CCPI 2016 : Romania, 18th in Performance index of fight against climate changes

Romania went up seven positions compared to last year in the Climate Change Performance Index 2016 and ranks 18th, according to the document launched in Paris on Tuesday. CCPI 2016 was launched by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe(CAN) at the UN Conference on Climate Changes in Paris. According to CCPI 2016, Romania has a better position than in past years, but that is due to the drawback recorded by other countries and to official statistics which do not take into account underground economy. One of the indicators Romania has a good situation is that of emissions coming from felling. According to data from official reports, Romania is one of the four countries with the least emissions of gases with greenhouse effect as a result of felling. However, the phenomenon of illegal felling in Romania is higher than shown by official data. For the rest of indicators that make up the country rank, Romania obtained results considered unsatisfying, people from Germanwatch say. Emissions coming from industry, traffic or households, rank us midway the index. As for renewable energy, Romania ranks 19th for the quantity of renewable energy in the energy mix, but ranks 52nd for the development of energy from renewable sources. The climate change subject is absent from public agenda in Romania. It comes visible only when we deal with calamities. “Mention should be made that Romania climbs in the CCIP classification without making big efforts to reduce emissions with greenhouse effect. From my point of view, there are two explanations for that process: wither the rest of states take no measures or Romania reports unrealistic data,”says Lavinia Andrei, the president of Terra Millennium III foundation, a member of CAN - E Europe. We see global trends, indicating promising shifts in some of the most relevant sectors for climate protection and important steps towards a transformation of the energy system", says Jan Burck (Germanwatch), author of the CCPI. "The energy intensity of the global economy is further declining. In the next years, it will be crucial to decarbonise the energy sector on a global scale. The years 2013 and 2014 saw for the first time a higher amount of newly installed capacity from renewables than from all other energy sources combined; indicating that many countries have already started decarbonising their energy sector.” Denmark (Rank 4), the United Kingdom (5) and Sweden (6) rank highest in the new Index. "EU countries still rank high, profiting from their early start in development of climate policies. However, as countries all over the world have now started to invest in renewable energy on a massive scale, the EU risks falling behind. Lack of leadership is reflected in cuts in support for renewables and the ailing Emissions Trading Scheme, explains Wendel Trio, Director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe. "The coming two years, when the EU will shape its future climate and energy policies, will define the speed of its transition to a fossil fuel free economy." The two largest emitters, USA (34) and China (47), have both improved their ranking in this year's CCPI. They profit from better policy evaluations, due to their massive investments in renewable energy and their start to shift energy production away from coal. The industrialized countries Australia, Japan, Korea and Canada are in the bottom six of the index. After leadership shifts in Canada and Australia, both countries now have a chance to improve their position in next year's ranking. Korea and Japan dropped several places - Korea because of their high and still rising greenhouse gas emissions, Japan because of a worsened score in nearly every category of the index. One of the winners is France. Just in time for its COP presidency, the country climbed six places to arrive in the Top 10 (rank 8). Some of the main reasons are the low level of per-capita emissions (lowest in G7) and a decreasing emission trend. Worldwide there is another promising trend as coal, the dirtiest energy source, is put on the defence. As recent studies show, global coal consumption has declined 2-4% in 2015. "Efforts to phase out polluting coal plants need to be dramatically ramped up, if we are serious about limitting climate change. We need a clear carbon prize signal that will catalyse a full phase-out of all fossil fuels and a transition to 100% renewables. It will be crucial that after the Paris summit countries start to revise their current, inadequate climate targets that put us on a path to a 3 degrees warmer world", said Wendel Trio. The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument supposed to enhance transparency in international climate politics. Its aim is to encourage political and social pressure on those countries which have, up to now, failed to take ambitious actions on climate protection as well as to highlight  countries with best-practice climate policies. On the basis of standardised criteria, the index evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 58 countries that are, together, responsible for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions. 80 percent of the evaluation is based on objective indicators of emissions trend and emissions level. 20 percent of the index results are built upon national and international climate policy assessments by about 300 experts from the respective countries.