Imagine walking through a city where every building is a testament to sustainability, resilience and innovation. A city built by – and now serving – a prosperous, diverse and cohesive society.   

This vision of Europe is not a distant dream.   

It’s an achievable reality if the European Commission delivers on advancing its sustainable building policy – plans for which should be firmly at the top of President Ursula von der Leyen’s inbox when she returns from summer recess later this month.  

In just a few short weeks, her second term will begin in earnest, as will her second push at keeping Europe’s green transition alive – a five-year marathon to cement both her and the bloc’s environmental legacy. 

The Commission’s activity to date has been commendable. The revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) were key steps towards accelerating climate action in the sector and driving plans under the Renovation Wave to boost energy efficiency in both public and private buildings.   

Renewable-energy carbon credits rejected by high-integrity scheme

In the “Political Guidelines released shortly after her re-election, von der Leyen has shown promising signs of continuing to champion sustainable buildings as a climate solution. There is a pledge to create the first EU commissioner with direct responsibility for housing, while our sector awaits with interest the new “Circular Economy Act”, designed to create market demand for reused and recycled materials. 

This is promising – but von der Leyen must go further both in implementing existing policies and in developing new ones to maximise the holistic benefits of sustainable buildings for everyone. 

We know already that sustainable buildings have huge greenhouse gas reduction potential. Buildings are responsible for about 40% of total energy consumption in the EU and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions from energy, so they can help improve energy security, reducing the bloc’s exposure to geopolitical shocks and reliance on fossil fuels.     

Creating jobs, lowering energy costs 

What isn’t spoken about enough is that they have the potential to address other issues facing Europe today: the cost of living and the unemployment crises.   

For me, these less-discussed issues in the context of buildings are just as, if not more, important due to their co-benefits for people and society.    

Take the energy efficient renovation of buildings, for example. The widespread availability of well-insulated buildings that keep out the heat during summer but retain the warmth during winter will significantly cut energy costs across the continent.   

The benefits of this will be far-reaching, but particularly for vulnerable or low-income households. Given soaring energy bills, improving energy efficiency across buildings would not only reduce associated costs, but also enhance living conditions.   

The benefits of renovating buildings do not stop here.   

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This task alone could create millions of employment opportunities across Europe: 18 jobs are created for every €1 million invested in this type of renovation.   

Bearing in mind figures from the European Commission, which calculated that €275 billion will be needed annually to bridge the building renovation gap in the EU, this level of investment could lead to nearly 5 million extra jobs across the bloc.   

Not only that, there is a real financial incentive for national governments to look towards investing in the building sector to save in the long run. Data from the Spanish government showed that while supporting one person through unemployment cost €20,000, funding a new construction role amounted to €14,000, a significant decrease. These statistics show a real-world example of how buildings can both address governmental issues and create better prospects for individuals.   

Blueprint ready to go 

Europe is at a significant moment in its history.   

We are only five years away from 2030, a deadline by which Europe committed to slash half its emissions, determining whether it will be on track to become the first climate-neutral continent. Yet the recent parliamentary elections showed a record number of seats from parties that could make the path to net zero more challenging. 

Von der Leyen has a real chance to confirm her legacy of green policies by driving an energy-efficient, regenerative and just transition in the built environment. World Green Building Council’s Europe Regional Network stands ready to continue to build momentum with the Commission over the next five years and create tangible benefits at the individual, societal and national levels.   

Let’s create a brighter, equitable and more sustainable future for all of Europe. The blueprint is ready; we just need to turn it into reality.   

The World Green Building Council leads BuildingLife, a project that drives the Commission’s EU Green Deal across the bloc by working to eliminate the whole-life carbon impact of buildings. 

The post How better buildings can help von der Leyen maintain her green legacy    appeared first on Climate Home News.

Machutar is one of the several dozens of villages across the Maharashtra state where the distribution of new stoves fuelled the production of carbon credits that are still being sold to big polluters today.

Nalband was told the new equipment would consume less of the firewood sourced from nearby trees as fuel. For villagers, this would mean fewer harvesting trips, supposedly bringing climate benefits in the process. 

But, as Abdul Nalband recalls now, “the stoves broke down soon due to rusting and nobody came to follow up or repair them”. Machutar villagers reverted to cooking with traditional stoves, while the few able to afford it gradually switched to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). 

Machutar’s experience is far from unique. Hundreds of carbon offsetting projects distributed so-called improved cookstoves across India, and other developing countries, over the last decade. As 2.4 billion people across the world still cook with highly polluting fuels, giving them access to more efficient firewood stoves can aid the transition to clean cooking.

However, experts suggest the climate benefits from a significant proportion of these projects have been severely overestimated. They say that lax rules, overinflated estimates and poor monitoring have likely created a flood of poor quality offsets linked to the cooking devices.  

Climate Home News analysed improved cookstove projects linked to one of the most active players in the sector: Enking, an Indian firm that claims to be the world’s biggest carbon offsetter. It found that the projects are likely overstating emissions reductions by as much as eight times. Buyers of these offsets include top polluters like oil giant Shell. 

“Everyone is technically playing by the rules, the issue is that the rules are bad”, Annelise Gill-Wiehl, co-author of a recent study on improved cookstoves, told Climate Home News. “The methodologies allow the books to be cooked by developers”. 

Booming carbon offsets

Improved cookstove projects are often confused with clean cooking schemes. But whereas the latter help households transition away from a polluting fuel to a cleaner one, like gas or, even solar, improved cookstoves simply hand out more efficient devices still powered by the same fuel, in this case firewood. 

The premise is that giving poor households better-designed stoves makes them consume less firewood resulting in fewer carbon emissions. That greenhouse gas prevented from being released into the atmosphere is then converted into carbon offsets that corporations, governments and individuals can buy to compensate their own emissions.

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On paper, such programmes can bring benefits. Especially in countries like India, where more than 40% of rural residents still rely on firewood for cooking and face barriers to switching to cleaner fuels.

But, in order to have a real climate impact, the projects have to accurately calculate the drop in CO2 emissions as a result of handing out the stoves.

Sheetal Kelgane sitting in her kitchen beside a firewood stove in Maharashtra state, India. (Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar)

Most improved cookstove projects follow a popular set of rules first established by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the UN’s official carbon offsetting scheme. Experts have pointed the finger at this methodology, arguing it has opened the floodgates to worthless offsets.  

A project distributing improved firewood stoves with those rules generates on average eight times more credits than it should, according to a recent pre-print study by the University of California, Berkeley. The paper is currently undergoing peer-reviewing. 

“I wouldn’t say that the projects are intentionally misleading their buyers,” says Rob Bailis from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), “but that weaknesses in the methodologies and oversight bodies allow developers to make assumptions that are probably not accurate, leading to inflated emission reductions”.

Revealed: How Shell cashed in on dubious carbon offsets from Chinese rice paddies

World’s largest carbon offsetter 

In a business park on the outskirts of Indore, a city in west-central India, lies the self-proclaimed world’s biggest developer of carbon credits. EKI Energy Services, or Enking as the company is commonly known, claims to control roughly 15% of the global voluntary carbon market. Enking has also played a major role in giving a new lease of life to thousands of junk credits from improved cookstove projects. 

Founded in 2008 by engineer Manish Dabkara, Enking started out buying and selling credits and helping other developers get their projects certified. It quietly built up a huge inventory and an ever-growing list of clients including the World Bank and major corporations such as Shell, Siemens and Volksgwagen. It also became the first carbon offset company listed on the stock exchange in 2021.  

We make a #great #team that sweats together, survives together, and wins together.

We #believe in the vision, harmony, and consistency. pic.twitter.com/tgp7ReCkrn

— Manish Dabkara (@manishdabkara1) May 7, 2022

Since then results for Enking have been much more mixed. The company has been mired in a spat with its auditor, which refused to sign off on its financial accounts after highlighting a “material overstatement of revenues”. Enking, which denies any wrongdoing, is now trying to oust the auditor. 

Climate Home News found Enking has also been betting big on improved cookstove projects, despite technical concerns from experts. The company has set up a manufacturing plant capable of producing up to 5 million cast iron stoves a year. The plan is to distribute them to rural households across India, and beyond, as part of carbon offsetting projects. This could lead to 5 million new credits every year. 

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Alongside developing its own activities, Climate Home News found that Enking has also been playing a major role in giving a new life to credits issued by old projects, originally started over ten years ago by a different Indian company under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. 

Based on flawed accounting, this type of project has long been subject to strong criticism. For this reason, Jess Roberts from carbon offsets rating agency Sylvera says they should not be used for offsetting claims, and, if bought, they should be seen as more philanthropic investments. 

But, since early 2021 Enking, acting as a consultant, has helped transfer two dozen of these projects onto the registry of Verra, the world’s largest carbon offsets certifier. Nearly 1.2 million credits have since been made available to polluters. Oil and gas giant Shell has been the biggest buyer so far, snapping up over 98,000 of them on a single day last February. 

Enking has not replied to questions sent by Climate Home News at the time of publication.

Verra told Climate Home News that it “takes any concerns about the integrity and quality of the carbon credits it issues seriously and is ready to address them if they turn out to be founded”.

It is not the first time Enking’s carbon credits activities have come under scrutiny. A report by Bloomberg highlighted how its portfolio is stuffed with offsets tied to renewable energy schemes. These products are generally acknowledged to be of poor quality because of the lack of additionality – meaning the projects would have been funded without the offsetting scheme. 

Overstated climate benefits 

Climate Home News found that both sets of projects – Enking’s own and the old ones from 2012 that they brought back to life – are highly likely to produce offsets that do not reflect real cuts in CO2 emissions, according to an analysis of their documentation by Berkeley’s Gill-Wiehl.  

The projects apply two slightly different versions of the much-contested CDM rules to calculate emissions reductions. They claim abnormally high levels of deforestation caused by firewood harvesting and unrealistic rates of usage when compared with comparable numbers found in scientific studies, the analysis shows.

When projects claim very high numbers buyers should ask hard questions, says SEI’s Rob Bailis. 

A traditional earthen stove (left) used in a rural household in India’s Maharashtra state alongside an improved cookstove (right). Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar

As with most other types of carbon credits, improved cookstoves start from a counterfactual scenario: what would have happened to CO2 emissions – in this case produced by collecting firewood – if the project had not existed? 

The methodologies compare the amount of wood consumed by each household before and after installing the efficient cookstoves. The cast iron cookstoves provided should be more efficient and consume less fuel. As a result, project developers claim villagers need to harvest less firewood from nearby forests, which should therefore be better preserved. 

But “it is extremely difficult to quantify the emissions reduced from avoided deforestation as a result of distributing the improved cookstove,” says Jess Roberts from carbon offsets rating agency Sylvera. Calculations heavily rely on modelling based on several different parameters, which are subject to uncertainty and at risk of manipulation, she added. 

Exaggerated forest loss 

One single key number, in particular, can hugely inflate emission reduction estimates and, as a result, produce vast amounts of worthless carbon credits. Experts call it the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB). In layman’s terms, this is the percentage of wood assumed to be lost for good when trees are cut down for fuel, leading to the depletion of carbon stocks. 

For example, if forests regenerated at the same rate at which firewood was collected, there would be no net change to CO2 levels and no negative climate impact. But the longer forests take to grow back – which implies a high fNRB value –, the bigger the threat to forests’ carbon-storing potential researchers expect. 

Experts say most low-quality credits from improved cookstove projects stem from the misuse of this factor. Several studies have found large discrepancies between the fNRB values used in carbon offsetting projects and those observed by independent researchers. 

According to Berkeley University’s Annelise Gill-Wiehl, this also applies to the projects analysed by Climate Home News.  

The 2012 CDM project declared a fNRB value of 87.9%, assuming therefore that nearly all harvested wood would not grow back. That value stands in stark contrast with the corresponding number – 24.2% – calculated by Gill-Wiehl through a more sophisticated and scientifically accepted model.  

The same level of discrepancy is found in the project currently being developed by Enking. 

Accounts heard by Climate Home News in villages across India’s Maharashtra state indicate the impact of the rural population’s firewood collection on forest loss is limited.

“The forest is protected and maintained by the government. So villagers collect just dead and broken twigs and branches,” Shantabai Deve said. “We are well aware of possible problems if we keep chopping trees, so we plant new ones as well.”

Vittal Barge using his improved cookstove at his house in India’s Maharashtra state. (Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar)

Poor monitoring 

The exaggerated forest loss estimates are not the only parameter fuelling questionable offsets.

“For this type of project the assumed emission reductions don’t happen unless the recipient actually uses the stove,” says Gill-Wiehl. For each stove not used as intended, the project developer needs to reduce the number of credits issued. 

That involves tracking recipients’ behaviour: whether they cook with the new stove at all, how often that happens and whether the traditional, less efficient, stove also remains in operation. This phenomenon, known as stacking, is relatively common because traditional stoves may be better suited for preparing a specific type of meal or may have a religious significance – like in some parts of India. 

Checking these metrics brings more problems. “Lots of over-crediting comes from the lack of robust monitoring”, Gill-Wiehl says.

Often this delicate exercise is done exclusively through surveys, asking a small sample of the recipients a set of questions once a year. These can be “really simplistic”, according to the Berkeley researcher. “They would literally ask a household ‘have you used the stove in the last month?’ and if the answer is ‘yes’, they get to credit it as if they used it all the time”. 

These surveys produce results that, on the face of it, appear excellent. 

In a monitoring report for its new project, Enking said its surveys showed everyone they had given a stove to has been using it all the time without ever combining it with a traditional one. The CDM projects report similarly high rates across the board, allowing them to issue nearly the maximum number of credits allowed. 

These results are starkly different from those generally observed by independent researchers on the field. According to the Berkeley report, studies have seen average adoption rates of 53%, usage rates of 48% and stacking rates of 76%. In other words, only about half of the recipients cook with the stove at all, and, if they do, it happens less than half of the time, most likely in conjunction with a traditional one. 

SEI’s Rob Bailis says that “projects claiming very high rates of fNRB, adoption, and exclusive use, should raise some red flags”.

Researchers say project developers could implement different methods to track the stoves’ usage: anything from just drafting better surveys to cross-checking answers with photos and videos, or even fitting the devices with remotely-controlled sensors.  

But it is easy to see why very few go the extra mile, experts said. “The incentive structure is to generate as many credits as possible, not to produce really high-quality data,” says Gill-Weihl.

In Machutar and in other neighbouring villages most improved cookstove users interviewed by Climate Home News didn’t recall the exact project that gave them their devices. But they do remember that most of them broke down quickly and were no longer in frequent use.

For the villagers, the abstract thought of carbon offsets is eclipsed by their immediate needs. Meager incomes from rice and strawberry farming put frequent supplies of gas canisters beyond the reach of most. Firing up the traditional mud stoves remains the only solution.

“It is convenient and faster to cook on LPG. But I cannot afford to refill it twice every month”, says Rajendra Jadhav, an electrician in the region. “So I use an earthen stove for boiling water, drying clothes, and even cooking food frequently”.

Saurabh Katkurwar contributed to report this story.

The post Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts appeared first on Climate Home News.

However, the plan has no binding measures, which runs in contradiction with a new regulation adopted by EU countries a week ago.

“The watchword is clear: general mobilisation,” energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said at a press conference announcing the plan.

The measures are the result of four months of discussion, following prime minister Élisabeth Borne’s June announcement of an energy saving programme for each sector of the French economy in response to the energy crisis and vulnerabilities in the national electricity network.

To reduce energy consumption by 10% in two years, the government has slated 15 key measures, from reducing heating to a maximum of 19C (66F) in offices to encouraging people to carpool.

