Differentiation of greenhouse gas reduction objectives based on differences in energy efficiencies in heavy industry

This paper gives an overview of energy efficiencies in six industrial subsectors in fourteen countries in order to indicate what consequences differences in energy efficiency may have for a differentiation of commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Differentiating the burden of greenhouse gas emission reductions among Parties to the UNFCCC has appeared in recent climate negotiations. Values for the Specific Energy Consumption were compared with structure-corrected values for a reference SEC to obtain an indication of energy efficiency. For some countries, specific energy consumption may be as high as 1.5 to 1.7 times the reference level whereas for other countries factors this factor is not higher than 1.2. In order to establish a differentiation of commitments the room for energy efficiency improvement in each country and each heavy industry subsector was utilized with an equal share in order to achieve an overall 5% reduction of CO2 emissions. The resulting partial reduction objectives for heavy industry vary from -15% to +20% in 2015 over levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The effect of these differences in total allowances in 7% to 10%. Although the values of this exercise are preliminary--due to limited data availability--the authors demonstrate that it makes sense to account for differences in industrial energy efficiencies in future burden differentiation rules