Climate change policy

US President Barack Obama has unveiled a new plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants at home, international media outlets reported.

Whereas an earlier version of the plan required a 30% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, the new version increases that target to 32%.

President Barack Obama framed climate change as the toughest and most pressing challenge of our time on August 3, as he unveiled the first ever limits on US power plant emissions.

"No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a change in climate," Obama said, warning: "There is such a thing as being too late."  

US President Barack Obama will August 3 unveil what he called the "biggest, most important step we've ever taken" to fight climate change, a sensitive issue central to his legacy.

Countries' current pledges for greenhouse gas cuts will fail to achieve a peak in energy-related emissions by 2030 and likely result in a temperature rise of 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the International Energy Agency said on June 15.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Group of 7 industrial powers to pledge to tackle climate change during their meeting in a Bavarian Castle on Sunday. She is urging the group to give $100 billion to help poor countries tackle climate change.

France will organize and preside the 21st United Nations conference on climate change in December, French Ambassador to Romania Francois Saint-Paul announced on Thursday, opening a seminar on energy efficiency in Bucharest.

Photo credit: (c) Silviu MATEI / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

By Susanna Twidale & Barbara Lewis

Europe's poorest nations, including heavily indebted Greece, emerge the main winners from a deal to reform the world's biggest carbon market that will raise billions for EU governments, data from Thomson Reuters Point Carbon shows.

BELGRADE - The Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection has made an estimate of possibilities for reducing emissions of greenhouse effect gases in the period up to 2030, Minister Snezana Bogosavljavic Boskovic said on Monday.

The Ministry of Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy is cancelling the increases to the special duty for the reduction of gas emissions (ETMEAR) which had been decided by Greece's power regulator RAE. The amendment concerning this is to be included in the first draft bill to be submitted to Greek Parliament.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on March 12 urged nations to set ambitious goals to curb greenhouse gases, warning climate change deniers that gambling with the Earth's future was a risky business as "there is no Planet B."