The plan also includes specific measures for each of the nine economic and social sectors targeted: the state, companies and labour organisations, establishments open to the public and supermarkets, industry, accommodation, transport, digital and telecommunications, sport, and local authorities.

Additionally, private individuals will be advised to practice “eco gestures”, from reducing shower time to switching off household appliances when they are on standby for too long.

For the prime minister, it is a matter of acting “on the whole range of energy savings”.

No binding measures

While the government insists on the particular need to reduce energy consumption during peak hours – between 8am and noon and between 6-8pm – it does not set binding targets.

“There will not be such thing as a temperature police,” Pannier-Runacher told local radio RTL on Thursday.

However, in its roadmap presented on 14 September, the EU Commission laid out a binding target of a 5% reduction in electricity consumption during peak hours. And in July, EU member states also agreed to a 15% reduction in gas consumption following Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

The electricity demand reduction target was formally adopted on Thursday evening after a political agreement was reached last Friday among the EU’s 27 energy ministers. And although member states will remain free to choose the appropriate means of enforcement, the 5% objective is legally-binding.

Only Malta and Cyprus have been exempted.

“We are not on track”

While Pannier-Runacher argued on RTL that high energy prices would provide the impetus for companies and households to act, Thierry Bros, a professor of energy at Science-Po Paris was less optimistic.

Bros told Euractiv that despite high prices, TotalEnergies’ service stations had still seen a rush of customers, both accelerating tensions in supply and maintaining levels of consumption.

Energy-saving measures tend to be unpopular, he explained, especially if the reduction is to be maintained over two years. A 10% reduction in primary energy consumption would be equivalent to the drop in consumption seen during the Covid-19 lockdowns when the economy was slowing down.

Bros also pointed out that France’s rate of reducing consumption has been 1% annually over the last ten years. If France intends to reach the targets it has set itself, “we will have to go five times faster over the next two years,” he said.

“We are not on track,”  said the professor, concluding that without binding measures, meeting the 10% objective “is not possible”.

According to the government, the package of measures should nevertheless reduce consumption by around 50 terawatt hours (TWh) per year.

This is also a first step towards carbon neutrality, which will require a 40% reduction in energy consumption by 2050, Pannier-Runacher said on RTL.

The government, moreover, insists that measures will not have a negative effect on the economy.

“Energy saving does not mean […] choosing to reduce production”, Borne said at the press conference.

This article was first published in Euractiv. It has been lightly amended for clarity.

The post Turn down the heating: France unveils ‘ambitious’ energy saving plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

Citizens want enough electricity to keep the lights on and governments have tried to give them that by supplying enough electricity to meet demand. But people’s demand for electricity is not constant, it goes up and down throughout a day and throughout the year.

In richer countries, many people fire up their air conditioning, switch on their lights and plug in their electric vehicle when they get back from work. After dinner, they turn on their dishwasher and they open the fridge during the advert break for Game of Thrones.

Governments have to provide enough electricity to meet not just the average electricity use but the peak electricity use – half-time in the Superbowl on a boiling hot day. They can make this easier by flattening out the peaks, by getting people to use electricity when demand is low and not when it’s high.

That doesn’t work for every use. Nobody wants to watch television at 3am or run their air conditioning when it’s cold. But people can run their dishwashers and washing machines at night-time. Industrial customers like aluminium smelters can often be flexible with their electricity use too.

That can help avoid power cuts and it can stop desperate grid operators paying extortionate prices for electricity to keep the lights on. When a heatwave hit Europe recently and spiked air conditoning use, the UK’s grid operator paid 5,000% more than usual to import electricity.

What’s all this got to do with climate change?

For the next few decades, electricity will be supplied by a mix of clean electricity and dirty electricity. Grid operators will use the clean electricity when they can and fossil fuel-powered electricity when that doesn’t fully cover demand.

For example, California gets most of its electricity from zero-carbon sources. But, it is building new gas generators which are only to be used when the supply of clean electricity can not meet demand. So the less demand outstrips supply, the less fossil fuels it will use.

More important than that though, according to Brattle Group analyst Ryan Hledik, is that demand response will make electrification and decarbonisation cheaper. If you can charge up your electric vehicle with cheap electricity at night rather than expensive electricity at 6pm then you are more likely to tell your friends to swap their gas-guzzler for an electric vehicle.

In many parts of the developing world, there’s not enough electricity to go around even before electric vehicle and electric heat pumps are rolled-out. So, as countries develop and homes and transport are electrified, demand response is key to keeping the lights on.

How is demand response done?

The simplest way to encourage consumers to shift their electricity use is to offer them discounts on their electricity bill if they do so through ‘time of use rates’. This works like ‘off peak’ fares on public transport or ‘happy hours’ at a bar, encouraging customers who can shift their demand to do so.

Currently, these rates have been targetted at electricity-guzzling businesses rather than households – as this is where demand response can have the most impact for the least amount of outreach work. (CHECK WITH SOURCES)

Hledik says that demand response is most advanced in North America. In the Canadian province of Ontario, for example, electricity costs different amounts at different times of the day. Andrew Dow, from Ontario’s grid operator IESO, said it’s cheaper at night because it’s not being used as much.

Big electricity users pay their electricity bills proportionately to their use in the five highest demand hours of the year. “So these businesses are incentivised to monitor electricity demand throughout the year and, when they see something that could be one of the top five peaks of the year, businesses are incentivised to reduce their use,” Dow explained.

South Africa takes similar measures. Malcom Van Harte works for their grid operator Eskom. He told Climate Home that 22 large industrial electricity customers are incentivised to shift their peaks by ‘time of use’ rates. When electricity is scarce, households get adverts over the television and radio asking people to switch off non essential equipment

A twist on ‘time of use’ is that electricity users are asked to switch off 10-20% of their electricity when demand looks like outstripping supply. If they accept this request, the customer is then exempted from the planned outages which plague South Africa, known as ‘load shedding’.

In the US state of Vermont, an utility called Green Mountain Power is deploying Tesla powerwall batteries to peoples’ homes. Most of the year, the resident gets to use this battery as a backup generator, to absorb excess power from their solar panels or to reduce their bill on a ‘time of use’ rate. But, for the few days a year when Green Mountain Power is desperate for electricity, it can take control of the battery and use its electricity to power the grid. “It’s a win-win situation”, said Hledik.

In the future, electricity users could even be paid to give the electricity from their vehicle’s battery back to the grid at peak times. This is known as ‘vehicle to grid’ power and, Hledik said, is still at the pilot phase. “It’s still very much at a point where the technology and the commercial business case are being tested and proven,” he said, “whereas the simpler ‘time of use’ rate concept is something that’s available at scale.

How will the energy transition affect demand response?

As electricity systems become increasingly based on renewables, daily and seasonal patterns of supply will shift. Fossil fuel power plants can pump out electricity whenever 24/7 and 365, as long as you can keep feeding them fossil fuels. But the sun and wind come and go.

The first chart shows wind (purple) and solar (yellow) potential vs demand (orange) throughout the year in the US. The second shows the same but throughout a summer’s day in the US. (Tong et al)

The same figures as above, but for South Africa, which has southern hemisphere seasons

Hledik said that parts of the US with high solar deployment like California and Arizona are already seeing this shift. Previously, grid operators have tried to delay electricity use from the post-work peak of 6pm to more like 8pm.

Now they have more electricity than they need between midday and 2pm when the sun is at its highest. So they’re trying to get dishwashers and washing machines on in the middle of the day rather than in the late evening. Luckily, the sun’s power dips at night which is when demand for electricity is also at its lowest.

The post Demand response: A win-win solution to climate and energy price crises appeared first on Climate Home News.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is having profound consequences on the EU’s energy and climate policies.

In May, the European Commission already proposed raising the EU’s energy efficiency target to 13% by 2030, up from the 9% figure it originally put on the table in July last year.

The plan, dubbed REPowerEU, is designed to cut imports of Russian fossil fuels by two-thirds before the end of this year and eliminate them completely “well before 2030” by diversifying gas supplies and accelerating the green transition.

Crucially, this will be the first time that energy savings become a legal obligation on EU member states, which increases the odds that the target will be met.

But as the war drags on and Russia threatens to cut supplies to Europe entirely ahead of next winter, lawmakers in the European Parliament have decided to up the ante and raise the EU’s efficiency target even further.

On Monday (11 July), the Parliament’s four largest political groups – the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the centrist Renew Europe (RE) and the Greens – put forward joint amendments for the revised energy efficiency directive.

“This deal has broad political support in the European Parliament, which shows a commitment to deliver,” said Niels Fuglsang, a Danish lawmaker from the S&D group who is the Parliament’s leader on the revised directive.

“In this time of energy crisis where Putin shuts off gas deliveries to the EU, we need to save more energy, and we need to do this by setting high and binding energy efficiency targets for the EU as a whole and for the individual member states,” he told Euractiv in emailed comments.

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The highlight is a higher energy efficiency target of 14.5% by 2030 compared to the 2020 reference scenario.

“We acknowledge that 13% in REPowerEU is already ambitious, but we can also go higher – we want to see if possible that we reach 14.5%,” said Pernille Weiss, a Danish Christian Democrat MEP who steers the EPP’s position on the file.

“This corresponds to a reduction of 40% for final energy consumption and 42.5% for primary energy consumption respectively when compared to the 2007 Reference Scenario projections for 2030,” the four parties said. The current EU target is a reduction in energy consumption of 32.5% based on the 2007 projections.

The additional reduction of 14.5% results in 740 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) of final energy consumption and 960 Mtoe of primary energy consumption to be reached in 2030 respectively, according to the joint proposal circulated on Monday.

In addition, public authorities in EU countries would have the obligation to reduce their energy consumption by “at least 2%” every year in order to “ensure that the public sector fulfils its exemplary role,” the joint proposal says. This is up from 1.5% in the Commission’s earlier plans.

EU member states would, however, “retain full flexibility regarding the choice of energy efficiency improvement measures” to achieve the target on final energy consumption, the joint text adds.

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A key aspect for Pernille Weiss and the EPP is that the joint amendments recognise the differences between EU member states.

“We have different infrastructures, industries, and buildings all over Europe,” Weiss explained at a press briefing on Monday (11 July). According to her, the compromise gives EU countries “the necessary flexibility” when setting their national contributions “by allowing them to take into account different national circumstances affecting energy consumption – such as GDP forecasts, the uptake of renewable energy, the development of storage technologies and the overall level of ambition in national decarbonisation plans”.

As part of this flexibility, EU countries will be able to count fossil savings towards one-third of their savings obligations until mid-2028, Weiss said. Member states will also have leeway to decide on renovation requirements for social housing, which is not defined uniformly across the 27 EU countries.

Still, the compromise texts also “provides for the establishment of binding national energy efficiency contributions for 2030,” a move that was supported by the Greens. And every four years, large companies will have to perform energy audits, whose recommendations will be mandatory.

“As the European Court of Auditors had found that the implementation of audit recommendations would contribute most to more energy efficiency, it is only logical that the Industry Committee now makes implementation mandatory,” said Jutta Paulus, a German Green MEP who represented the Greens in the negotiations.

With the four largest political groups on board, the amended directive is expected to sail through easily when the Parliament’s industry committee votes on the proposal this Wednesday.

The full Assembly will hold a debate on the revised directive in September. Unless one of the Parliament’s political groups asks for a plenary vote to be held, the file will be sent directly for so-called trialogue talks with the 27 EU member states in the EU Council of Ministers to finalise the legislation.

The final target, and the measures to meet it, will be at the centre of talks with the Council, which agreed its position on 27 June.

This article was produced by Euractiv and republished under a content sharing agreement.

The post EU lawmakers back stronger energy efficiency target in response to Russian war appeared first on Climate Home News.

Five major oil companies, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, which extract some of the world’s most carbon-intensive oil, announced they had formed the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero alliance on Wednesday.

The companies, which together operate about 90% of Canada’s tar sands, said they will work with the Canadian government and the provincial government of Alberta to roll out technologies that will enable them to cut emissions from their extraction and production process.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2018, the oil and gas sector was the largest source of Canada’s emissions, accounting for 26% of its total, according to government data.

Tar sands companies said the alliance aims to “develop an actionable approach” to cut emissions while “preserving the more than $3 trillion in oil sands contribution” to Canada’s economy to 2050.

But they made no mention of phasing out production. The “net zero” strategy does not extend to emissions from consumers burning the oil, which are many times larger than those from the extraction process.

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In fact, planned oil production in Canada would lead to a 17% expansion between 2019 and 2030, according to recent analysis by Stockholm Environment Institute.

This goes against modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which found that new investments in expanding oil and gas production must stop by the end of the year for the sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

“This kind of greenwash is worse than meaningless – it’s dangerous,” Alex Doukas, senior consultant at the Denmark-based KR Foundation, said of the alliance. “It fails to cover emissions associated with the tar sands products themselves. Nobody should cheer this nonsense.”

Laurie van der Burg, campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home News: “These plans lack the one and only action that is most vital to cutting emissions: cutting dirty oil and gas production.

“If the Canadian tar sands net-zero alliance cared about climate action it would have committed to cut production by 2030.”

Van der Burg added that tar sands producers risked facing litigation over the plans, citing a court ruling against oil giant Shell, which established that real emissions reductions were necessary for oil and gas companies to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN Environment Programme, global oil production must fall by 4% every year between now and 2030 to maintain a chance of staying below 1.5C of warming.

New Zealand climate plan criticised over ‘cow-shaped hole’

Because it is thick and viscous, oil from tar sands takes a lot of energy to extract and refine, making its production three to four times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional crude oil.

To meet the goal, the alliance plans to create a corridor to link oil sands facilities from Fort McMurray to the Cold Lake regions and channel CO2 to a carbon sequestration hub.

Energy efficiency measures, electrification of operations, producing hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technology would be deployed requiring “significant investment” from both the industry and government, the companies said.

The alliance said “internationally recognised forecasts” indicate fossil fuel will continue to be part of the energy mix to 2050 to justify the initiative – contrary to the latest IEA net zero report.

“Every credible energy forecast indicates that oil will be a major contributor to the energy mix in the decades ahead and even beyond 2050,” said Sonya Savage, Alberta’s minister of energy, claiming this would lead to the production of “net zero barrels of oil”.

Net-zero latest

“Canadian oil sands producers said on Wednesday they would form an alliance to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 2050”https://t.co/WjuVD53quZ pic.twitter.com/bTyUKwHk4m

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) June 9, 2021

Under the IEA’s first comprehensive 1.5C scenario, the agency projects a drop in oil demand of 75% between 2020 and 2050, with fossil fuels supplying slightly over one-fifth of total energy by 2050.

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, described the alliance as “absurd”. In a tweet, she said measures to reduce emission intensity and develop carbon capture and storage were “clearly not enough” to help the world meet its climate goal.

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One of the main checks on tar sands producers’ bullishness is organised opposition to infrastructure projects to connect Alberta to key export markets.

On Wednesday, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries along the US’ Gulf Coast. The decision comes after Joe Biden revoked permits for the pipeline expansion in January.

It was hailed a victory by climate campaigners and indigenous communities who fought the project for a decade.

“Keystone XL is now the most famous fossil fuel project killed by the climate movement, but it won’t be the last,” said Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. “Now it’s time to go a step further and say no to all new fossil fuel projects everywhere.”

On Thursday, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative published research warning that ending the expansion of the fossil fuel sector was not enough to keep the 1.5C within reach, and an exit strategy from existing production is required.

The study, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, found that carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects would lead to 66% more emissions in 2030 than is compatible with a 1.5C trajectory.

