April 24, 2007 The climate change challenge

Georg Carlberg from Corporate Environment last week participated in two meetings with relevance to Climate Change. The first meeting took place in Oslo and the title was "Climate change - what is known and how should we act?" The second meeting was an Advisor meeting of the 3C (Combat Climate Change) project in Brussels.

Some weeks back the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Working Group 1 published their Fourth Assessment Report. At the meeting the co-chair of the working group went through the findings and explained why the experts now are convinced that greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change.
The level of green house gases in the atmosphere has never been higher and it is still increasing drastically. We will experience an increase in the global temperature, and the increase will be larger the closer one gets to the poles. This is caused by the fact that snow and ice reflects the sun rays while the oceans absorb sun rays and thereby heat.
When the global temperature increases the snow and ice will melt around the poles, there will be no ice to reflect the sun rays. Furthermore the predictions are that the warm areas of the world will be warmer and the wet areas will be wetter. In conclusion there is an urgent need to reduce the emission of green house gases.
New energy sources must be developed, we must use energy more efficiently and carbon capture and storage will play an important part to reduce the emissions. Cost estimates for keeping the greenhouse gas levels at reasonable levels amount to trillions of US dollars.

Norske Skog joined the 3C (Combat Climate Change) project in January. A description of the project is given in this year’s annual report. The 3C Initiative aims at forming a global opinion group consisting of companies showing leadership by demanding an integration of climate issues into the world of markets and trade facilitated by means of a global framework coming into force in 2013. At the Brussels meeting the main focus was on emission trading systems.
Emission trading will play an important part in green house reduction work. The present emission trading systems has not been optimal and based on own experience the 3C project will engage itself in the development of future emission trading systems. 3C was initiated by the Swedish company Vattenfall. They have financed a study on possible ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to acceptable level.
The 3C project will evaluate and update the study and use it as a scenario for further discussions with authorities and NGOs.