The sun rises behind Fiddlers Ferry coal fired power station near Liverpool, northern England, December 15 2008.

OSLO | Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:15am EST

OSLO (Reuters) - An agreement by almost 200 nations to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 will be far more costly than taking action now to tackle climate change, according to research published on Wednesday.

Quick measures to cut emissions would give a far better chance of keeping global warming within an agreed U.N. limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avert more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

"If you delay action by 10, 20 years you significantly reduce the chances of meeting the 2 degree target," said Keywan Riahi, one of the authors of the report at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

"It was generally known that costs increase when you delay action. It was not clear how quickly they change," he told Reuters of the findings in the science journal Nature based on 500 computer-generated scenarios.

It said the timing of cuts in greenhouse gases was more important than other uncertainties - about things like how the climate system works, future energy demand, carbon prices or new energy technologies.

The study indicated that an immediate global price of $30 a metric ton on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, would give a roughly 60 percent chance of limiting warming to below 2C.

Wait until 2020 and the carbon price would have to be around $100 a metric ton to retain that 60 percent chance, Riahi told Reuters of the study made with other experts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

And a delay of action until 2030 might put the 2C limit - which some of the more pessimistic scientists say is already unattainable - completely out of reach, whatever the carbon price.

"The window for effective action on climate change is closing quickly," wrote Steve Hatfield-Dodds of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia in a separate commentary in Nature.

Governments agreed to the 2C limit in 2010, viewing it as a threshold to avert dangerous climate change. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degree C (1.4F) since wide use of fossil fuels began 200 years ago.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN

After the failure of a 2009 summit in Copenhagen to agree a worldwide accord, almost 200 nations have given themselves until 2015 to work out a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions that will enter into force in 2020.

Amid an economic slowdown, many countries at the last U.N. meeting on climate change in Qatar in December expressed reluctance to make quick shifts away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies such as wind or solar power.

Each U.S. citizen, for instance, emits about 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. There is no global price on carbon, only regional markets - in a European Union trading system, for instance, where industrial emitters must pay off they exceed their CO2 quotas, 2013 prices are about 6.7 euros ($8.83) a metric ton.

The report also showed that greener policies, such as more efficient public transport or better-insulated buildings, would raise the chances of meeting the 2C goal.

And fighting climate change would be easier with certain new technologies, such as capturing and burying carbon emissions from power plants and factories. In some scenarios, the 2C goal could not be met unless carbon capture was adopted.

($1 = 0.7585 euros)

(Scientist corrects carbon price to $30 a tonne from $20 in paragraph 6)

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson testifies at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 22, 2011.

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:34am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Regardless of who takes the reins, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will likely face continued legal battles in President Barack Obama's second term as it tries to finalize pollution rules for power plants, analysts said.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who spearheaded the Obama administration's regulation of carbon emissions, said on Thursday she will step down after almost four years.

Her tenure was marked by opposition from industry groups and Republican lawmakers to the EPA's first-ever crackdown on carbon emissions, as well as other anti-pollution measures.

Analysts said whoever succeeds Jackson will probably face a spate of lawsuits to challenge rules that the EPA will finalize governing power plants, industrial sources and oil and gas production.

"This is shaping up to be four years of litigation," said Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Energy Institute.

Given the partisan divide, Guith said, legislators would struggle to draft laws that could serve as alternatives to the EPA's pending suite of carbon and air regulation.

"As we look to an even more divided Congress, the action will be in the federal courts," he said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, which hears most challenges to federal environmental rules, is likely to be busy as industry groups and states bring their cases against the EPA's rules after they are finalized.

The court sided with the agency in most of the recent challenges, most notably upholding its decision to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate and Clean Air Program, said this could bolster the EPA as it tackles rules that may be more controversial than those rolled out under Jackson.

"The agency has a very good batting record on the clean air side. Carbon and climate (regulations) have come through completely unscathed," he said.

CARETAKER ADMINISTRATOR?

After the EPA was a political lightning rod during the first Obama administration, the president is likely to seek out a safe, possibly internal choice as Jackson's successor, or to avoid the confirmation process altogether.

"There are just so many arrows pointed at this agency," said Susan Tierney, managing principal and energy and environment specialist at Boston-based Analysis Group

Bob Perciasepe, deputy EPA administrator, will take over on an interim basis and could continue in that role indefinitely.

He previously worked at the EPA during the Clinton administration, specializing in water and air quality. Before rejoining the agency, Perciasepe was a top official at the National Audubon Society, a major conservation group.

Tierney said she expects the EPA to stay the course on its current agenda, especially as the agency faces some court-ordered deadlines to finalize rules, such as for coal ash, industrial waste from coal-fired plants and ozone standards.