Professor Sven Teske, who led the research, said: “National governments must establish binding limits for the extraction volumes for coal, oil and gas,” adding that new investments risked becoming stranded because of the falling prices of renewable energy.

The post Tar sands companies aim for ‘net zero’ by 2050 – with no plan to extract less oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

Japan, China, South Korea, Norway and several EU member states are among 14 countries to agree on a package of energy efficiency measures for existing ships, ahead of next week’s IMO environmental committee meeting. The International Chamber of Shipping also backs the submission.

In the proposal, seen by Climate Home, they suggest imposing a combination of mandatory short-term technical and operational measures on the world’s 60,000 vessels, from reducing engine power to introducing ship-level carbon intensity targets. These measures would not be enforced until 2030 – a decade too late, green groups say.

Bryan Comer, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, told Climate Home that the proposal ignores scientific and technical recommendations made by climate campaigners. “What’s on the table now may not even be enough to achieve the IMO’s minimum 2030 target. It’s certainly not Paris-aligned,” said Comer. 

“Every year that we allow shipping emissions to go up, it is eating up more of the carbon budget. More drastic actions will need to be taken later,” Comer said.

EU considers crackdown on methane leaks from imported oil and gas

The proposal is modelled on Japan’s Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) which would impose energy efficiency targets on existing ships based on their type and size, and is supported by Norway, Greece and Panama. 

Limiting engine power to reduce emissions is the easiest way for ships to comply with EEXI, according to a report by the ICCT. EEXI would only make ‘a small contribution’ to the IMO’s climate goals and reduce CO2 emissions from the existing fleet by just 0.8-1.6% by 2030, the ICCT concluded. 

In the new IMO proposal, the countries suggest combining EEXI with other operational measures, including a carbon intensity indicator, proposed by Denmark, Germany and France, which would set individual targets for every ship. 

Campaigners describe it as a compromise, which lacks urgency and commitment to address the scale of the problem. International shipping produces around one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, accounting for 3% of annual global emissions. Without further action, ship emissions in 2050 are expected to reach 90-130% of 2008 levels. 

Faig Abbasov, shipping programme director at Brussels-based think-tank Transport & Environment, told Climate Home that many of the measures, including limiting engine power, are “empty shell” pledges. “Ships aren’t using their engine power to the maximum anyway,” he said. 

“The measures are voluntary for the next decade. There is no reason for member states to go beyond what the regulation says. They will just wait until then,” Abbasov said.

Major ship emissions study flags a bigger role for governments

The IMO has set the target of cutting CO2 emissions from international shipping by at least 50% by 2050, compared to 2008 levels, with carbon intensity reduced 40% by 2030. When the IMO announced these targets in 2018, it said it was  pursuing “a pathway of CO2 emissions reduction consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature goals.” But experts say the IMO targets are not in line with the strongest Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5C. “This requires full decarbonisation by 2050,” said Abbasov.

“Leaving the efficiency of ships unregulated for another decade, the clear and intended result of this proposal, is certain to allow shipping’s huge 1 billion tonnes of annual GHG emissions to keep rising for the next 10 years and beyond,” said Kate Young, a campaigner for Generation Climate Europe, the largest coalition of youth-led NGOs in Europe.

The IMO’s 2018 strategy said it would prioritise short-term measures that achieved emissions reductions before 2023.

“The countries trying to push enforcement back until 2030, and for some ships only, are simply hoping no-one will notice they are removing all the ambitious bits of a major international climate agreement reached by over 100 countries just two years ago,” Young said. 

The proposal came a few days after the EU Parliament voted to include maritime CO2 emissions in the EU carbon market from 2022, following criticism that shipping is the only sector to not face emissions reduction targets. The decision will force shipowners to buy carbon permits to cover emissions during voyages in Europe or international voyages which start or finish at a European port. 

The EU decision could force the IMO to ramp up its climate ambition, campaigners say. “By going first, the EU is putting pressure on the IMO to act,” Abbasov said.

The post Ships to get free pass on emissions until 2030, under compromise proposal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Japan’s environment minister Shinjirō Koizumi convened ministers from across the world to launch an online tool for countries to share their experiences in designing climate-compatible recovery packages for their economies.

Opening the event, Koizumi said he hoped the initiative would spur greater action ahead of critical climate negotiations, or Cop26, in Glasgow, UK, in November 2021. Countries, he added, were expected to demonstrate political will and evidence of how they were using stimulus money to accelerate emissions cuts.

To date, in many cases, government bailouts have thrown a lifeline to dirty energy. Since the start of the pandemic, G20 governments have pledged $204 billion of support to fossil fuels. That is 52% of all public money committed to the energy sector, compared with 35% for clean energy, according the Energy Policy Tracker.

Some of the world’s largest emitters including the United States and India were absent from the meeting, which saw participation from 96 countries and nearly 50 ministers giving short statements, despite connectivity and technical issues.

UN’s Espinosa: China among nations likely to miss 2020 deadline for climate plans

Chairing the session, Selwin Hart, UN special adviser on climate action, said there had been widespread support for international collaboration and solidarity to address both Covid-19 and the climate crisis.

Vice-president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans told the meeting this was “a one in a generation opportunity to rebuild better”.

“The recovery will be green or it won’t be a proper recovery,” he said, adding that the EU had committed to spend half a trillion euros on supporting the climate agenda and aligning investment with the Paris Agreement.

Common themes in ministers’ speeches included electrifying transport, rolling out renewable energy, energy efficiency measures and promoting nature-based solutions.

Investment in green hydrogen and carbon capture technologies featured highly among a number of rich countries’ plans including Japan, the UK, Germany and Australia.

Extra UN climate talks mooted for 2021 to help negotiators catch up

Koizumi said Japan was working on “redesigning the energy sector” to become “a hydrogen society” using renewable energy and carbon capture technologies. Other measures included the construction of carbon neutral data centers and an EV push.

The charismatic environment minister, tipped as a potential future Japanese premier, said Japan was “ready to lead international climate discussions” once again – hinting the country had been taking a back seat in international talks since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

UN secretary general António Guterres told Japan that to walk the talk, it would need to end all investments in coal power and commit to carbon neutrality before 2050.

Earlier this year, Japan restated its existing 2030 plan to cut emissions in a submission to the UN, drawing international criticism for failing to set a tougher target.

UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa told Climate Home News on Wednesday she expected only 80 countries to submit updated climate plans by the 2020 deadline for ramping up ambition. China, the world’s largest emitter, would not be among them.

While China’s provinces have gone on a coal plant building spree this year, Beijing has so far committed more money to clean energy than fossil fuels to reboot its economy. In a statement, environment minister Zhao Yingmin highlighted new guidance on investment to support green industries, including speeding up renewable energy, and circular economy projects.

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Cop25 president and Chile’s environment minister, Carolina Schmidt, said updating climate plans this year “was not an unnecessary distraction to the pandemic” but a “guide to a sustainable recovery to Covid-19”.

Germany environment minister Svenja Schulze promised the EU would agree on a strengthened 2030 climate plan before the end of Berlin’s rotating presidency of the European Council at the end of the year.

Schulze said Germany had dedicated €40 billion of its €120 billion stimulus package to green projects, with a focus on green infrastructure including “the escalation of a global green hydrogen industry”.

On Thursday, France unveiled a €100 billion stimulus package, of which €30 billion was earmarked for greening the economy.

The scale is in sharp contrast to the UK’s £350 million investment plan to cut emissions in heavy industry and drive a green recovery.

Appearing through video message, Cop26 president designate and the UK’s business minister Alok Sharma said the recovery was “a chance for all of us to build back better, to create green jobs and put green growth at the heart of our economy”.

“There has never been a better time to invest in the green economy,” he said.

But so far, nearly 70% of the UK’s recovery spending in the energy sector has gone to fossil fuels, according to the Energy Policy Tracker – putting the Cop26 host at risk of appearing as a laggard.

The post Countries promise green recovery at Japanese virtual summit, keep quiet on fossil bailouts appeared first on Climate Home News.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) – perhaps the world’s most influential energy forecaster – gave the company an easy defence.

In its climate strategy, Total cites the IEA’s most “sustainable development scenario”, which sees methane gas consumption soaring between now and 2040 to meet a quarter of global energy demand.

Gas, Total insists, “is the best option currently available for combating global warming”. This is just one example of how oil and gas companies use IEA forecasts to justify investments in fossil fuels.

Under the direction of Turkish economist Fatih Birol, the agency has become increasingly supportive of clean energy. Yet it continues to appeal to its oil-producing funders, ducking hard questions about the endgame for dirty energy.

“The IEA is an organisation that was set up and designed for a different era and it needs a radical transformation if they are still to have relevance in the modern era,” Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at Carbon Tracker, told Climate Home News.

With a reputation for having excellent analytical skills and a deep understanding of the energy system, the IEA could be repurposed to show the full cost of fossil fuels and drive the energy transition, Bond said. That would be “a game-changer”.

Seven countries back Africa’s biggest investment, a $20 billion gas project

The Paris-based energy agency was established in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis to ensure the security of oil supplies. Oil security remains central to the IEA’s mission. It is best known for its in-depth analysis and data on the energy market, which provides reference material for companies and governments alike.

The coronavirus pandemic confronted the IEA with the opposite problem: over-supply. The price of oil tumbled and even turned briefly negative in the US, as demand collapsed – a foretaste of shocks that could be in store if and when action to cut emissions accelerates.

As lockdown measures to contain the pandemic started to take a toll on the economy, Birol led the narrative on putting clean energy at the heart of stimulus packages. In an interview with Climate Home News in March, he said recovery packages offered governments “a historic opportunity” to accelerate the clean energy transition.

The IEA then set out its vision for a sustainable recovery in a special report last month, providing governments with a guide for how short-term energy investments could reboot the economy and create jobs while cutting emissions.

It’s a message many leaders have yet to heed. Major economies in the G20 have so far spent more recovery money supporting fossil fuels than clean energy, according to initial findings of the Energy Policy Tracker launched by 14 research groups earlier this month.

Speaking to CHN this month, Birol said the first tranche of recovery money had been focused on “creating firewalls around the economy, helping businesses and maintaining employment”. He expected stimulus in the second half of the year to focus on renewable energy, energy efficiency for buildings and the modernisation of power grids.

“Even countries that do not put climate change as a key priority in their political agenda need to focus on these energy policies because they will boost economic growth and create jobs. Energy efficiency is a job machine – it is very labour intensive and it will reduce emissions,” he said.

Long read: This oil crash is not like the others

Notably absent from the IEA’s “sustainable recovery” report is any reference to the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Under the pact, governments aim to hold global warming “well below 2C” and aim for 1.5C, the tougher target seen as critical to the survival of some vulnerable nations.

Oil Change International said this reflected a chronic failure of climate ambition at the agency. “Given the IEA’s rhetoric and calls for leadership, omitting 1.5C is a pretty significant oversight,” said campaigner Hannah McKinnon.

Then there is a certain evasiveness around what those goals mean for fossil fuels.

On the “mission” page of its website, the IEA says it takes an “all-fuels, all-technology approach”.

In November 2017, the IEA launched a Clean Energy Transition Programme to support clean energy deployment in emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India.

A few months earlier, Birol told an oil and gas conference in the US: “Our message to the oil industry here in Houston is invest, invest, invest”.

Renewables overtake fossil fuels in EU electricity generation

At the World Energy Forum this year, Birol called for “building a grand coalition” to bring down global emissions. He later said 2020 was “the year for the clean energy transition“.

In May, he told an online energy event: “I don’t think it’s the end of oil yet. We still need oil for years to come,” citing ongoing demand from the transport and petrochemical industries.

“There is a strong rhetoric and desire by the IEA to lead on [the clean energy transition],” said Peter Wooders, senior energy director at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). “But the agency hasn’t always provided all the tools and clear signalling of the way forward…

“By sitting on the fence and backing all forms of energy, there is a danger that they will perpetuate the unsustainable pathway we are on rather than showing what could be achieved in the future.”

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In an interview with CHN this month, Birol called for a phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel consumption subsidies that give citizens cheap petrol or cooking gas, for example. Such subsidies create “a major distortion in the market” and “an artificial challenge for the clean energy transition,” Birol said.

But he avoided questions about subsidies supporting the production of coal, oil and gas, such as the public finance poured into the Mozambique gas project by seven other countries.

Nor would he comment on whether a managed decline of oil and gas production was needed to meet international climate goals.

Claudia Strambo, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said ignoring the supply side of the equation was “extremely problematic”.

The lack of attention to fossil fuel production subsidies misrepresents the relative costs of coal, oil and gas compared with other energy sources, making them appear more competitive than they really are, she said.

By failing to provide policy guidance for a managed transition away from fossil fuels, Strambo said the IEA was doing “a disservice” to producers. “History shows that failing to manage this process can have severe long-term economic, social and political implications.”

Comment: World Bank policy advice boosts oil and gas, undermining climate goals

Business leaders, scientists and investors have urged the IEA to make a 1.5C-compatible scenario central to its flagship annual publication, the World Energy Outlook, opening up a debate over the IEA’s role in setting norms around global energy use.

In response, the IEA last November extended its Sustainable Development Scenario, which sets out what would need to happen for the world to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2C”, to reach the 1.5C goal.

However, it relied on using unproven negative emissions technology towards the end of the century, rather than accelerating a shift away from burning coal, oil and gas.

The campaigning coalition, led by former UN Climate Change head Christiana Figueres, is not impressed.

Guterres confronts China over coal boom, urging a green recovery

Sue Reid, principal advisor on finance at Mission 2020, which convened the campaign, said companies and investors lacked the data they need to align their business plans and investment portfolios with international commitments.

In its 2019 annual report, Italian oil company Eni said it had not tested its investment plan for compatibility with 1.5C because the tools to do so were not yet available.

Reid suggested investors and businesses could seek alternative sources of analysis on 1.5C if the IEA failed to meet demand.

“The more time elapses with the IEA not developing a 1.5C scenario, the more time it gives for other models to emerge that could supersede the IEA’s tools,” Reid told CHN. “It risks losing its influence if it doesn’t catch up with the world’s direction of travel towards 1.5C.”

If the IEA is serious about wanting to accelerate the clean energy transition, McKinnon said it will have to develop a central 1.5C scenario and address fossil fuel production. Its approach to the issue in its next major report in November “could make or break the legitimacy of its climate rhetoric,” she said.

The post For all its green talk, the IEA still gives comfort to oil and gas producers appeared first on Climate Home News.

Spain joins a handful of countries to have set out a legal binding strategy to end their contribution to global heating in the next 30 years.

The draft text, which follows a public consultation started in February 2019, sets the direction of economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

“We would like to have presented this law in other conditions, several weeks ago,” said Spain’s vice president Teresa Ribera, who serves as the minister for the ecological transition, adding the draft bill had to be “a useful guide” to shape the recovery effort.

“This law offers us an incredible opportunity to debate about the country that we want to be,” she said.

Under the law, which still needs to be approved by Parliament, the government is pledging to make Spain’s electricity system 100% renewable by the middle of the century, ban all new coal, oil and gas extraction projects with immediate effect, end direct fossil fuel subsidies and make all new vehicles emission-free by 2040.

To reach its 2050 goal, the government has proposed interim targets through its national energy and climate plans to 2030.

By 2030, the government pledged to reduce emissions 23% from 1990 levels and double the proportion of renewable sources in total energy consumption to 35-42% — an objective it described as consistent with the EU bloc-wide target to cut emissions 50%-55% by 2030.

To do so, clean energy sources will need to make up at least 70% — striving for 74% — of the electricity mix in the next 10 years and efficiency measures will need to reduce energy consumption by at least 35%, primarily through the renovation of buildings and homes.

