Financial crisis, EU rift, strain U.N. climate talks

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By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - Worries about the costs of combating climate change and rifts between European Union states are likely to strain 185-nation talks in Poland from Monday on a new U.N. treaty to fight global warming.

The election of Barack Obama as U.S. president may, however, help the mood at the December 1-12 meeting of 9,000 delegates in the industrial city of Poznan since he has promised more action to slow warming than President George W. Bush.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, urged negotiators to stick to a timetable meant to end with a new U.N. climate treaty in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and not be distracted by the worst financial crisis in 80 years.

"We must now focus on the opportunities for green growth that can put the global economy onto a stable and sustainable path," he said in a statement. Poznan will review progress half-way through a two-year push for a new treaty.

But economic slowdown has exposed doubts in Europe about costs of an EU goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Poland, which gets 93 percent of its electricity from coal, and Italy, worried about its industrial competitiveness, are leading a drive for concessions in a package meant to be agreed at a December 11-12 summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate minister who is set to host next year's talks on a new pact, expressed hopes for an EU deal. "We will obtain nothing by postponing the deadline," she said in Copenhagen.

EU nations have been among the most enthusiastic backers of the existing Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries such as China and India say the rich have to prove leadership before the poor start acting to slow emissions.

The Poznan meeting will also look at details of a new climate treaty, based on an 84-page compilation of ideas on ways to slow rising temperatures that could bring more droughts, disease, floods and rising seas.

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Plans include giving tropical nations credits for slowing deforestation from the Amazon to the Congo -- trees soak up greenhouse gases. And China wants rich nations to give up to 1.0 percent of their gross national product in new climate aid.

The WWF environmental group said activists would demonstrate on Monday outside the Poznan conference center with giant nuts and nutcrackers urging delegates to "crack the climate nut."

Adding to worries on costs, a report last week for the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said costs of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter by 2030 would be 170 percent more than a 2007 estimate of $200-$210 billion a year by then.

The sharp upwards revision was due to rising capital costs in the renewable energy sector, such as demand for wind turbines. Britain's Centrica, for instance, said on November 14 it is reviewing the economic viability of wind power projects.

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen will attend Monday's opening. About 150 environment ministers will attend the final days of the talks.

John Kerry, incoming chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will also attend and report back to Obama.

"After eight years of delay, destruction and denial, the United states is going to rejoin the international community in tackling this global challenge," he said last week.

Obama aims to return U.S. emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 after a rise of about 14 percent since 1990. He would then seek to cut them by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

(With extra reporting by Karin Jensen in Copenhagen, Editing by Dominic Evans)

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