Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
be a teacher pointing to a better way. The nations of the
world were divided into two classes, the industrialized and
the developing. The industrialized nations were to take
the lead and only they, as listed in Annex B of the Proto-
col, were committed to binding emissions targets. The
main Annex B nations and their targets for reductions
relative to their emissions in the base year of
are
the European Union (
-
%), the United States (
-
%),
Japan (
%), plus a
few others including most of the Eastern European
members of the former Soviet bloc. Though the goals
are called binding commitments, there are no sanctions
speci
-
%), and the Russian Federation (
ed in the Protocol for failing to meet the goals.
The United States has not rati
ed the Protocol though
all the other Annex B countries
finally did (the last was
Australia in November
). Even if all the goals speci-
fied in the Protocol were achieved on schedule, the con-
tinued increase in emission would change very little.
Figure
.
is a repeat of
Figure
.
and shows the
expected increase in TPES up to
under a BAU
scenario. The industrialized nations of Annex B are
projected to increase emissions very little through this
century. The increase is dominated by the growth of the
developing counties and so merely setting back the emis-
sions of
the industrialized countries
to
% below
could only have a tiny effect. A close look at the
figure shows that the goals would only set the increase
path back about
years because only the industrial-
ized nations are committed to reductions under Kyoto-
or
.
Instead of TPES ending at
gigawatt-years in
gigawatt-years.
The hope was and is that low- or even no-emission
it would be reduced to about