Watchdog: Germany must reach net zero emissions by 2038

The government forecast the plan would generate more than €200,000 million ($219,000 million) of investments in the next decade and create up to 350,000 new jobs every year.

In a briefing paper, it claimed these carbon-cutting measures would boost the country’s economic growth by 1.8% by 2030 compared with business as usual.

The proposed law establishes a commission of experts on climate change and the energy transition to evaluate progress and make recommendations for improvement. The commission will also coordinate climate change policies across communities from December 2021.

The law is expected to shape the recovery from Covid-19. More than 27,500 people have died of the virus in Spain, according to the World Health Organisation – making it one of the worst affected countries in the world.

The draft law “finally provides an institutional framework for the action that science and people are asking for, and it comes at a time when it is more necessary than ever,” Ribera said. “We need a country that thinks about the future opportunities for young people, we can’t leave them a mortgage.”

“At a time when we have to address the Covid-19 recovery process, the energy transition is going to become an important driving force for generating economic activity and employment in the short term and in a manner consistent with what we will need as a country in the medium and long term,” she said.

Covid-19 outbreak in Polish coal mines heaps further pain on struggling sector

In the short term, the government identified energy efficiency measures and renewable deployment as leverage for economic recovery.

Specific measures such as the promotion of hybrid energy generation, incorporating both solar and wind energy in the same installation for example, are being considered to upscale renewable capacity. Reversible hydroelectric power plants have also been made a priority.

Spain’s draft climate law: 

• Bans new research permits and exploration concessions for all hydrocarbons with immediate effect. Existing mines and wells would be required to submit a plan to repurpose the site, for example to generate geothermal energy, five years before the end of their licence.
• Provides for a percentage of the general budget to contribute to the energy transition goals. The percentage will be mirrored on the climate contributions in the next EU budget and revised upwards before 2025. The European Commission has proposed for 25% of expenditure to contribute to climate objectives.
• Ensures all new vehicles are zero carbon by 2040, promotes electric charging points infrastructure and introduces low-emissions zones in cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants.
• Establishes annual biofuel and other alternative fuel targets for air transport.
• Introduces measures for state-owned ports to be carbon neutral by 2050.
• Requires financial institutions to publish specific decarbonisation objectives of their loan and investment portfolios from 2023, in line with the Paris Agreement.
• Integrates climate risks in coastal planning and management, transport infrastructure and land use development.
• Sets out a biodiversity strategy to protect and restore Spain’s wildlife and ecosystems.
• Requires the approval of a transition strategy for communities dependent on fossil fuel industries for their livelihood every five years. Specific transition agreements to promote alternative economic activities should be developed in affected areas.
• Introduces climate change to the school curriculum and promotes professional training in new low-carbon skills and technologies.

The post Spain unveils climate law to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

We never wanted a lesson in decarbonisation and our lack of resilience that condemned hundreds of thousands to death.

But the cleaner air that followed the coronavirus outbreak does represent a golden opportunity: our last best chance to shift our economies away from fossil fuels and reset the governance and institutional rules we need to deepen international cooperation.

As climate impacts intensify, how can governments be better prepared in supporting resilient societies and economies?  How can we build the international system we need for the difficult years ahead?

To ensure 2020 isn’t a lost year for climate action, but anchors climate risk and resilience at the centre of decision making, three areas of focus are important.

First, it’s not about the Cop – shorthand for the annual UN climate negotiations which have become the focal point of climate diplomacy. It’s about the calendar.

IMF chief: $1 trillion post-coronavirus stimulus must tackle climate crisis

There is nothing in the Paris Agreement that binds governments to ratchet up ambition by Cop26. But there is for the end of 2020.

In a year when most governments are scrambling to stop the haemorrhaging of lives and livelihoods from Covid-19, that ambition will have to be expressed in recovery packages, not necessarily in standalone climate plans. And some countries will miss deadlines.

It’s also the year to think about the format of negotiations.

We have long relied on an annual and expanding Cop as the mechanism to ramp up incremental progress that pushes smaller countries and quieter voices to the fringes.

In a post-pandemic world, tens of thousands of delegates and negotiators huddled in a conference centre may prove prohibitively difficult. How do we redesign negotiations so that they are fair and open, transparent and efficient and designed to move the process forward?

Merkel: don’t neglect climate finance to the world’s poor

Secondly, the short-term needs of economic recovery must be guided by a principle of “do no harm” to the decadal imperative of decarbonisation.

Short term stimulus that creates jobs and supports businesses can be aligned with long-term resilience goals, resource efficiency and carbon neutrality.

In the energy transition already underway, we have an opportunity to leap forward.

Comparing 2020 to 2019 energy production across UK and the EU, Finnish power company Wärtsilä reported that coal had slumped 25%, emissions were down 20%, energy demand was down 10% and renewables were providing over 45% of energy generated.

It is a glimpse of the future we can have.

The collapse of the oil price means governments have a chance to divert public money currently used to subsidise fossil fuels to ease an inevitable restructuring of the power sector.

Renewables most resilient to Covid-19 lockdown measures, says IEA

Stimulus funds, regulatory tweaks and other incentives can be used to accelerate investments in smart grids, energy efficiency, digitilisation and renewable energy installation and storage.

The fossil fuel sector, and national oil companies in particular, could be assessed from the perspective of bad and good assets that could be restructured as happened after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Back then we created a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Now, perhaps, we need the Global Bank for Clean Development.

With the price of oil hovering in low double digits and the WTI crude oil benchmark in the US recently in negative territory, Donald Trump’s administration is considering paying producers to keep their shale oil in the ground. Russia is exploring proposals to burn oil to cut production and support the limping price.

Make no mistake, Covid-19 is the respiratory crisis that should hasten the end of the current energy system.

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The pandemic has also laid bare our broken food systems. Food supply chains are broken, leaving hundreds of millions at risk of famine across sub-Saharan Africa and miles long lines for food banks and community pantries dangerously low on supplies across the US.

Again, we have an opportunity to build back better.

The food we consume is the leading driver of chronic disease which in turn is increasingly the biggest drain on public budgets. That diet is also killing the planet. Our current food and agriculture systems are unsustainable and wasteful.

There have been experiments to begin fixing parts of this, such as paying farmers to protect soils and health insurance companies providing clients with healthy meals.

In repairing each of these systems, the public’s new sensitivity to value what is ‘local’ may be enhanced while the risks embedded in global supply chains are better understood. Investing in local – from food production to distributed energy – could be a smart and job-rich resilience strategy.

UN development chief calls for green shift away from ‘irrational’ oil dependence

Finally, we need a level of international cooperation not seen in recent years.

For while Covid-19 may not be an existential threat to us as a species, it most certainly is for our international system of governance. The scale of the economic response to the pandemic is testing the capacity and model on which the UN and the global monetary system are build.

Just like governments must focus on short and long term goals simultaneously, the UN and global financial institutions must prop up existing international instruments while, at the same time, start laying the groundwork for the multilateralism that can ready the world to face truly existential threats.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) will need to pool capital and expertise to rise to the challenge and should prepare countries for future shocks and a decarbonised world.

Development aid from the West will have to rise above the dizzying array of specialised funds and bespoke solutions and find ways to work with greater speed and scale. And China and India should be brought into a constructive dialogue about support to developing countries.

The preamble of the UN Charter describes the need for cooperation and tolerance born of the hard lessons of two world wars. It speaks of social advancement, rights and peace. It is a charter of the people.

Today, as many feel let down by their governments which, with rare exceptions, have been flatfooted at best and callous in their disregard for science and wellbeing at worst, we, the people, have to demand more.

Competence and compassion seem like good places to start in seizing that golden opportunity.

Rachel Kyte is the Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Massachusetts. She is the former CEO and special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All. 

The post No silver lining to coronavirus, but a golden opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.

President Moon Jae-in’s party won a landslide 180 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, up from 120 previously, in a huge show of faith in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The election was one of the first nationwide polls to take place since the start of the pandemic, but the threat of Covid-19 did not deter voters from casting their ballot, with a record turnout.

Voters had to wear a mask and gloves and use hand sanitiser, with those failing a temperature check directed to special booths.

The Democratic Party’s decisive victory will enable President Moon to press ahead with its newly adopted Green New Deal agenda during the last two years of his mandate.

Under the plan, South Korea has become the first country in East Asia to pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to submit updated climate plans to 2030 and long-term decarbonisation strategies to the UN before the end of the year.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

In its climate manifesto published last month, the Democratic Party promised to pass a “Green New Deal” law that would steer the country’s transformation into a low-carbon economy.

The manifesto explicitly referred to the “Green New Deal” plans of Democratic candidates in the US and the EU’s “Green Deal for Europe”, under which the European Commission promised to make the EU the first carbon-neutral continent.

The plan includes large-scale investments in renewable energy, the introduction of a carbon tax, the phase out of domestic and overseas coal financing by public institutions, and the creation of a Regional Energy Transition Centre to support workers transition to green jobs.

The Democratic Party also pledged to develop a medium to long-term roadmap to achieve its goal and campaigners are pressing President Moon to come up with a clear timeline and policies to meet it.

Jessica Yun, of the South Korean advocate group Solutions For Our Climate (SFOC), told Climate Home News she now expected climate change and energy issues to become more prominent within the national political debate.

“It is a positive sign that the ruling Democratic Party has successfully brought in environmental leaders from the coal phase-out and energy transition movement,” she said.

“This is a clear mandate and opportunity for the party to implement these policies,” said Ursula Fuentes Hutfilter, a senior climate policy advisor specialised in the Asia-Pacific region at research group Climate Analytics.

She added that for the Democratic Party to turn its promises into something credible it needed to take “concrete steps”, including updating its 2030 emissions target and developing a clear roadmap to phase out coal power.

Renewable energies under threat in 2020 from coronavirus, oil price slump

Under its existing climate plan, South Korea pledged to cut emissions 37% below projected business-as-usual levels by 2030. An increase of the target was not mentioned in the Democratic Party’s climate platform.

Climate Action Tracker ranked that target as “highly insufficient” to meet the goal of the Paris deal to limit global warming to “well below 2C”.

South Korea is the world’s seventh largest carbon emitter. Coal represents about 40% of the country’s energy mix and Seoul has not yet agreed on a national phase-out date.

The country is also one of the biggest funders of coal projects abroad. In 2016 and 2017, it provided $1.1 billion of public finance for the construction of new coal plants overseas, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

As of this year, South Korea has 60 coal fired plant units, accounting for a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, and another seven units under construction, according to Climate Analytics. It said Seoul would have to phase out coal by 2029 to do its fair share to tackle climate change.

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Plug-in vehicles emit less greenhouse gases than petrol and diesel models over a car’s lifetime – that includes the mining of metals or lithium for batteries, manufacturing, driving 150,000 kilometers and finally scrapping, a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability on Monday found.

Some past studies have questioned the greenness of electric vehicles (EVs), especially because of high emissions linked to making batteries.

“In most of the world, in countries accounting for 95% of road transport, EVs would reduce emissions compared to average petrol cars,” lead author Florian Knobloch, of the Environmental Science Department at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told Climate Home News.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

The study said it made sense to drive an electric car rather than a fossil-fuel vehicle in major markets including China, the United States and almost all of Europe.

The exceptions, where EVs need electricity generated from coal-fired plants to recharge, were India, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria, it said.

Transport, mostly by road, accounts for about a quarter of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

“But it’s not like driving EVs is a silver bullet solution for transport. It’s much better not to drive a car at all,” Knobloch said of the findings by a team also including researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge.

As electricity sources shift from fossil fuels to renewables such as hydro, solar and wind power, EVs would become relatively more attractive. India, for instance, is shifting to solar power so EVs would make sense within a few  years, he said.

India has previously committed to raise the portion of renewable into its energy mix to 175GW by 2022, with the aim of boosting it to 450GW in the long-term.

The benefits of driving EVs are highest in nations with few fossil fuels in electricity generation. “Average lifetime emissions from electric cars are up to 70% lower than petrol cars in countries like Sweden and France (which get most of their electricity from renewables and nuclear),” the authors wrote.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global electric car fleet exceeded 5.1 million in 2018, up by 2 million since 2017. China led sales with 1.1 million in 2018 but, worldwide, EVs are still less than 1% of the global car fleet.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which campaigns for cleaner transport in Europe, said its research was more favourable to EVs.

“EVs are better than petrol or diesel cars in every country in Europe. This also includes Poland,” Lucien Mathieu, a transport and e-mobility analyst with T&E, told CHN.

Mathieu added that grids were likely to be a lot greener in 15 years’ time – the expected lifetime of a vehicle – if governments stick to pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

There are also massive differences between the carbon footprint of manufacturing, he said. Tesla, for instance, uses clean solar power at a Gigafactory in Nevada to assemble battery packs and reduce emissions.

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Over the last week, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stopgap measures have been announced to fight the coronavirus and limit economic shortfalls.

In the US, industries are scrambling for a share of a $1 trillion-stabilisation package with the aviation industry expected to receive a large chunk.

Last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a €870 billion ($781bn) emergency bond-buying programme to stabilise the euro zone economy until the end of the year – the equivalent of 7.3% of the euro area’s GDP.

In contrast, the EU Commission has promised a trillion euros over a decade to finance its Green Deal and support the union’s plan to be the first climate neutral continent by 2050.

Resounding calls have been made for governments and international financial institutions to put the clean energy transition at the heart of stimulus packages, once the human tragedy eases. Almost 15,000 people have died in the pandemic with more than 340,000 confirmed cases by Monday.

“We have a responsibility to recover better” than after the financial crisis in 2008, UN secretary general António Guterres warned.

“We have a framework for action – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We must keep our promises for people and planet,” he added.

But short-term measures designed to stabilise the economy are so far doing little for the transition.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

In Europe, the bond-buying programme announced by the ECB – one of Europe’s most powerful institutions – follows the bank’s current purchasing criteria, which proscribes the bank from preferring one sector over another, instead buying what is available on the market.

An ECB spokesman told CHN the bank’s portfolio “will have an increasing number of green bonds” since these are rising on the market, but their total numbers remain limited.

Stanislas Jourdan, head of Positive Money Europe, a campaign group that has called for the ECB to do more to promote green finance, said the bank committed to a mass purchase of bonds “without any climate considerations”.

“Though the ECB is rightly aiming at addressing the coronavirus crisis, there is a risk that fossil fuels free-ride on those measures to gain even cheaper financing to maintain their activities,” Jourdan told Climate Home News.

The move will likely put more pressure on the bank’s upcoming strategic review of its monetary policy, which is due to consider climate risk, Jourdan added. The ECB is also expected to look at ways it can help drive the continent’s decarbonisation.

Ronan Palmer, who leads the environmental think-tank E3G’s clean economy programme, told CHN that while Europe needed an immediate economic stabilisation package, such measures should be consistent with the EU’s 2050 net zero emission goal.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

As fossil-fuel intensive sectors such as the oil and gas and aviation industries are also lining up for economic relief, “this must be the time to keep these firms afloat providing some conditionality on how these companies operate in the future,” he said.

For example, an automotive company could be bailed out on the condition it accelerates the electrification of the fleet when the immediate crisis passes.

NGO Transport & Environment has urged EU governments to make any financial aid to airlines conditional on carriers paying taxes and starting to use low-carbon fuels once conditions improved.

This, Palmer added, would help governments and companies move away from increasingly risky fossil fuel investments “in a controlled manner”.

In the less immediate term, Palmer said he hoped the EU would “clip a recovery package to its Green Deal” – and use recovery efforts to boost energy efficiency, the electrification of transport, the deployment of renewable energy as well as land use change reforms.

