30 Oct 2015

Climate change plans will miss target

12:10 pm on 30 October 2015

The World Energy Council is dismissing climate change plans as not good enough and says ot plans to write to all participants of upcoming climate talks in Paris.

Greenhouse gas emissions.

Photo: 123rf

New Zealand is among the countries who will be participating in those talks.

At a meeting in Ethiopia, the 90-year-old World Energy Council made its call, saying it would criticise what it believed was a low level of ambition in climate change plans being developed by governments ahead of the talks.

It will also call for countries to agree to proper pricing of carbon emissions at the meetings.

New Zealand will take an offer to the talks of cutting emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, or 11 percent below 1990 levels.

But this has been condemned as insufficient by an organisation of environmental monitors called Climate Action Tracker.

The group said New Zealand was not alone; it had analysed the majority of offers ahead of the Paris talks and said collectively they would not be able to meet the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming to 2degC.

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