TOKYO (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas curbs on industries such as power generation and steel could provide a basis for a renewed U.N.-led drive to fight global warming, Akio Mimura, Chairman of Nippon Steel Corp said on Thursday. Japan hosts the G8 summit meeting of political leaders at the Lake Toya resort area of Hokkaido in July, which is expected to discuss a new United Nations climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas curbs on industries such as power generation and steel could provide a basis for a renewed U.N.-led drive to fight global warming, Akio Mimura, Chairman of Nippon Steel Corp said on Thursday.
Japan hosts the G8 summit meeting of political leaders at the Lake Toya resort area of Hokkaido in July, which is expected to discuss a new United Nations climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012.
Mimura, also Vice Chairman of Japan's powerful business lobby Nippon Keidanren, was speaking as part of a panel of fellow business leaders from the Group of Eight rich nations discussing the options for a new Kyoto deal.
Mimura said Kyoto should be revised in a way that all major emitters, including India and China, could take part.
!ADVERTISEMENT!"In order to get all the major emitters to take part, we need to have a flexible method which enables each to maintain what each thinks is appropriate for the balance of economic growth, energy security and environmental protection," he said.
"This will be possible, we think, by so-called sectoral approach," Mimura said, referring to sectoral industrial targets, which, added up, to set a national target.
Developing nations objected at a Paris meeting this week that a sectoral scheme might throttle their inefficient energy-intensive businesses and said the burden for curbs should fall instead on rich nations.
If greenhouse gas curbs apply to 5 key sectors --- power generating, steel, cement and electric appliance and automobiles --- that would cover about 70 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, Nippon Steel's Mimura said.
"At the Lake Toya summit we hope an agreement is made on how major emitters can set such bottom-up national goals," he said, adding any goals should be accessible and equitable.
Martin Broughton, president of the Confederation of British Industry and also on the panel, agreed that a sectoral approach should be an important element of any carbon system in a planned new U.N. treaty, which is to be crafted by the end of 2009.
But the use of a bottom-up approach will lead to a target which is substantially lower than that from a top-down process, he said.
"You need a top-down approach at the same time or you won't have low carbon revolution," said Broughton, who is also Chairman of British Airways Plc.
Broughton also said a trading system of carbon in some form should also feature.
John Peller, Chairman of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said, however, the cooperative nature of the sectoral approach could avoid possible protectionism such as border taxes.
"We're very supportive for the sectoral approach, not only for the reasons which they gave, but because this process is to be fairly equitable," said Peller, who is also president and CEO, Andrew Peller Ltd.
(Reporting by Risa Maeda)