“This is the big political battle,” warned Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement.

“We can make the right choices and address the short economic crisis at the same time as making sure we don’t lock in the economy in Europe into a fossil fuel economy,” she told reporters last week.

“There are many areas where we could take the elements of the Green Deal and quick start them with massive investments that governments are ready to go for anyway,” she said.

Coronavirus response to delay EU Green Deal by weeks

Tubiana insisted the EU needed to start aligning its economic response to the virus with its Green Deal as soon as possible.

“Or we accelerate the implementation of a green deal or I’m very concerned this will be a totally wasted opportunity because the fiscal resources will be use immediately to tackle the [coronavirus] crisis,” she said, adding this could sap the EU’s capacity to make progress on the Green Deal.

Under the Green deal, the EU committed to become climate-neutral by 2050, increase its 2030 climate target, ensure no-one is left behind in the energy transition and transform key sectors such as constructing and renovating buildings, agriculture and transport.

How quickly the promised stimulus money can help boost clean energy investments is, however, up for debate.

“Right now there is much competition for that stimulus money,” Samantha Gross, a fellow in the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate, told CHN, making a focus on clean energies and technologies “challenging” in the short-term.

Gross said the low cost of renewable energy and plummeting interest rates would, in time, constitute favourable conditions for mass investments in the energy transition. “But we need to get out of this crisis mode before businesses can take advantage of these conditions,” she said.

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For Albert Cheung, head of global analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the economic response to the pandemic will happen in two stages.

The first few months to a year is “when you get cash into people’s hands”, he told CHN. While the next couple of years can be spent shaping the recovery effort.

“That is the opportunity for green investments and putting people back to work in jobs that can accelerate the clean energy transition,” he said.

While stabilisation packages might not immediately assist the clean energy transition, the extraordinary scale of the response by governments and central banks is setting a precedent for similar measures to be rolled out to tackle the climate crisis, Jourdan told CHN.

Ronan agreed. “It shows what they [central banks] might be able to do when their put their full weight behind the climate crisis.”

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The UN body responsible for global shipping, which is based in London, also closed its headquarters to staff and visitors on Thursday and Friday as a precautionary measure.

The IMO put off talks by the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), which had been due to meet in London from 30 March to 3 April. The MEPC is reviewing proposals to improve the energy efficiency of ships.

A total of five IMO meetings have now been cancelled, including a working group on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ships from 23-27 March.

The rescheduling of the meetings will be announced “in good time for delegates to make appropriate arrangements,” the IMO said.

In a statement, it cited “the rapid increase of cases worldwide and the continuing difficulties for some delegates from IMO member states travelling from abroad to attend IMO meetings” and WHO’s announcement as reasons for the decision.

Coronavirus: UN delays talks on global ocean biodiversity treaty

Countries members to the IMO have agreed to reduce carbon emissions from global shipping by 40% from 2008 levels by 2030 and at least halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The IMO is working to finalise measures to support its CO2 intensity reduction goal this year. The MEPC meeting was due to review a number of short-term measures to cut carbon emissions.

A controversial proposal by Japan to fit ships with engine power limitation devices to indirectly reduce speed and fuel use was on the agenda for review.

Research by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) has shown the proposal will not directly have an impact of carbon emissions because ships are already operating slower than the proposal’s implied limit.

Faig Abbasov, the shipping programme manager at NGO Transport & Environment, told Climate Home News it was too early to predict the impacts on the negotiations but that much depended on when the meeting would be able to take place.

“Timing matters because if the IMO reaches an agreement on stringent reduction measures, it will then need six months to be adopted followed by 10+6 months to go through the tacit acceptance process,” he said.

“In that sense, any delay in the approval of measures that could have happened at the MEPC meeting would have implications on that timeline as well.”

Coronavirus delays global efforts for climate and biodiversity action

This is the latest global climate meeting to be affected by the spread of the virus, also known as Covid-19.

On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly agreed to postpone a key meeting when countries were due to finalise a global ocean treaty that would enable the creation of marine protected areas in the high seas.

UN Climate Change has also cancelled or postponed all physical meetings until the end of April.

The spread of the virus is putting increasing pressure on the climate and biodiversity timetable this year, with a number of high-level meetings likely pushed back to the summer and the second half of the year.

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European Investment Bank (EIB) revealed the strategic shift in a draft on energy lending policy on Friday.

If adopted by EU finance ministers on 10 September, the policy will pull the plug on finance for infrastructure dedicated to coal, oil and gas by the end of 2020. Instead, it will pivot to clean energy projects.

“This is the result of several months of work and it’s also a reflection of the views we have heard from hundreds of stakeholders across Europe as to what the priorities of the European Bank should be when it comes to supporting energy in the future,” said vice president Andrew McDowell in a video statement.

“The main proposals are clear: we want to increase our support for the energy transition in Europe, the decarbonization of the European economy. We want to support more energy efficiency and energy savings projects, we want to help further decarbonize energy supply, through more support for renewable energy. We want to support energy innovation, new technologies that will be necessary in the future to meet ambitious climate and energy commitments. And we need to support more the energy infrastructures of the future, particularly the electrification of the European economy.”

The draft proposes some exemptions including production of biofuels and high-efficiency gas-fired combined heat and power plants.

Comment: A weak carbon price is worse than no carbon price

Environmental organisations, which have been calling for such a shift for years, erupted over the news.

“This is a crack of light in the darkness,”  Colin Roche, fossil free campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said. “While the EU and national governments are floundering as the planet burns, the EU’s public bank has made the brave, correct and just proposal to stop funding fossil fuel projects. We are now urging the European Investment Bank’s board to endorse this step forward, and ensure there are no loopholes for fossil fuel funding.”

The policy is something the EU could present at the climate action summit convened by UN chief Antonio Guterres in New York on 23 September.

“Saying that their bank is aligning its energy lending with Paris [Agreement] by ruling out fossil-fuel funding, is pretty significant,” Lisa Fischer, a policy advisor at think-tank E3G, told Climate Home News. “It will set the standard for others to follow.”

The initiative would also “put a lot of pressure on the European Union to align its infrastructure priorities,” Fischer said.

Guterres asks all countries to plan for carbon neutrality by 2050

The proposed ban on funding natural gas may meet resistance, Fischer said. Having committed to end coal power by 2038, Germany is eyeing gas as a bridge fuel.

“We know that there’s a disagreement between ministries in Germany, so that the environment ministry [wants] to exclude fossil fuels, but they’re not actually holding the pen,” Fischer said. “It’s the economy ministry that is writing the position and sending the finance ministry that will relay it.”

Meanwhile, Romania has not given up on the dream of extracting gas in the Black Sea, despite a spate of recent regulation making that task harder. Another country rich in gas, Bulgaria, could also lobby against the proposal.

Championed by French economist Pierre Larrouturou and top climate scientist Jean Jouzel, the idea of an EU bank for climate investments has piled pressure on the EU’s lending arm in the past months. More than 600 political figures backed the initiative, with French president Emmanuel Macron,  Spanish president Pedro Sanchez and the pope ranking among its most influential supporters.

“It’s put a lot of tension on the EIB that wasn’t there beforehand,” Fischer said. “The EIB came out saying: ‘Hang on, we’re the climate bank!’ I think that set the standard and then it was about translating what that means.”

Last year €16.2 billion euros, or 30% of the EIB’s lending, went towards climate action.

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Last month, the European Commission issued its recommendations on the draft national energy and climate plans (NECPs) submitted by the 28 EU member states to achieve their 2030 objectives.

But “while the plans include ambitious goals, they lack concrete policies and measures to deliver on the promises,” according to new research by the PlanUp project coordinated by Carbon Market Watch, an environmental NGO.

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Finland, Sweden and Portugal in particular were praised for their “overall high ambition” when it comes to setting long-term energy and climate goals. But deeper analysis “reveals a lack of details and quantifiable expected results with regard to policy measures in the transport, buildings and agricultural sectors,” said Carbon Market Watch.

The NGO’s analysis is hardly surprising. In fact, it largely corroborates the European Commission’s own findings. When it issued its recommendations last month, the EU executive identified “substantial” gaps in the draft national plans – particularly when it comes to energy efficiency – and urged all EU countries to submit improved versions before the end of the year.

On transport, the five draft national plans were generally praised for addressing issues such as light transport, biofuels and electro-mobility. “However, they largely fail to recognise the importance of tackling emissions from heavy-duty transport, shipping and aviation,” according to the analysis by the PlanUp project.

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The building sector, responsible for 40% of energy consumption in Europe, was also neglected. Even though buildings are addressed in all of the five plans, they fall short, “especially when it comes to planning for deep renovation rates and energy efficiency improvements”. Germany stood out in this area however, because it set goals to achieve carbon-neutral buildings by 2050.

Agriculture is the other sector where the five countries were found to be missing the mark. With the exception of France and Portugal, “agriculture is again largely omitted” from the draft national plans, the analysis said, even though it has significant potential to contribute to carbon reduction efforts.

Finland’s forestry sector comes under particular scrutiny in this regard. Although the country won plaudits for setting an ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035, the current EU Presidency holder plans to rely heavily on surplus carbon credits from forestry to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions in other sectors.

Finland puts new climate target top of EU leadership agenda

“Finland’s commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2035 is very promising,” said Agnese Ruggiero, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch. “Yet, relying on policy loopholes to reach climate goals is dangerous because it means that targets are met on paper but not in practice,” she said in a statement.

“The final plan is an opportunity for the new government and the current EU Presidency holder to live up to its claims to lead on climate by committing to concrete measures in sectors such as transport and agriculture,” Ruggiero said.

A final area where all plans seem to be falling short is public involvement. While Finland and Sweden held public consultations to draft their national plans, France, Germany and Portugal failed to involve interested parties and the general public.

“A more transparent process…would ensure greater support and commitment from all parties involved,” the NGOs said.

EU countries have until the end of the year to submit revised versions of their draft national energy and climate plans (NECPs).

This piece was originally published on CHN’s media partner Euractiv.

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Coal plants are becoming unviable investments, Yongping Zhai wrote in Viet Nam News, as renewable energy costs fall and the bank puts a carbon price in excess of $36 a tonne on lending decisions.

The bank last approved a coal power project five years ago, he said, to convert Pakistan’s Jamshoro plant to run on coal instead of heavy fuel oil. Last year it backed $2 billion worth of investment into renewable energy and energy efficiency, on the way to a $3bn target for 2020.

Some of its more innovative projects include a battery storage pilot to back up wind power in Pakistan, and a floating solar farm in Vietnam.

“Clean energy will power Asia’s future,” wrote the bank executive. “We will ensure that, as we meet our own climate finance targets, ADB’s lending portfolio has no place for ‘dirty energy’.”

In the “transition” to clean energy, the bank continues to support gas-fired power plants, which emit roughly half the CO2 of coal plants.

Kosovo turns to US after World Bank dumps coal plant

Analysis by think-tank E3G based on 2015-16 data found that ADB was still investing slightly more in fossil fuel projects than green energy. On overall alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement, it ranked ADB fourth out of six major development banks.

The authors urged ADB to limit oil and gas lending and update its carbon price.

How Asia meets its fast-growing energy demand is critical to meeting global climate goals. Many governments and financiers are still betting on coal, which would blow the targets, but development banks are moving towards cleaner options.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his near-certain presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

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But the energy department in Westminster has refused to say whether the government would stay committed to the targets it agreed after Brexit.

The package includes bloc-wide targets to slash energy waste 32.5% by 2030 and generate 32% of energy from renewable sources.

Member states, including the UK, are due to outline their national contributions by early 2019, to be negotiated and revised until the numbers add up. That horse-trading will continue after the UK is due to leave the EU in March, 2019.

Asked whether the UK would participate in this process after Brexit, a business, energy and industrial strategy (Beis) department spokesperson said: “We are looking carefully at the EU’s proposed renewable targets.”

A European Commission spokesperson also demurred, saying that would be part of the Brexit negotiations.

Barry Gardiner, shadow minister for international climate change, said the UK government “should at a minimum agree to uphold these targets after Brexit”.

If elected, the Labour Party would go further, Gardiner added. Its manifesto includes a push for 60% renewable energy target by 2030 and upgrading 4 million homes to a C energy rating.

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The government highlighted UK success in cutting greenhouse gas emissions more than 40% since 1990, while growing the economy by two thirds. Last year renewables generated 29% of electricity.

However, electricity is only part of the picture. Slow progress on greening heat and transport put the UK off pace for its 2020 renewable energy target. On both ambition and deployment, it lags behind the EU average.

In EU negotiations, the UK has consistently opposed setting renewable and energy efficiency targets, arguing for a “technology neutral” climate policy. Proponents of sector-specific targets, who won that battle in Brussels, say they give more confidence to green investors and businesses.

Alongside its EU commitments, the UK has a climate law that sets out a series of “carbon budgets”, leaving some flexibility on how to meet them. The independent Climate Change Committee has warned of “significant gaps” in the government’s clean growth strategy for next decade.

Gardiner said the strategy lacked detail on how to roll out household insulation, for example. “Government needs to come up with a programme of measures as to how that can be achieved. Until they do we can have no confidence that they are committed to playing their proper role in the European targets they have – however reluctantly – signed up to.”

Jonathan Gaventa, director at thinktank E3G in Brussels, said continuing to take part in the EU process was “not particularly burdensome” for the UK.

“What they will have to do is take the work in this clean growth plan and put it in this [EU] template, which is needed to have transparent comparisons between EU member states,” he said. “Even if the UK is not in this framework, it is a no-regrets step to do that planning.”

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It took six rounds of talks, the resignation of an MEP and a heavy dose of compromise but new laws on energy efficiency for the next decade were finalised on Tuesday, with national representatives and EU lawmakers agreeing on an overall EU-wide target of 32.5% by 2030.

That meant that the Council and Parliament met exactly halfway between their initial starting points of 30% and 35%, respectively.

But negotiators could only agree on a non-binding indicative goal, which in EU-speak is now being touted as a “headline” target. When inter-institutional talks began, MEPs had insisted that a binding target was their main red line.

The Council was able to defend its own red line though; namely, where energy savings should or should not actually be made. MEPs and the Commission wanted this to be linked to primary consumption, i.e. where power is produced, while EU countries wanted the option to choose.

Comment: The EU needs to update its climate ambition – here’s how

It looked likely that the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) would mirror the renewable energy directive (RED) agreement with a ‘32/32’ set of targets but the extra half a percentage point sets the energy savings rules apart. The RED deal is also binding rather than a mere ‘headline’.

But the EED does contain a 2023 review clause, like the renewables rules. Greens MEP Benedek Javor explained that its “very important” inclusion is intended to help align the legislation with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Javor told EURACTIV that the deal is “insufficient” to meet the 2015 climate accord obligations but insisted that it is at least more ambitious than the Council’s 2014 conclusions, which only envisaged a 27% target.

The Hungarian lawmaker added that Tuesday’s agreement is a “political reality” that makes it possible to tie up another clean energy law, the governance regulation, within the next 12 hours. Talks had started and were ongoing at the time of writing.

EU negotiators meet once again this week for what promises to be final talks on two crucial energy files on energy governance and energy efficiency. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments, as well as to catch up on what has happened so far.

‘Failure’

Environmental groups were quick to give the agreement short shrift. European Environmental Bureau (EEB) expert Roland Joebstl branded the outcome “disappointing” and a mere “door-opener for more ambition”.

His counterpart at Friends of the Earth Europe, Clémence Hutin, added that the new pact is “a let down for the climate and Europe’s energy poor”, denouncing the agreement as a “missed opportunity for emissions cuts, decent homes, cheaper energy bills and local green jobs”.

