Japan PM policy to mention carbon trade-Nikkei
TOKYO, June 4 (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister will call for a study on how to introduce an emissions trading scheme in a statement ahead of a July G8 summit at which global warming will be a key topic, a Japanese newspaper said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will also announce a target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050, the Nikkei business daily said, but added that bickering persists over setting a target for cutting emissions by 2020 or 2030, a key demand of emerging nations in U.N.-led talks on climate change.
Companies and governments around the world are turning to emissions trading as a weapon to fight climate change in a carbon market worth $64 billion last year. Cap and trade schemes force participants -- often energy-intensive industries -- to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Japan has a voluntary scheme launched in 2005, and this month a working panel organised by Japan's Environment Ministry drafted four options for a carbon trading scheme.
But industries such as steel remain opposed out of concern it will reduce their global competitiveness.
Nikkei said Japan's steel and power industries had softened their opposition to a carbon trading scheme, but Nippon Steel Corp 5041.T said in a statement that there had been no change in its stance.
"There is no truth in the report that Nippon Steel has decided to approve a carbon trading scheme under certain conditions," the company said in a statement.
About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Group of Eight (G8) leaders agreed last year in Germany to consider halving global emissions by mid-century, a proposal favoured by Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada but opposed so far by the United States and Russia.
But wide gaps exist inside the G8 and between advanced and developing countries over how to share the burden for fighting climate change, which causes droughts, rising seas and more severe storms.
G8 environment ministers last month urged their leaders to set a global target of halving emissions by 2050, but stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets.
Washington wants the main forum for emissions cuts to be the Major Emitters or Major Economies grouping, which was set up by the United States last year and includes Brazil, China and India and other industrial powers alongside the G8.
"The biggest problem for Prime Minister Fukuda is that he is faced not only with the (U.S. President George W.) Bush administration, but also Japanese economic circles are taking a firm negative stance on carbon trade," former Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Koike told Reuters last week.
"These are the two big problems." (Reporting by Linda Sieg and Yuko Inoue, Editing by Michael Watson)
