New WTO accord could encourage clean energy

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Geneva: A new World Trade Organization (WTO) accord could improve access to clean-energy tools in poorer countries, but any deal making it easier to ship cargo internationally would also carry a heavy carbon footprint.

Environmental economists are uncertain about the relative merits of the WTO’s Doha round, whose potential impact remains murky after six years of arduous negotiations in Geneva.

On the one hand, reducing barriers to trading green goods may boost use of solar panels, wind turbines and other climatefriendly technology “several-fold” in emerging nations such as China and India, World Bank senior environment economist Muthukumara Mani said.

“Among low- and middle-income WTO members, considerable barriers to entry still exist for these technologies,” he said in a telephone interview. “As countries grow they are going to be contributing a lot more to greenhouse gas emissions. It would make sense to have this agreement and give them the access.”

But conversely, a WTO deal slashing import taxes, duties and tariffs may also increase polluting output from the cars, trucks, boats and planes shipping goods worldwide.

The transport sector accounts for a quarter of the world’s energy-related output of greenhouse gases, which scientists say are trapping sun rays in the atmosphere and causing ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise and weather patterns to shift wildly.

Philip Bagnoli of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said increased deliveries of goods such as flowers from Africa, apples from New Zealand and shoes from Argentina could compound carbon emissions and counteract the clean-energy gains from the WTO talks.

“There are two factors working against each other in the Doha round. Where it comes down is unpredictable if you don’t know the specifics of the agreement itself,” Bagnoli said from his office in Paris.

“Access to cleaner technologies does not in and of itself automatically lead you to use them,” he said. “If you don’t put in policies that are specifically designed to reduce emissions, you could end up increasing emissions in the end, as result of the increased trade effect.”

According to forthcoming OECD research, global carbon emissions would jump 8 percent and worldwide economic output would rise 1 percent by 2025 as a result of international trade maintaining its recent fast pace of growth.

Most economists believe that the failure to conclude a global deal at the WTO would lead to more stilted commercial flows and spur a proliferation of smallerscale free trade accords between neighboring countries.