Warnings on energy choices
Officials taking part in the Ninth Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference held in the Cypriot capital Nicosia warned on Wednesday that emergency measures to cope with the present energy crisis should not distract from the overall goal of switching to clean energy sources.
United Nations officials said suspending the timetable on achieving specific climate change goals whenever an energy crisis arises would mean they would never be achieved.
“We do have tools, we have [the] will and we are going to have to find a way to walk with balance between managing a very current threat [and] keeping our eyes on the long-term objectives that we have,” said Sonja Leighton-Kone, the acting deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.
A number of countries have backtracked on their commitments to phase out fossil fuels for energy generation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
And, irrespective of the crisis, a UN environmental assessment study has found that any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by Western European countries has been more than offset by increases in countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