Leftist MEP Xabier Benito Ziluaga (GUE/NGL) also called it “inefficient” and also cast doubt on Europe’s ability to deliver on the Paris accord.

Cost-effectiveness played a major role in the horse-trading, especially since it was revealed that the Commission had allegedly used flawed data to estimate its original overall and annual targets.

The Coalition for Energy Savings said the agreement could create 840,000 additional jobs in the EU but warned that a 32.5% benchmark falls short of the cost potential of efficiency and pledged to use the period up to 2023 to convince legislators of the merits of a 40% target.

Although newly crunched numbers make a strong case for setting a higher energy efficiency target, EU member states were unable to sign up to a compromise on Wednesday (30 May) that would have sealed an agreement before the end of Bulgaria’s presidency.

Rocky road

Socialist and Democrat MEP Miroslav Poche, the Parliament’s lead negotiator, made significant concessions in talks last week, even offering up a non-binding target in exchange for trade-offs elsewhere.

But Bulgarian Presidency negotiator Zhecho Stankov insisted that his mandate was not generous enough to meet the Parliament’s new negotiating position and the talks collapsed. However, the weekend ultimately proved enough to secure a compromise.

Mandate of Bulgarian presidency unclear after government changes in Italy and Spain.

Poche tweeted after tonight’s agreement that the deal is “strong” on Article 7 and that the final text will guarantee “higher annual savings” than the European Commission’s original proposal.

Commission climate boss Miguel Arias Cañete called it a “major push for Europe’s energy independence”, echoing points made by green groups that every percentage point of energy efficiency equals a 4% reduction in energy imports.

“Europe is by far the largest importer of fossil fuel in the world. Today we put an end to this,” he said in a statement.

Electricity produced from natural gas has matched power generated from coal in OECD countries. But Europe’s gas self-sufficiency dropped below 50% for the very first time as well.

The Spanish Commissioner, who earlier in the day was in Berlin, was reportedly responsible for convincing the Bulgarian Presidency that a majority existed to finalise the deal.

Cañete will have breathed a sigh of relief at news of the agreement as the Commission has targeted an unveiling of its 2050 net-zero emissions strategy by the end of the year. In order to start work in earnest, his team needed final confirmation of targets.

This article was produced by Euractiv

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EU energy ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday debated a package of laws that will underpin the EU’s 2030 climate target.

With targets set to be finalised in the next two weeks, the range of possible outcomes narrowed when Spain and Italy joined a coalition of more progressive countries.

A leaked document from the Bulgarian presidency of the European Council ahead of the meeting proposed improving energy efficiency 30-33% from business-as-usual by 2030 and boosting the renewable share of the energy mix to 30-33%.

New governments in Spain and Italy joined France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Portugal in pushing for the higher end of the range. That gives them the numbers to block a deal they consider insufficient. It also brings the council closer to agreement with the European Parliament, which has called for both targets to be set at 35%.

“It is clear some countries are moving towards more ambitious figures,” said EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete in a press conference after the meeting.

That would improve the prospects of a deal, he said. On Wednesday the council will begin a three-way negotiation with representatives of the parliament and European Commission over the efficiency and renewable targets.

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“The meeting this morning was much more positive than it used to be, especially on high ambition,” agreed Quentin Genard, Brussels-based policy expert with thinktank E3G. “Spain and Italy have shifted gear.”

At the same time, he noted, Germany was less vocally supportive of ambition than previously: “Germany used to be clearly a leader on these issues, but with the new government in place… we were expecting them to be much stronger.”

With some countries determined to secure higher headline targets, the trade-offs are likely to come in the detail. For example, there is debate over the minimum levels of national action, a sectoral target for transport and which parts will be legally binding.

Discussions on a third pillar of the package, governance, have been deferred to 19 June. This will determine how the renewable energy and energy efficiency goals are monitored and enforced. “It is not sexy, but it is very important” to the credibility of the package, said Genard.

Minister @Tiilikainen on #CleanEnergy package: I hope to find a compromise with the @Europarl_EN which enables us to achieve the ambitious #climate and #energy goals in a cost-effective way. Then we have taken into legislation our promises in #ParisAgreement. #TTE #Energy

— FinPermRepEU (@FinPermRepEU) June 11, 2018

Hoy defendemos en el Consejo de #Energía #euenergycouncil los objetivos más ambiciosos en #renovables y #eficiencia. Cumplir el #AcuerdodeParís exige más ambición en 2030. #CambioClimático y #transiciónjusta son elementos esenciales en política energética.

— Teresa Ribera (@Teresaribera) June 11, 2018

Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network Europe, urged the Parliament to stand its ground. “The Paris Agreement requires bold and scaled up action to boost the energy transition,” he said.

“As a bare minimum, the call of the European Parliament to increase the EU’s 2030 renewable energy and energy efficiency targets to at least 35%, backed up by a robust governance framework and strong implementing policies, should be the way forward.”

Once the complex legislation is approved, attention will turn to how the EU can raise ambition in line with the Paris Agreement. Ministers from eight member states have already voiced support for revising the bloc’s overall carbon emissions targets.

The European Commission is due to update its long-term climate strategy towards the end of the year, which campaigners say must set out a pathway to net zero emissions by 2050.

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Under the climate accord, Europe promised to shave 40% off its emissions by 2030, mostly by revising existing climate laws on renewables, energy efficiency and its flagship Emissions Trading System (ETS).

But documents seen by Climate Home show that Visegrad countries are trying to gut, block or water down all of these efforts, in a rearguard manoeuvre that mirrors president Donald Trump’s rollback of climate policy in Washington.

Energy efficiency is supposed to make up around half of Europe’s emissions reductions by 2030, but a Czech proposal could cut energy saving obligations from a headline 1.5% a year figure to just 0.35% in practice.

Below the radar, Poland has also launched a manoeuvre that may block the EU’s winter package in its entirety – particularly a planned limit on power plant emissions – if it is signed up to by a third of EU parliaments, or 10-13 states.

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The EU’s various wings will eventually thrash out a compromise between the commission’s original proposal – which was calibrated to meet the Paris pledge – and the counter-proposals designed to weaken this.

The effect this could have on the EU’s overall emissions has raised concerns among those in Brussels who wish to see the EU maintain its leadership on climate.

“We cannot allow backward-looking east EU states to destroy the EU’s credibility on the Paris agreement,” said Claude Turmes, the European parliament’s lead negotiator on climate governance.

“A successful and ambitious energy transition is one of the few remaining positive stories for Europe. If we allow that to be drained by vested old interests from east Europe, our international credibility – and the last remaining trust of our citizens – will be smashed,” said Turmes.

On Thursday and Friday this week, the EU leadership will meet with Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang. Climate change is a top agenda item at the meeting. A Sino-European coalition on climate action has been mooted as a possible bulwark against the reversal in the US.

The measures proposed by the east EU rebels are highly technical but their potential to diminish carbon savings is clear.

Report: Poland says it ‘cannot afford’ share of EU 2030 climate target

Existing loopholes in the EU’s energy efficiency law already cut the real 1.5% annual energy saving law to around 0.75%. But the Czech proposal, seen by Climate Home and largely accepted by the Maltese EU presidency, would slice off an estimated 0.4% in real savings by trimming the target itself and introducing loopholes.

These include a cut to firms’ energy saving obligations, a stretching of the deadlines by which they must be met, and a double-counting of solar and wind investments towards both renewables and efficiency targets.

Buildings milestones planned for 2030 and 2040 have been edited out of a separate draft energy performance in buildings law after lobbying by Visegrad states.

An article ensuring at least one electric vehicle charging point for every 10 public parking spaces has also disappeared from the commission’s proposed text.

“It is clear that the east European countries are only thinking of cheap energy and nothing else,” one informed source said. “That applies to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, all of them. The problem is that Germany is not taking a leadership role.”

Documents released by Greenpeace Energydesk on Sunday show the UK government has also been lobbying to weaken the energy efficiency target, despite its intention to leave the EU.

Poland’s far right government has been mired in sniping with the European commission since taking power in 2016. This year, it has already threatened to take the EU to court over its climate laws – and won concessions on its plans for subsidies to keep coal plants running when there is no demand.

Coal is seen as the “foundation” of Poland’s development by the ruling Law and Justice party, despite the thousands of Poles it sends to an early grave each year, and the unparalleled dangers it poses to the climate.

The EU’s preferred method of squeezing big emitters is carbon trading but here too, a Polish proposal taken up by the European parliament’s majority right wing blocks would drain the EU’s proposal of meaning.

A Polish memorandum, which Climate Home has obtained, proposes carrying over a glut of 907m worthless “hot air” carbon credits into the next market phase, depressing prices and reducing incentives to scale back CO2 emissions.

Femke de Jong, a spokeswoman for Carbon Market Watch said that the Polish proposal “would rig the EU’s key climate law with loopholes [and] put the EU’s delivery of the Paris climate goals at risk, at a time when Europe’s climate leadership is most urgently needed.”

But Poland views its gambit as a “reward” for early compliance with past climate obligations, which were largely met by closing down Soviet-era industries.

While Poland’s idea might allow the EU to meet its Paris obligations on paper, it would also open the door to surplus credits covering 550 million tonnes of carbon equivalent (Mtoe), according to a commission analysis obtained by Climate Home.

The same working paper says that a separate “early counting” proposal by Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia and Lithuania would increase the carbon allowance surplus by 690 Mtoe – triple the four countries’ combined 2014 emissions.

Poland also wants a huge increase in forestry offsets that would allow it to continue its coal-first energy model so long as it plants more trees.

De Jong said the ensuing carbon credits shower would allow the EU’s agriculture sector to continue business as usual until 2030, “which means that emissions cuts would need to be nine times steeper afterwards to achieve our climate objectives.”

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Meanwhile, in Britain’s nascent election campaign, Climate Home has learned Labour plans to unveil new rules for landlords to renovate properties to higher efficiency grades, before they can be rented out.

Rarely considered political catnip, energy efficiency was argued over by French candidates’ during TV debates.

As the tightly-fought four-way race heads towards a first round vote this weekend, building renovations have made climate policy relevant to alienated working class voters in France. 

One in three French households are energy poor and, with buildings continuing to account for more than 40% of carbon emissions, renovations have stealthily climbed the political agenda. An existing law that obliges renovations of all buildings in the ‘F’ and ‘G’ energy classes by 2025 has popularised such programmes.

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Left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon has promised 700,000 building renovations a year for the poorest householders, while his socialist opponent Benoit Hamon has flagged a stunning €100bn renovation plan.

Less striking but better-costed is a €4bn a year renovations programme proposed by the front-runner in opinion polls, Emmanuel Macron, who would also scrap a one-year stay on energy transition tax credits and introduce free efficiency audits.

Even the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen has a manifesto pledge (number 132) to make insulation a “budgetary priority” in public procurement policy. 

Adrian Joyce, the director of Renovate Europe, which is promoting the issue, hailed the new-found prominence that energy renovations were receiving in the election.

“It represents a political breakthrough in that a solid cross-party consensus around the need to accelerate energy renovation has emerged,” he told Climate Home.

In France, a broad alliance of businesses, trade unions, Catholic networks, environmentalists and housing associations were key to turning energy renovations into a consensus issue.

Danyel Dubreuil, a spokesperson for the Renovons (Lets Renovate!) campaign, which has lobbied the candidates on the issue, said: “One of the things that surprised the candidates’ teams was that we were so diverse, and that we produced a cost-benefit analysis.”

“It was a shock for them to see that this was such a big issue – with 7m flats or houses in really bad shape – and that it would not be so expensive to upgrade their energy ranking.”

Warming up cold homes could have universal appeal, said Joyce.

“We spend 90% of our time in buildings so working on them affects everyone positively. The sooner other countries facing elections – like the UK and Germany – witness a similar breakthrough, the better,” he said.

Scotland is currently in the midst of a public consultation about how to upgrade its building stock after declaring energy efficiency to be a national infrastructure priority.

But in the wider UK a remaining Green Deal obligation on landlords to improve the efficiency of energy-leaking buildings later this decade has been so whittled down by the government as to make it unworkable, according to Erica Hope, senior associate at the European Climate Foundation.

Barry Gardiner, UK Labour’s shadow climate spokesman described transport and buildings emissions as “the biggest challenge to meeting our climate budgets”. The challenge is likely to spawn a new election initiative in that country too.   

“We will bring forward clear [building efficiency] standards as part of our manifesto,” Gardiner said. “We are looking to upgrade the obligations on landlords in particular to make sure that properties have to be of a certain energy efficiency level, within a certain timeframe, before they can be rented out.”

“The key thing for the UK is how we go about renovating older housing stock and that is where we need to set regulations in place,” he added.

The policy reflects similar thinking to Labour’s 2015 election manifesto, which proposed a “decency standard” for rented properties.

Britain has some of the worst-insulated housing stock in Europe. Cold homes cost the NHS some €1bn a year in direct treatment, and are rated the second highest risk on Britain’s housing health and safety system.

In just one city – Liverpool – energy poverty was fingered as the culprit in 500 deaths and around 5,000 illnesses in one survey in 2013.

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In our study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change today, we looked at how global and national energy sectors are progressing towards global climate targets.

We found that we can still keep global warming below 2C largely thanks to increasing use of clean energy, a global decline in coal use, improvements in energy efficiency, and a consequent stalling of emissions from fossil fuels over the past three years.

Nations need to accelerate deployment of existing technologies to lock in and build on the gains of the last three years. More challenging, is the needed investment to develop new technologies and behaviours necessary to get to net-zero global emissions by mid-century.

We looked at several key measures, including carbon emissions from fossil fuels, the carbon intensity of the energy system (how much carbon is produced for each unit of energy) and the amount of carbon emitted to produce one dollar of wealth.

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The world share of energy from fossil fuels is starting to decline. There has been no growth in coal consumption and strong growth in energy from wind, biomass, solar and hydro power. The emerging trend is therefore towards lower carbon emissions from energy production.

Energy efficiency has also improved globally in recent years, reversing the trends of the 2000s. These improvements are reducing the amount of carbon emissions to produce new wealth.

From all these changes, global fossil fuel emissions have not grown over the past three years. Remarkably, this has occurred while the global economy has continued to grow.

As the global economy grows, it is using less energy to produce each unit of wealth as economies become more efficient and shift towards services.

These promising results show that, globally, we are broadly in the right starting position to keep warming below 2C.

But modelling suggests that stringent climate policy will only slightly accelerate this historical trend of improvements in energy intensity. And to keep warming below 2C will require deep and sustained reductions in the carbon intensity of how energy is produced.

Looking at the carbon intensity of energy (how much carbon is produced for each unit of energy) shows that current emissions (black line) are in the right spot to keep warming below 2℃ (blue, red and yellow lines). However we’ll need much more work to close the mitigation gap (brown line). (Photo: Peters et al 2016)

We also looked at the countries that will have the greatest global impact.

The slowdown in global emissions in the past three years is due in large part to the reduced growth in coal consumption in China. Fossil fuel emissions in China grew at 10% per year over most of the 2000s, but have not grown since 2013. This signals a possible peak in emissions more than a decade earlier than predicted.

China is showing a significant decline in the share of fossil fuels in its energy sector. This has been driven by the decline in coal and the growth of renewable energies. The carbon intensity of fossil fuels has also been falling, for instance by burning coal more efficiently.

The United States has also reduced emissions in the last decade, with significant declines in coal consumption, particularly in the last few years. These declines have several causes, including a weaker economy in the last decade and continued improvements in energy efficiency, which have led to lower energy demand.

Emissions in the US have further declined due to a decline in carbon intensity of fossil fuels driven by the shift from coal to natural gas and the growth in renewables.