PRIORITY ON CLIMATE CHANGE?

Some environmentalists have criticized Obama for being too timid on climate issues during his first term. But in his acceptance speech on election night in November the president gave a nod to climate change, raising hopes for more activism.

The White House may lean on the EPA to tackle one of the largest sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the current fleet of power plants, said Jeremy Symons, senior vice president at the National Wildlife Federation.

"The president has made clear that climate change is one of his top three priorities for the second term, so that means EPA needs to do its job," Symons said.

This, he said, means the agency needs to finalize the rules for new power plants and the standards for limiting carbon emissions from existing power plants.

The NRDC's Doniger said once the EPA meets an April 2013 legal deadline to finalize the greenhouse gas rules for new power plants, it will then have to address standards for existing plants.

The EPA has to start promptly in the beginning of the second term, said Doniger, because the rulemaking process is "a multistep process that will take time."

The controversial task will almost certainly trigger lawsuits because the rules will target a large number of domestic power plants and could jeopardize electric reliability.

"It's high stakes litigation when you are talking about bringing 40 percent of generation under regulations. That's disastrous," the Chamber's Guith said.

Guith said that while the EPA does have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide using the Clean Air Act, its rules are too difficult for industry - forcing the litigation.

"This EPA has been so aggressive in pushing the envelope by way of the compliance timeline that it has made itself more vulnerable to lawsuits," he said.

The EPA may also face legal challenges from environmental groups and certain states. The NRDC, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club joined a group of nine states led by New York that threatened to sue the EPA last year to propose air pollution standards for oil and gas drilling.

They said that the drilling, transportation and distribution resulted in a significant release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is not regulated by federal rules.

Doniger said the group is trying to negotiate a timeline with the EPA to set a rule but could sue the agency if it doesn't agree a schedule by February.

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Gary Hill)

(This story was corrected to fix the name of environmental group to Natural Resources Defense Council from National Resources Defense Council in the tenth paragraph)

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WARSAW | Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:15am EST

WARSAW (Reuters) - French power company EDF has launched its first wind farm in Poland, a 48 megawatt (MW) facility located in the northern part of the country, the firm said on Thursday.

The utility's unit, EDF Energies Nouvelles, bought the Linowo windfarm last year to strengthen its position in the coal-dependant European Union nation looking to boost the share of renewables in its energy supplies.

Poland has around 2,000 MW of installed wind energy, representing more than 5 percent of the power system's total capacity. It has targeted boosting that capacity to 6,000 MW by 2030.

Under EU law at least 15 percent of Poland's energy production must come from renewable sources by 2020.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Michael Kahn and Mark Potter)

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1 of 3. Tribesmen attend a funeral of a paramilitary soldier who was kidnapped and executed by Taliban militants at Darra Adam Khel December 30, 2012. Pakistani Taliban militants have executed 21 paramilitary force men who were captured in attacks on their posts late last week, government officials said on Sunday.

PESHWAR, Pakistan | Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:36am EST

PESHWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani militants, who have escalated attacks in recent weeks, killed at least 41 people in two separate incidents, officials said on Sunday, challenging assertions that military offensives have broken the back of hardline Islamist groups.

The United States has long pressured nuclear-armed ally Pakistan to crack down harder on both homegrown militants groups such as the Taliban and others which are based on its soil and attack Western forces in Afghanistan.

In the north, 21 men working for a government-backed paramilitary force were executed overnight after they were kidnapped last week, a provincial official said.

Twenty Shi'ite pilgrims died and 24 were wounded, meanwhile, when a car bomb targeted their bus convoy as it headed toward the Iranian border in the southwest, a doctor said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has noted more than 320 Shias killed this year in Pakistan and said attacks were on the rise. It said the government's failure to catch or prosecute attackers suggested it was "indifferent" to the killings.

Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize the region before NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, denies allegations that it supports militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.

Afghan officials say Pakistan seems more genuine than ever about promoting peace in Afghanistan.

At home, it faces a variety of highly lethal militant groups that carry out suicide bombings, attack police and military facilities and launch sectarian attacks like the one on the bus in the southwest.

Witnesses said a blast targeted their three buses as they were overtaking a car about 60 km (35 miles) west of Quetta, capital of sparsely populated Baluchistan province.

"The bus next to us caught on fire immediately," said pilgrim Hussein Ali, 60. "We tried to save our companions, but were driven back by the intensity of the heat."

Twenty people had been killed and 24 wounded, said an official at Mastung district hospital.

CONCERN OVER EXTREMIST SUNNI GROUPS

International attention has focused on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

But Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist Sunni groups, lead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are emerging as a major destabilizing force in a campaign designed to topple the government.

Their strategy now, the officials say, is to carry out attacks on Shi'ites to create the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed countries like Iraq to the brink of civil war.

