Poland wins emissions deal

An EU summit ended in a good deal for Poland, but the UN climate conference appeared to accomplish little
A draft compromise on CO2 emissions cuts, agreed upon at an EU summit in Brussels in December, states that Poland will receive up to 70 percent of its emission allowance for free. The exemption will be gradually phased out by 2020 and is considered a satisfactory improvement on the previous deal, which offered half the emissions allowance for free until 2016.

“Without doubt, [the summot] ended with our success,” said President Lech Kaczyński. Poland had threatened to veto the deal amid concerns that emissions credits would prove too expensive. Over 90 percent of Poland’s power comes from coal-dependent energy plants.

The draft deal creates a solidarity fund, retaining 10 percent of revenues from credit trading, which will be distributed among nine post-communist EU member states to help them invest in cleaner technologies.

An additional two percent of credit trading revenues will be divided among eastern EU members in recognition of the emissions reductions they achieved in the 1990s after the collapse of communism.

“The deal is flexible, allowing for the modernization of the Polish power sector and ensuring that there will not be any steep increase in electricity prices,” a Polish official told Reuters. In other news, on the sidelines of the UN climate change conference in Poznań, Poland entered into tentative agreements with Ireland and the World Bank, each of which will purchase carbon emission credits under the Kyoto Protocol. According to unofficial information, Ireland is ready to buy emission allowances worth EUR15 (zł.59.5) million, while the World Bank signed a separate deal to purchase 10 million tonnes of emissions for around EUR10 (zł.39.6) per tonne.

The Poznań summit finished with a proposal for a “Solidarity Partnership” declaration, but many delegates argued that too little had been done to move forward on climate-change countermeasures.

Source: By Marcin Poznan, Warsaw Business Journal