Emissions have declined in the European Union for several decades, most notably in the past 10 years as a weaker economy, along with continual improvements in energy efficiency, has led to declines in emissions. These declines are speeding up with the growing share of renewables in the energy sector.

India has sustained an emissions growth of 5-6% per year and is expected to continue growing, with little change in the underlying drivers of emissions growth.

Australia’s fossil fuel emissions have been stable or declining since 2009 as a result of the combined decline in the energy intensity of the economy and the carbon intensity of energy. However, fossil fuel emissions have grown since 2015.

There is one big “but” in our analysis. We found that current fossil fuel trends are consistent with keeping warming below 2C because the future climate scenarios we use – assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – allow for relatively large amounts of fossil fuels use in the future.

These scenarios assume that large amounts of the carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels will be removed using carbon capture and storage (CCS).

CCS is also widely used together with bioenergy to produce a technology that in effect removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this process, plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, burning these plants produces bioenergy, and the resulting CO₂ emissions are captured and stored underground. The plants grow again and the cycle is repeated.

Governments must back carbon capture technology – IEA

Most scenarios rely on large-scale deployment of CCS, in the order of thousands of CCS facilities by 2030, to keep warming under 2C. At present, just a few tens of facilities are being planned. There is also a lack of commitment to CCS in most pledges under the Paris Agreement for 2030.

Although many of the current indicators are consistent with limiting warming to 2C, there is now an urgent need for deployment of CCS to avoid the divergence from those pathways. That is unless technological alternatives can be deployed to cover the mitigation gap that is quickly emerging.

Many emissions scenarios also include removing large amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Although bioenergy with CCS is the preferred technology in those scenarios, there is an equally urgent need to invest in the research and development of alternative negative emission technologies, potentially with a smaller environmental footprint.

It is significant that emissions growth has slowed in the last three years. This is necessary to move onto an emission pathway consistent with keeping global average temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

The short-term challenge is to lock in this slowdown from declining coal use, switching coal for gas, and the increasing share of clean energy. This will reduce the risk of emissions rebounding if the global economy grows more strongly in the short term.

However, our research shows that for emissions to move onto a downward trend at the required speed will require emission reductions in a broader range of sectors and more rapid deployment of existing low-carbon technologies.

Ultimately, reaching zero emissions this century will require a rapid program of research and development to support a wide range of low-carbon technologies, including systems to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Pep Canadell, CSIRO scientist and executive director of the Global Carbon Project, Professor Corinne Le Quéré is from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, and Glen Peters is a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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In a major annual stocktake of global action to reduce carbon – the Emissions Gap Report released on Thursday – the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) called on the leaders of the world to bring their emissions targets into line with the advice of scientists.

Under the Paris climate agreement, which comes into effect on Friday, nations agreed to limit warming “well below 2C” and strive for less than 1.5C. But the collective pledges of nations under the Paris agreement fall far shy of either goal – sending the temperature shooting up to 3.2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The warmer the world becomes, the more destructive and painful climate change will be.

The report was released a week before climate talks resume in Morocco and it is hoped the process of increasing ambition will begin.

In order to get on track, nations must cut a further 25% off their projected emissions by 2030, said UNEP head Erik Solheim: “It’s still not good enough if we are to stand a chance of avoiding serious climate change.”

Solheim added: “If we don’t start taking additional action now, beginning with the upcoming climate meeting in Marrakech, we will grieve over the avoidable human tragedy. The growing numbers of climate refugees hit by hunger, poverty, illness and conflict will be a constant reminder of our failure to deliver. The science shows that we need to move much faster.”

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This report focuses on achieving a 2C limit to warming. But the Paris agreement enshrines a more ambitious target – a target the UN body said was quickly slipping beyond reach.

“Continuing on the emissions trajectory implied by the current INDCs [national climate plans] would mean that the budget for 1.5C is already overspent by 2030, and the budget for 2C is almost depleted,” the report said.

While the combined national contributions fail to reach the 2C goal, the report also found that none of the major developed economies have implemented policies that would achieve even those inadequate pledges. The one exception is Russia, which measures its pledge against a pre-Soviet collapse baseline that means it has to do nothing to meet the goal.

In the UK, laws have been passed to underwrite the government’s policy to “maximise” its oil and gas prospects in the North Sea. US protesters are engaged in a pitched battle to stop the North Dakota Access Pipeline, which they say exemplifies the gap between pledge and policy. Australia has repeatedly approved the massive Carmichael coal mine, with the Queensland state government giving the project “essential” status. In South Korea, the government has dropped its 2020 climate target in preference for a weaker 2030 one.

“Bottom line: not enough,” said UNEP chief scientist Jacqueline McGlade, although she added “there are lots of signals around the world that things are going in the right direction.”

Report: Cities rush to join climate drive after Paris Agreement

There was a brighter tone to the report when it ventured beyond the tortured progress at state level. Cities, regions, companies and civil society organisations are consistently going beyond the level of ambition set by their national overlords.

On Thursday, the Australian state of New South Wales announced a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050. In doing so it joined with several other states to have made similar pledges. The national government has set no goals beyond 2030.

Outlining the city of London’s programmes to cut emissions, deputy mayor Shirley Rodrigues said all emitters including national governments must capture the political momentum created in Paris and translate it to real emissions cuts. “We know we can’t do this alone,” she said.

Similarly, corporations are recognising the benefits of being ahead of the climate curve with thousands making commitments to reduce their emissions. Although the report notes that accountability is a problem in the private sector.

The Nature Conservancy’s climate change director Lynn Scarlett said. “The report highlights the extent to which companies are addressing climate risks facing their businesses… Investors are going to be paying increasing attention to those risks and how companies are managing them, as well as the relationship between corporate decarbonisation and financial performance.”

Non-state initiatives could save the world several billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030, the report estimated. For reference, the US emitted around 6.8 billion tonnes in 2014. The UN report said that would make a “significant” difference to the state of the climate in 2030.

The report also highlighted the role of energy efficiency, so often the poor cousin of other carbon cutting measures. Investment in energy efficiency grew by 6% in 2015, despite being hampered by hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies that reduce energy prices and undercut the economics of efficiency measures.

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The Norwegian struck a pessimistic note at the annual Oil and Money conference, which traditionally offers upbeat assessments on the hydrocarbon sector.

But his logic was simple: transport accounts for 55% of oil use, and the electric vehicle industry is starting to gather pace meaning a once-guaranteed market could start to fade – fast.

According to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report in June, there are now more than one million electric cars on the roads, with sales up 70% from 2014 levels.

Oil demand will peak in 2020s "then we'll have a shrinking oil industry" as vehicles are electrified, says Statoil boss Eldar Saetre #OM2016 pic.twitter.com/LFAQaPVkzR

— Andrew Ward (@andrew_ward1) October 18, 2016

Range anxiety is also waning, reports the Carbon Brief website, as electric batteries get larger and more efficient, meeting 98% of daily driving needs.

It’s still tiny compared with the numbers of cars with traditional combustion engines, and the charging infrastructure remains mixed. The US, China, Norway and Netherlands dominate growth.

Speaking at an event held by Bloomberg earlier this month, BP chief economist Spencer Dale laughed off the threat: “It’s not a game changer over 20 years, even with aggressive electric vehicle penetration,” he said.

Still, it’s a development that last month led analysts at BHP Billiton to brand 2017 as the year when “the electric car revolution really gets started”.

By 2035 they believe 140 million of cars on the road will be electric, about 8% of the global fleet, displacing 2.3 million barrels of oil a day – equal to about 2% of demand.

“Our projections in this regard put us firmly at the ‘green’ end of the spectrum, well above the levels projected by ‘traditional’ industry consultants,” reads the BHP report.

#OPEC Watch: #SaudiArabia #oil minister says market "clearly rebalancing", industry at end of "considerable downturn" #OM2016 #OOTT #OPEC pic.twitter.com/wmPZ74xTcP

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) October 19, 2016

Well – not quite. The team at Bloomberg New Energy Finance reckons electric vehicles could account for 35% of car sales and displace 13 million barrels of oil by 2040.

This week Fitch Ratings issued a warning that global credit markets covering a quarter of outstanding corporate bonds were potentially threatened by the rise of Tesla, Toyota Prius and other EV makers.

Fitch cautions that the switch from oil to electric won’t be overnight, largely due to high battery prices, but predicts a quarter of the global car fleet could be weaned off oil by 2035.

Even that could be underestimating the growth trajectory, suggest the report’s authors, considering battery prices fell 35% over the last 12 months.

(Pic: Bloomberg New Energy Finance)

“We believe it will be important for oil companies to react early, and we will continue to evaluate their strategies for doing so even though the changes discussed here would occur well beyond our rating horizon,” reads its summary.

“Many are already taking initial steps such as diversifying into batteries or renewables or focusing more on natural gas, and many are actively participating in the debate around future energy sources.”

PwC’s upcoming Low Carbon Economy Index will also suggest change is afoot with most governments developing plans to decarbonise electricity and electrify transport.

“Electric vehicles are potentially disruptive in the medium term, but inevitably there’s a time-lag between EV sales and emissions reductions as petrol and diesel cars sold today will be on the road for the next 15 years,” said PwC director Jonathan Grant, lead author of the LCEI.

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Under a new funding policy, it has ruled out investment in new coal and oil-fired power stations.

Big hydropower plants are eligible for less support than previously, down from 70% to 50% of the project value. The bank has been widely criticized for using Treasury resources during Dilma Roussef’s administration to fund unsustainable mega-projects such as US$10 billion Belo Monte dam, in the Amazon.

Meanwhile, solar projects can get up to 80% of their investment needs at subsidized rates, raised from 70%. Energy efficiency and other renewable sources such as wind power, biomass and small hydro have kept their respective 80% and 70% rates.

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The bank operates in the electricity sector by lending money under a special interest rate, lower than the market’s, for projects that are partly or fully made in Brazil. The aim is to stimulate national enterprise. However, the extent of such operations in recent years years was such that they are believed to have contributed to Brazil’s current fiscal crisis.

During a press conference on Monday, BNDES’ head of Infrastructure and Sustainability, Marilene Ramos (who also happens to be a former president of Ibama, Brazil’s federal environmental agency), stated that the new policy was being adopted due to to two main factors: the bank’s limited resources, which forces the institution to pick more carefully where to put its money, and the government’s will to act according to the Paris Agreement’s commitment to low emissions.

In practice, the decision on fossil-fueled power plants is more of a political signal than true divestment. Between 2013 and 2015, BNDES has approved loans equivalent to US$450 million for coal and oil projects, which will still go ahead.

Comment: Can the right be good for the climate in Latin America?

In its last Decennial Energy Plan, which outlines Brazil’s energy mix until 2024, the government predicted a reduction to the installed capacity in oil-fueled stations, which are the most expensive to operate due to the cost of fuel. Today, they amount to 3,586 megawatts, and are expected to drop to 3,201 megawatts by 2024.

Coal, on the other hand, has a projected expansion from 3,064 megawatts today to 3,404 megawatts by 2024. The policy may affect projects such as the Ouro Negro power station in Rio Grande do Sul (600 megawatts), which cleared the first phase of environmental licensing this year but has not auctioned its energy yet.

Barbara Rubim, campaign coordinator of climate and energy from Greenpeace Brazil, welcomed the BNDES decision as a key first step towards meeting Brazil’s Paris goals in the energy sector.

“In general, this is great news; a strong signal to improving financing for solar power and discouraging investment in fossil fuels,” she said. “We truly hope that this is well received by other sections of the government, especially in planning. It is also a signal to the private sector.”

Comment: Can Brazil green its energy without mega dams?

Brent Milikan, from International Rivers in Brasília, said the decision about big dams reflected the sector’s current reality.

“We see that these great facilities are much more difficult to finance: there’s too much insecurity about financial returns, deadlines, an energy market that is not so attractive and a concern with the hydrology, since climate change is expected to mess with river flows over the coming decades,” he argued. The biggest hydropower project in the country, São Luis do Tapajós, has had its license denied twice by Ibama.

Milikan added: “I hope this is the beginning of a change. But maybe one consequence of the new BNDES policy will be a hunt for more Chinese loans.”

This article first appeared on Observatório Clima

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“We have never seen such a decline [in oil and gas investment]”, said Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), at the London launch of its first ever report into world energy investment.

“Our findings carry a very important message for climate change and for the Paris agreement. Anyone who does not understand what is going on – governments, companies, markets – is not in the right place.”

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energies is seen as vital in the battle against climate change.

The IEA, which focuses on issues of energy security, says that overall investment in the global energy sector declined by 8% in 2015 to US$1.8 trillion.

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In part, the decline in investments in oil and gas was due to the lower costs of crude oil and other products of the fossil fuels industry.

Although investment in renewables has been more or less the same in each of the last four years, increased efficiencies and lower capital costs resulted in a third more electricity being produced from these technologies in 2015.

“A major shift in investment towards low carbon sources of power generation is under way,” the IEA report says. “Fossil fuels continue to dominate energy supply, but the composition of investment flows points to a reordering of the system.”

Lazlo Varro, an IEA renewables expert, says the sector needed less and less in government subsidies as costs come down. Over the last five years, the price of solar energy dropped by 80%, while wind power’s costs dropped by a third overall.

Varro says that offshore wind power – traditionally seen as expensive – was becoming more price-competitive as turbine sizes increase and more efficient construction methods are used. Low interest rates were also encouraging more investment in renewables.

Nuclear energy is seen by some as an important ingredient in tackling climate-changing carbon emissions.

Study: existing coal, oil and gas fields will blow carbon budget

The IEA says the drop in the price of renewables has not been reflected in the nuclear sector – rather, the reverse. And there are continuing worries about nuclear safety and the disposal of nuclear materials.

For those hoping for a bright new dawn of carbon-free energy, the IEA report has some sobering news: there are continuing large-scale investments in coal – the most polluting of fuels. More than US$60 billion was invested in coal projects last year, most of it in Asia and in Australia.

Many of the coal plants constructed are described as sub-critical – severely polluting, and using only basic technology.

The continued investment in coal was often due to the lack of the necessary infrastructure to support other, cleaner energy systems in countries such as India and Indonesia, and to the failure of governments to back renewables.

Energy spending

China continues to be the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal, although the IEA says 60% of the country’s total energy spending last year was on renewables.

The IEA predicts that investment in fossil fuels is likely to continue to fall in the years ahead, particularly in the oil industry. But the energy sector − especially transport − will remain dependent on oil and gas.

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) market will grow substantially, and countries in the Middle East and Russia will continue to expand their oil production.

The IEA welcomes the shift in investment to renewable forms of energy, but says new oil production needs to come on stream in order to meet international energy demand.

Production from oil fields around the world is declining, and Birol says: “Every second year we lose [the equivalent of] one Iraq due to the decline in oil field production. This is worrying from an IEA perspective.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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It is a hotly debated question since prices plummeted in mid-2014 from more than US$100 a barrel to $40-$55 more recently.

A study published in the journal Nature Energy on Monday represents the most systematic attempt yet to answer it – and the findings are significant.

If crude continues to trade at today’s levels until 2050, analysts warned it could “considerably” hinder energy efficiency improvements. Sustained prices of $110-120/bbl, on the other hand, would give a mild boost to carbon-cutting efforts.

The difference between the scenarios amounts to 5-20% of the 2C carbon budget – the amount that can be released within the upper warming limit agreed by governments.

It is the same order of magnitude as the total national emissions cuts promised towards the Paris climate agreement.

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“We took these two extremes to bound the region of possibility,” explained lead author David McCollum of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). “Then we looked at the broader energy systems and emissions impacts.”

