SA announces emissions target as climate talks start
17-Dec-2009
Source: Engineering News

South Africa will undertake mitigation actions which will result in a deviation below the current emissions baseline of around 34% by 2020 and by around 42% by 2025. This level of effort enables the country's emissions to peak between 2020 and 2025, plateau for about a decade and decline in absolute terms thereafter, said the Presidency in a statement.

This undertaking would be conditional upon a fair agreement at the Copenhagen climate change talks and finance, technology and capacity building assistance from the developed nations to developing countries.

The highly anticipated fifteenth conference of the parties (COP15) under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) kicked off in Denmark's capital on Monday. South African President Jacob Zuma would be in attendance for the Heads of State and government segment of COP15 on December 17 and 18.

The GHG mitigations were in line with South Africa's Long Term Mitigation Scenario (LTMS) study.

The LTMS was used to inform the policy choices that would allow South Africa to aggressively tackle climate change in a way that allowed for job creation and achievement of developmental opportunities of a twenty-first century ‘green economy'.

"South Africa, being a responsible global citizen and in line with its obligations under article 4,1 of the UNFCCC acknowledges its responsibility to undertake national action that will contribute to the global effort to reduce GHG emissions," said the Office of the President.

The UNFCCC also said that developed countries would need to provide fast-track funding on the order of at least $10-billion a year through to 2012 to enable developing countries to immediately plan and launch low-emission growth and adaptation strategies and to build internal capacity. At the same time, developed countries would need to indicate how they intended to raise predictable and sustainable long-term financing and what their longer-term commitments would be.

South Africa's negotiating team was advocating for an agreement at COP15 that was a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and a balance between development and climate imperatives. Success in Copenhagen should strengthen climate resilient development and assist the world's poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate, said the Department of Environmental Affairs.

South Africa highlighted that its greatest challenge was to ensure energy security and access to electricity as a developmental imperative and, simultaneously, lay the foundation to a path of low carbon growth - a conundrum since almost 90% of the nation's electricity was generated from coal-fired power stations.

"In the short-to-medium term, we have an immediate energy supply challenge, which alternative energy supply options cannot meet at affordable cost and at the scale needed, therefore, we are aggressively pursuing carbon-efficient coal technology, in the medium term," said the Presidency.

"The potential for multilateral finance to unlock ambitious mitigation actions is already evident in recent events. Clearly, the scale of support enables a concomitant level of action," said the Presidency, noting particularly the Clean Technology Investment Fund (CTIF).

South Africa's recent application to the CTIF has mobilised $500-million, leveraged to over $1,6-billion from other multi-lateral sources in order to support the establishment of a 100-MW utility scale wind power generation; a 100-MW concentrated solar power plant; conversion from electric water heating to solar water heaters for one- million households; and scaling up of energy efficiency projects as leverage for commercial and industrial sectors.

Climate change is a global challenge, which will take a combination of the full range of available interventions, technologies, policies and behavior changes to resolve. It will also demand massive investment in new low-carbon technologies, said the South African government.

UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer on Sunday expressed confidence that the meeting in Copenhagen would deliver a comprehensive, ambitious and effective international climate change deal.

"Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together. So while there will be more steps on the road to a safe climate future, Copenhagen is already a turning point in the international response to climate change," added De Boer on the unprecedented political momentum to finalise a deal in Copenhagen.

De Boer spoke of three layers of action that governments must agree to in the course of the two-week negotiating sessions: fast and effective implementation of immediate action on climate change; ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, including start-up funding and a long-term funding commitment; and a long-term shared vision on a low-emissions future for all.

With 193 parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 190 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialised countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.

The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.