As elections scheduled for next year approach, Pakistanis will be asking what sort of progress their leaders have made in the fight against militancy and a host of other issues, such as poverty, official corruption and chronic power cuts.

Pakistan's Taliban have carried out a series of recent bold attacks, as military officials point to what they say is a power struggle in the group's leadership revolving around whether it should ease attacks on the Pakistani state and join groups fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban denies a rift exists among its leaders.

In the attack in the northwest, officials said they had found the bodies of 21 men kidnapped from their checkpoints outside the provincial capital of Peshawar on Thursday. The men were executed one by one.

"They were tied up and blindfolded," Naveed Anwar, a senior administration official, said by telephone.

"They were lined up and shot in the head," said Habibullah Arif, another local official, also by telephone.

One man was shot and seriously wounded but survived, the officials said. He was in critical condition and being treated at a local hospital. Another had escaped before the shootings.

Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"We killed all the kidnapped men after a council of senior clerics gave a verdict for their execution. We didn't make any demand for their release because we don't spare any prisoners who are caught during fighting," he said.

The powerful military has clawed back territory from the Taliban, but the kidnap and executions underline the insurgents' ability to mount high-profile, deadly attacks in major cities.

This month, suicide bombers attacked Peshawar's airport on December 15 and a bomb killed a senior Pashtun nationalist politician and eight other people at a rally on December 22.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN and Gul Yousufzai in QUETTA; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ron Popeski)

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Italy's outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti looks on during a news conference in Rome December 28, 2012. Monti said on Friday that he would lead a coalition of centrist parties who support his European and reform-minded agenda in the parliamentary election in just two months time.

ROME | Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:46am EST

ROME (Reuters) - Mario Monti declared "mission accomplished" when he resigned as Italy's prime minister, having seen off the debt crisis that loomed as he took office just over a year ago but 2013 will test whether he has laid the foundations for lasting economic change.

Elections on February 24-25 will give Italian voters their first chance to decide whether they want to stick to the broad course he has set or turn to a growing chorus of politicians who have attacked his austerity medicine.

Monti's decision to enter the race himself has put his reform agenda at the heart of the campaign and will have effects far outside Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy, which took the single currency to the brink of collapse last year.

Former European Commissioner Monti, favored by the markets, the business establishment and even the Catholic church, has insisted that the election must be about creating agreement on policy rather than on any individual.

In that sense, the true test of his success may be not whether he wins a second term but whether he has succeeded in convincing the other parties and the country as a whole to stay with the liberalizing agenda he has laid out.

That remains uncertain, despite the plaudits he earned abroad for his handling of the crisis, as ordinary Italians have seen their living standards fall and unemployment rise relentlessly.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD), the favorites to win the election, have supported Monti in parliament and say they will maintain the broad course he has set, while putting more emphasis on growth and helping workers and the poor.

But some on the left of the party and among its trade union allies say inequality has risen under Monti.

On the right, Silvio Berlusconi accuses Monti of taking orders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and penalizing middle class Italians for the benefit of German banks. He has called for sweeping tax cuts to stimulate growth.

The runaway success of the anti-establishment comic Beppe Grillo and his 5-Star Movement, which wants to hold a referendum to decide whether to leave the euro, has also underlined the widespread mood of disillusion now deeply anchored in Italy.

"I don't have any confidence in my country, absolutely not," said Rosaria Resciniti, one of thousands of young people lining up to enter a competition for a job as primary school teacher in Rome.

"It is a country for old people. We should all leave and leave the country to the pensioners," she said.

UNEMPLOYMENT EMERGENCY

Monti himself acknowledged the disaffection on Friday when he confirmed that he would be joining the election campaign as head of a centrist alliance committed to continuing his reforms.

"Fortunately, it seems that the financial emergency is over, but there is another emergency which is just as serious or even more so, which is the unemployment emergency, especially as regards youth unemployment and the lack of growth," he said.

Helped by the promise of European Central Bank support, the main gauge of investor confidence, the spread between yields on Italian 10 year government bonds and safer German Bunds has narrowed from the crisis levels of more than 550 basis points hit when Monti took office to about 320 points.

But the broader indicators of economic health have got worse, a fact constantly pointed out by critics such as Berlusconi and Grillo, who say the tax hikes and spending cuts imposed to calm the markets have dragged Italy into a recessionary spiral.

The economy has contracted for five consecutive quarters and is estimated to have shrunk by 2.4 percent in 2012. Public debt has topped the symbolic 2 trillion euro level, corruption and waste are still rampant, and youth unemployment is over 36 percent.

Italy has had the euro zone's most sluggish economy for more than a decade, and whether any of the leaders fighting the election can turn that around quickly is doubtful, as one of the possible ministers in a centre-left government acknowledged.

