EU to discuss plans on Kyoto Protocol extension

According to reports the EU are discussing a proposal to resurrect the Kyoto Protocol and extend the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) beyond 2012.

Over the next few weeks EU member states will debate prolonging the climate treaty set in 2007, with the plans potentially being submitted at the UN climate change conference in South Africa later this year.

The proposals would be set under the condition that the new treaty would expire in 2018, and that then after a new unified law would be augmented to mitigate the emissions of major nations.

"It's not a formal EU position yet, although it is something that has gained ground in recent months," a senior EU negotiator told Point Carbon News. "We see there are a lot of parties that want to maintain the Kyoto Protocol and its rules-based system, maybe it's possible to preserve the rules, but not ratify (a second period)," he added.

An agreement on the proposals is expected to be reached by the 27 EU member states in October at a scheduled meeting held by EU environment ministers. If an amicable decision is reached then the bloc will attempt to agree a collective negotiating position for the year-end U.N. climate negotiations in Durban.

Given the fact that new investment in CDM has fallen in recent months and shows no signs of recovering soon, an agreement by the EU bloc member states would see renewed confidence in the initiative. A plan by developing nations to extend the CDM as part of signing for a second period of the Kyoto Protocol was firmly rejected by the EU earlier this year. The EU at the time made it clear that until the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters, such as China, India and the U.S, firmly committed to mitigating emissions then a Kyoto target was far from viable.