The Environmental Protection Ministry has begun to formulate a national plan for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The plan will review different means of reducing greenhouse gases.
Israel has begun to examine the potential for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in the wake of global discussions on a new post-Kyoto agreement, whose draft is expected to be completed in 2009.
Findings show that under a business as usual scenario, and in the absence of a national plan on greenhouse gas mitigation in Israel, greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 may be some 63% higher than emissions in 2000. The Ministry of Environmental Protection is therefore reviewing different reduction alternatives in order to quantify Israel's mitigation potential.
Efforts today are focusing on defining reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions in all relevant sectors and on formulating a national plan for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Israel. The plan will review and analyze a variety of alternatives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which will then form the basis for a comprehensive plan for the economy as a whole.
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change obligated developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a collective average of 5% below their 1990 levels during the first commitment period of the Protocol, which will end in 2012. Current discussions on post-Kyoto policy are expected to lead to a draft of a new agreement in 2009, which is expected to include reduction targets for different states.
Israel, which ratified the Climate Change Convention in 1996 and the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, does not currently have any binding limitation on its greenhouse gas emissions since it was classified as a developing country. In 2013, when the new global agreement is expected to come into effect, Israel may well be subject to formal requirements for greenhouse gas reductions. Therefore, the country has initiated a number of steps related to both climate change mitigation and adaptation to prepare for the post-Kyoto period.
Avi Moshel, Acting Director of the Air Quality Division in the Ministry of Environmental Protection, notes that the formulation of reduction targets is a complex mission which must take account of the country's implementation capabilities and the costs to the economy of different mitigation options.
