Summary: Climate-friendly policies not only reduce greenhouse emissions and bring environmental benefits; they also boost and diversify the economy, a recent report scoring some 100 climate policies from G20 countries reveals.
The report carried out by Ecofys and Germanwatch for WWF and E3G evaluates climate policies of countries accounting for around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, identifying best and worst examples and lessons learned.
The top places in the report were given to an “Efficiency in buildings” program implemented by the German government and a “Feed-in tariff for renewable electricity” initiative, also in Germany. The latter guarantees a producer of renewable energy a fixed feed-in tariff for 20 years. Germany’s buildings program reduces emissions, creates jobs in the construction sector, and offers broad scope for replication in others countries.
The report also exposes a number of bad policies, often in the same countries where the good policies were implemented, which both fail to deliver economic benefits and block the way to a low carbon future. These include measures such as subsidizing of local mining, preferential treatment of energy-intensive industries and lack of comprehensive water management.
Source: November 5, 2009 WWF Press Release
More Information:
- A pdf of the report is at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/scorecards_2009_11_02_online_version_final.pdf
- A briefing note on the report is at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/e3g_wwf_scorecards_ii_briefing_note_nov_2009.pdf
- The full press release is at http://www.panda.org/wwf_news/news/?uNewsID=179223
Prepared by: This message was distributed by Kellen Mahoney, who may be reached at e-mail: kmahoney@eetnews.com
