Dutch GHG Levels Back To 1990 Levels - Some Caution Merited - ENN

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands fell by around 2 percent in 2005 from a year earlier and were at approximately the same level they were in 1990, a government agency said Monday. Climate change watchdogs generally praised the announcement by the country's Central Bureau for Statistics, but said the public should be skeptical about how the fall in emissions was measured and what it means.

"It's a good thing, but they (the Dutch) still have a way to go in order to meet their targets under Kyoto," said Joris Thijssen of Greenpeace, referring to the international treaty under which the Netherlands agreed to reduce its emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.

The statistics agency said that total Dutch emissions were 214 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide or equivalents, down 2 percent from 2004 and just fractionally higher than 213 billion kilograms in 1990. Agency spokesman Michiel Vergeer said the fall from 2004 was due to carbon dioxide emissions saved by increased use of biomass fuel for electricity generation, by households using less energy for heating during a warm winter, and by increased import of electricity.

However, each of those reasons has a downside. A warm winter could be just a fluke, or it could be due to global warming. Dutch biomass generators have been accused of buying some fuel from suppliers in developing countries who chop down old-growth forest to make room for biomass crops. And when the Netherlands imports more electricity, that means the exporters -- Germany and to a lesser extent France -- will have higher emissions. "We just report the data, it's up to others to interpret it," Vergeer said.

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