"This crisis will last throughout the whole of the next parliament at least," deputy PD leader Enrico Letta told Reuters last month.

The task will be greatly complicated if market sentiment turns against Italy as it did in 2011, when tensions in the Berlusconi government raised doubts about its commitment to budget discipline.

Monti, seen outside Italy at least as a guarantor of stability, has said he was "not a man sent by Providence", but whether he himself will be involved in the next government has been one of the main questions hanging over the race.

His sober, professorial style came as a welcome relief to international investors and European partners unnerved by the turmoil and scandal surrounding Berlusconi as bond markets crashed in the summer of 2011.

But if opinion polls are confirmed on election day, it is difficult to see how he could become prime minister without resorting to the kind of backroom deals that characterized the shaky coalitions of the postwar period, when governments often survived no more than months or even weeks.

The most recent opinion poll gave centre-left PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani support of 36 percent, with Monti on 23.3 percent, ahead of both Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) and Grillo's 5-Star Movement.

Monti's involvement in the election has ruled him out as a candidate for president of the Republic, a post that would have given him significant behind-the-scenes influence.

That leaves the possibility of becoming finance minister in a Bersani government, though there has been little sign of enthusiasm either from his side or from the PD, which has maintained a respectful tone towards Monti but now clearly sees him as a political adversary.

GROWTH AGENDA

Beyond the issue of personalities, the deep-rooted problems afflicting the Italian economy will be a formidable challenge to any new government.

"The situation in Italy is not easy, there are too many centres of power where everybody blocks everything. Our infrastructure isn't working and we've got corruption all over," said Renzo Rosso, head of the group behind Diesel jeans, one of the Italian companies that has managed to find a way past the obstacles in its home market to create a global success.

All the main parties in the race have called for more emphasis on creating growth, which along with its towering public debt has long been Italy's Achilles heel.

Monti's own 25-page agenda lays out a range of answers, such as taxing consumption and large fortunes more than companies and workers, and opening up markets to more competition and breaking down the suffocating power of special interest groups.

Turning such ideas into practice and convincing the public to go along with them is another matter.

Reflecting on her time in office, Elsa Fornero, an academic expert recruited into Monti's technocrat government whose labor reform plans were largely stymied by resistance from both unions and employers, said she had learned the difference the hard way.

"In this period of almost a year now, I have been able to measure the distance between being a professor and being a minister," she told foreign reporters last month.

"It's something completely different. I have been more used to formulating rational solutions, but the rationality of a solution is not enough because society is more differentiated and doesn't just live on rationality."

(Additional reporting by Hanna Rantala, Cristiano Corvino and Antonella Ciancio; Editing by Will Waterman)

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1 of 4. A still image taken from Venezuelan government TV broadcast shows Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro (C) talking to the media during a news conference next to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' daughter Rosa Virginia (L), Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza (2nd L) and Attorney General Cilia Flores (R) in Havana December 30, 2012. Chavez has suffered more complications following complex cancer surgery in Cuba and remains in a ''delicate'' condition, Maduro said on Sunday.

CARACAS | Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:03pm EST

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering more complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grew for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area. Officials said doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

He said Chavez's condition remained "delicate" - a term he has used since the day after the surgery, when he warned Venezuelans to prepare for difficult times and urged them to keep the president in their prayers.

"We trust that the avalanche of love and solidarity with Comandante Chavez, together with his immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists, will help our president win this new battle," Maduro said.

A senior government official in Caracas said the New Year's Eve party in the capital's central Plaza Bolivar had been canceled. "Everyone pray for strength for our comandante to overcome this difficult moment," the official, Jacqueline Faria, added on Twitter after making the announcement.

OIL-FINANCED SOCIALISM

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

His condition is being closely watched around Latin America, especially in other nations run by leftist governments, from Cuba to Bolivia, which depend on subsidized fuel shipments and other aid from Venezuela for their fragile economies.

Chavez has not provided details of the cancer that was first diagnosed in June 2011, leading to speculation among Venezuela's 29 million people and criticism from opposition leaders.

Chavez's allies have openly discussed the possibility that he may not be able to return to Venezuela to be inaugurated for his third six-year term as president on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Senior "Chavista" officials have said the people's wishes were made clear when the president was re-elected in October, and that the constitution makes no provision for what happens if a president-elect cannot take office on January 10.

Opposition leaders say any postponement would be just the latest sign that Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement. If Chavez had to step down, new elections would be called within 30 days.

Opposition figures believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country that boasts the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

In Sunday's broadcast, Maduro said Chavez sent New Year greetings to all Venezuelans, "especially the children, whom he carries in his heart always."

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Editng by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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