Guest Article:Climate change - what is Austria doing about it? | |
The UN climate experts are certain that the reason for global warming is man's hunger for energy and the emission of greenhouse gases connected with it. And they emphasized that we have to change our personal life-style if we want to keep climate change within manageable limits. What is needed is that every individual is prepared to make a contribution and to rely on environmentally friendly alternatives in daily life.
In the Kyoto Protocol Austria bound itself to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases harmful to the environment between 2008 and 2012 by 13 % compared to 1990. For the Austrian Federal Government the safeguarding of a sustainable energy supply for Austria is amongst the central challenges of the coming years and decades to take effective countermeasures against climate change. We have set the right course for reaching this target with the climate strategy and we have created an important instrument for strengthening renewable energies and increasing energy efficiency with the climate and energy fund. The change to renewable energy sources, national energy generation, energy saving and intensive energy research and new energy technologies all play a central role for increasing the security of energy supplies and reducing the imports of fossil energy. The new climate and energy fund will give valuable impulses for this.
Traffic is the number one climate killer. In this sector CO2 emissions have increased by 92% since 1990. Other key sectors are industry, heating of rooms and small consumption. Here we already started to take concrete countermeasures. Since 1 October 2005 the bio-fuel directive ensures that 2.5% of bio-diesel are added to diesel fuel. This will go up to 5.75% from 2008, and then to 10% from 2010. Austria will thus have implemented this ambitious EU goal 10 years before the deadline. For subsidized housing we concluded a state treaty with the states which links the granting of subsidies more strongly to climate protection criteria. The government programme envisages that from 2015 only low energy and passive houses meeting the klima.aktiv-standard will be subsidized.
One of the most important instruments of climate protection is environmental promotion. Over 98 % of the money was used in 2006 for climate protection projects. In March 2007 alone some 900 new climate protection projects were approved at home. This brings new individual bio-mass plants; bio-mass local heating networks and district heating connections and energy efficiency and energy saving measures of companies are supported, leading to a saving of some 450 000 tons of CO2 annually. For achieving the Austrian climate protection targets the "Green investments abroad" for the JI/CDM projects also play a major role. We give particular attention to achieving as much Austrian added value as possible.
In future we have to orientate our entire energy policy and our consumer behaviour according to new, sustainable and climate-friendly criteria - worldwide. Only then will we be able to safeguard an environment worth living for our children.
Dipl.-Ing. Josef Pröll, Federal Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Environmental and Water Management
