almost 200 countries are set to gather in Copenhagen in December to debate terms for a new accord to combat rising temperatures and sea levels.

"What China and India and others want to know is that the West is going to take serious action," Blair said. "That will require a target, but it will also require realistic means of achieving it."

Industrialized and developing nations need to quickly implement stricter energy efficiency rules for buildings, vehicles and appliances, as well as renewable energy and fuel standards, according to The Climate Group report.