At each end of the oil price spectrum, analysts from IIASA and the World Bank tested a range of assumptions about technology development and the price of competing fuels.

For example, the faster battery costs come down, the better electric vehicles will be able to overtake petrol-fuelled transport.

They did not specifically analyse the impact of cheap hydrocarbons on the climate pledges countries submitted towards global action.

Developed countries that have set hard emissions targets should not be much affected, McCollum told Climate Home.

China is a different story. It aims to peak emissions in 2030, but does not say at what level. “This is where oil prices could make more of a difference.”

He concluded: “Low prices hamper the transition; high prices give it a boost. In the end, if we are going to get to 2C we have to have strong climate policies in place.”

Gas v Google: Information, not fuel is driving the energy transition

The analysis comes as economists are rethinking the relationship between oil prices, demand and GDP.

Historically, cheap oil was seen as a boon, stimulating demand. This time round, weakening demand was a significant driver of the price slump.

The European Central Bank wrote in its latest economic bulletin: “Although the low oil price may still support domestic demand through rising real incomes in net oil-importing countries, it would not necessarily offset the broader effects of weaker global demand.”

Consultancy McKinsey recently cut its global oil demand forecast to 0.8% a year to 2040, well below other mainstream estimates.

If there is an extra push to recycle hydrocarbon-based plastics and promote electric vehicles, its analysts said demand could peak as early as 2030.

The post Sustained cheap oil likely to hurt global climate plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: US Energy/Flickr)

By Ed King

Governors from 17 states say it’s time the US takes bold steps to invest in renewables and energy efficiency.

“Extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, wildfires and sea level rise can negatively impact electric reliability and the economy,” they say in a statement released late Tuesday.

“Technologies that capture solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal power have become viable and cost-effective to integrate into our state’s energy portfolios,” they add.

Todd Stern: US will sign and support Paris climate change pact

The ‘Accord for a New Energy Future’ is backed by four Republican and 13 Democrat states.

Michigan’s Republican governor Rick Snyder is among the signatories, despite his state being one of 27 to take legal action against President Barack Obama’s flagship carbon cutting policy.

The Clean Power Plan – which mandates states to slash emissions from power plants – was blocked last week by the Supreme Court, pending legal hearings in June.

The post Coalition of 17 US states signals support for wind, solar appeared first on Climate Home News.

(credit: Kremlin)

By Alex Pashley

Where world leaders gushed before a UN climate summit, Vladimir Putin gave a sales pitch. 

Help Russia scale up nanotechnology, its president exhorted an international audience in his five minutes at the podium.

Those extraordinary molecules could manipulate aluminium to make lightweight airplanes, sturdier cement, or cables more ductile than copper. In theory.

Less material means lower carbon emissions spewed by foundries and plastic makers as part of the industrial process.

“Literally we are standing ready to exchange those technological solutions,” Putin said.

The fibres used at nanoscale (one billionth of a metre) could cut CO2 160-180 million tonnes (Mt) by 2030, he claimed. Russia emits 2,322 Mt CO2-equivalent a year, or 5.4% of global emissions, according to World Resources Institute data.

Carbon nanotubes have been proven to work under laboratory conditions, but are years from being commercially viable.

Russia, one of the planet’s top historical polluters, say it seeks to drive down high costs through investing in R&D to make the technology more competitive.

State-owned technology investment firm Rusnano planned to funnel over 30 billion rubles (US$403 m) to companies such as OCSiAl last year for such projects.

Chairman and former Kremlin official Anatoly Chubais, who masterminded the firesale of the country’s public assets in the 1990s, is ebullient.

Emissions prevented by adding nanotubes to materials will be equal or greater than those saved by renewable energies by 2030, he told the Siberian Times in October, while attending a trade forum in Japan.

And those are conservative assumptions, he said. Rusnano aims to boost its production of the materials from 0.2 tonnes to 30-40t within two to three years. Global output was just 2t in 2014.

They would be tackling industrial processes that account for 28% of global greenhouse gases, the company calculates.

But an American expert criticised Putin’s speech as “bewildering” and said it would have a negligible effect on cutting emissions.

“This is really a bunch of nonsense and I feel Russians walking away from that meeting are rubbing their hands saying: ‘They bought it’,” said James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Producing nanotubes wouldn’t recoup the energy expended at blazing temperatures to produce them, he added. Besides, ventures in the US, East Asia and Europe were making surer progress with stronger patent systems and better scientists.

Report: At UN, Putin bids to sponsor climate forum

Alan Windle, emeritus professor in materials science at the University of Cambridge, took a more positive view. Companies had to get developing the product, rather than delaying on further research if they wanted to make breakthroughs.

“I’m very excited by the level of Russian investment, because I think the potential of other big-scale investments could be a de-risking step,” he said. “This could lead to real progress.”

Separately, Putin repeated Russia’s aim to slash emissions 70% on 1990 levels within 15 years at the summit, by using its vast forests as carbon sinks.

That plan was “a magnum opus of hypotheticals,” said Thomas Hale at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, on its announcement in March 2015.

This story was updated to reflect comments by James Tour and correct Russia’s annual carbon emissions which were stated incorrectly.

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(Pic: SmartLightLiving/Flickr)

Philips has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2020, in the latest sign major businesses are falling into line behind efforts to tackle global warming.

The giant multinational says it aims to achieve carbon neutrality in the next five years by reducing energy use and cutting business travel.

The company says it has already cut its carbon footprint 40% from 2007 to 2015, and is investing heavily in clean energy as part of a pledge to use 100% renewables.

“As it stands, we’ve reached the climate change checkout and all the contributions from around the world have proved insufficient to prevent a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures,” said Eric Rondolat, CEO of Philips Lighting.

“The world must set more ambitious goals to improve energy efficiency.”

The post Philips targets carbon neutrality by 2020 appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: White House/Flickr)

By Ed King in Paris

The quest for clean technologies to replace fossil fuels will receive a huge boost today, with the Paris launch of two multi-billion dollar coalitions to drive research and development in green energy.

US president Barack Obama and Microsoft founder Bill Gates will spearhead the initiatives on the opening day of the COP21 UN climate summit, where over 150 leaders are expected to outline their plans to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Mission Innovation” will see the level of global R&D funding in the clean tech sector doubled to US$20 billion over the next five years, according to a White House briefing.

In total 20 countries, including the US, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, Japan and China have signed up to the plan to help drive the global economy away from oil, gas and coal.

Scientists say the world has under 30 years at current rates of emissions before warming above the 2C danger zone is unavoidable.

Report: Record number of leaders expected for COP21 opening

These governments “share a common goal to develop breakthrough technologies and substantial cost reductions to enable the global community to meet our shared climate goals,” said the White House.

Leading emerging economies like India and China say access to cheaper clean energy technologies is essential if they are to slow emissions growth and allow their growing populations access to power.

The separate “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” is a private sector push involving Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Tom Steyer, Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros, billionaires all.

They plan to invest heavily in risky technologies, aiming to span what they term the “valley of death” facing new entrants into global energy markets.

“Given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths—and that means we also need to invent new approaches,” said Gates, who will personally inject up to $2 billion.

“Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund.”

Leading investors in India, China and Saudi Arabia are also set to participate.

Saudi Royal family member Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said the group would “aggressively address the dual challenge of satisfying increasing energy needs and combating climate change.”

According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based think tank, government spending on energy R&D as a share of spending fell from an 11% peak in 1981 to just under 7% in 2013.

Renewables funding is up but investments in nuclear have contracted by 75%.

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(Pic: Number 10/Flickr)

By Avik Roy in New Delhi

It’s official. Climate change will feature on the agenda of Indian prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart David Cameron when they meet in London later this week. 

Modi is scheduled to arrive in the United Kingdom on a three-day visit on November 12, the first by an Indian prime minister in nearly a decade.

Amid other requests, Modi will be asking for technological cooperation from the UK in its fight against climate change, said India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar.

“England, UK has done many good things…particularly in the technology sector. We are expecting greater technological cooperation throughout the world multilaterally, but bilaterally, yes,” Javadekar said before leaving for Paris to attend a French-hosted climate meet.

India has long been a strong advocate that green technology needs of emerging economies are crucial in capping greenhouse gas emissions, arguing for financial and technological support from developed nations.

Report: Modi proposes India-Africa solar power alliance
Report: India’s ex climate chief outlines minimum goals for Paris

Last week, Modi vowed to bring power to 18,000 Indian villages, many of which currently lack an electricity pole, in the next 1,000 days.

This is part of a wider drive to develop 175 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022, as outlined in the country’s recent climate plan.

But to ensure India can install enough wind, solar and nuclear and other clean energy sources, Javadekar said it will need help gaining access to technologies held by richer nations.

It’s an issue he’s likely to bring up during the two-day Paris gathering of nearly 80 ministers that concludes on Monday.

India promised to shave a third off the rate at which it emits greenhouse gases over the next 15 years, in a long-awaited contribution towards a proposed Paris climate pact this December.

The world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases also said it would target 40% cumulative installed power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, though said this would require international support in the form of finance and technology.

The country also pledged to create an additional carbon sink equivalent to 2.5-3 GT of CO2 by planting more forests by 2030.

The Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris, scheduled from November 30 to December 11 this year, will for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate with the aim of keeping global warming below 2C.

Speaking in Delhi, Javadekar stressed that despite its status as an emerging economy, India strongly supported the notion of climate justice under a new UN deal, especially for poorer nations.

And he said observers would see a new, constructive approach to the negotiations from the country, admitting that earlier perceptions of Delhi’s interventions at the UN were “negative”.

“India is leading from the front in climate dialogue… it has become positive and with our huge renewable programme; we have really made a very important impression in the world,” he said.

“We are sure that we will make the world discuss … lifestyle issues [consumption levels] and we will have equitable, fair and just climate deal in Paris. We are raising the voice for climate justice for all poor countries and poorer sections of society.”

Preliminary estimates indicate India would need to spend around $206 billion between 2015 and 2030 on adaptation measures in the agriculture and forestry sector, among others.

The primary goal for India in Paris would be to ensure that the responsibilities for countering climate change should not affect its right to development and providing a decent livelihood to its people, he said.

Javadekar added that India’s long-term goal on climate change is to “achieve sustainable development, cleaner growth and low carbon growth.”

The post Modi, Cameron to discuss climate change during UK visit appeared first on Climate Home News.

A family uses solar energy to generate power in Mongolia. Climate finance funds clean projects in the developing world (credit: UN photo)

By Saleemul Huq

As we approach the Paris climate summit in December the topic of climate finance is becoming more pressing.

It was a major topic of the recent IMF meeting in Lima, Peru and will require the involvement of ministers of finance rather than environment to make decisions.

The good news is that a political commitment of $100 billion per year starting from 2020 has already been pledged by rich countries.

This will help towards supporting actions to tackle climate change in poorer countries and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has been established to be a channel for the funds. The next meeting of the GCF Board in November is expected to approve the first set of funded projects.

However, the devil as always, is in the details of how the funds are to be channelled.

Who is going to get it? What will be the relative proportion for mitigation and adaptation?

Will the funds be given as loans or grants? How will private sector finance be mobilised and counted?

Fundamental confusion

One of the key questions is the allocation of grants versus loans and the level of funding for mitigation versus adaptation.

The $100bn is meant to provide support for mitigation and adaptation.

The GCF Board has already adopted a decision to allocate its funds equally between the two and also to prioritise the most vulnerable countries, such as the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) for adaptation funding.

Report: Green Climate Fund directors warn it faces staffing crisis

While these are indeed commendable decisions when it comes to providing funding for adaptation to the LDCs and SIDS the GCF secretariat is said to be offering low interest loans rather than grants.

This is due to a fundamental confusion between a development bank (which is where the officials of the GCF secretariat have come from) and a fund.

Bankers are in the business of giving loans that need to be repaid (even if the interest is low) while the LDCs and SIDS have an expectation that climate change finance from rich countries (who are mainly responsible for historic emissions) is to enable them to adapt to the adverse impacts of human induced climate change (for which they have very to cause) must be provided in the form of grants.

If this confusion between loans vs grants for adaptation is not resolved quickly it is unlikely that the GCF will be able to deliver the adaptation funding to the most vulnerable countries effectively.

Idle billions

For the LDCs there is an additional paradox in that while the GCF is sitting on billions of dollars and has not yet disbursed anything, there are over thirty shovel-ready adaptation projects approved by the LDC Fund requiring around $250m but there is no money in the Fund.

The rich countries seem to have forgotten their commitment to the LDC Fund and have instead put all their adaptation funds in the GCF where it is sitting idle for now.

Analysis: What will a decent climate finance package in Paris look like?

If the rich countries genuinely wish to support immediate adaptation actions in the most vulnerable countries then they should seriously consider allocating their next few tranches of climate adaptation finance to the LDC Fund where they can be provided as grants, rather than through the GCF who are offering them as loans rather than grants.

That would be a more effective way to support adaptation in the most vulnerable countries, at least for the next few years, while the GCF gets its act together on supporting adaptation in the most vulnerable countries.

The post Loans or grants for climate finance? appeared first on Climate Home News.

By Gerard Wynn

A quarter of European Union member states say that they want a binding target for energy efficiency in 2030, in the run-up to a decision to be made by leaders in October.

The EU executive, the European Commission, proposed in January deep cuts in carbon emissions and a target for deploying renewable energy, and is due in July to propose steps to boost efficiency.

Seven countries wrote on Tuesday to the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, supporting a binding target for an absolute cut in energy consumption compared with 2020.

Some countries and industry see targets to boost energy efficiency as a no-brainer, to help the EU maintain a competitive edge and cut the cost of Russian gas imports, especially in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

Others worry about the upfront costs, especially if these are passed on to energy prices which are already some of the highest in the world.

“The current situation in the Ukraine emphasises the importance of reducing dependence on imported oil and natural gas,” said the signatories of the letter, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal.

“Reduction of energy consumption through energy efficiency is the most robust and cost effective means of increasing energy security and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and there is still a considerable economic potential for energy efficiency improvements in most areas.”

“The signatories of this letter share the conviction that the (European Commission) should present a proposal for a binding target for energy efficiency in 2030.”

“A target is essential to highlight the importance of energy efficiency, and a strong political commitment is crucial to secure the necessary policies and measures, including financing at the EU level and at the national level.”

The letter showed jostling ahead of a major decision to be taken by EU leaders in October on the bloc’s energy and climate strategy for the next 15 years.

It showed that most countries were either on the fence or would not support a binding efficiency target.

In particular, no east European countries signed the letter, suggesting that an agreement is at best elusive.

East European economies are still lagging those in the west, making them wary about environmental policies which they fear may limit growth, and in particular countries more dependent on coal, such as Poland.

Poland obstructed in March a decision on the so-called “2030 framework for climate and energy”.

The EU presently has a non-binding to target to improve energy-efficiency in 2020, including energy consumption limits which EU member states are expected to exceed.

In 2012, the EU’s oil and gas import bill was more than €400 billion, as reported in the World Energy Outlook (WEO) of the International Energy Agency.

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(Pic: Flickr/Apple94)

By John McGarrity

Tokyo will meet carbon reduction targets without the need to use carbon credits in its emissions trading scheme, mainly as a result of increased energy efficiency after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster threatened a crunch in power supply.

Japan’s capital, one of the world’s largest cities, became the first urban area in Asia to impose emissions caps and carbon trading at the start of the decade, blazing a trail for other cities that are using the market to control climate-changing gases.

But big cuts in emissions through energy efficiency – spurred by a 2011 catastrophic Tsunami and subsequent meltdown of a nuclear reactor – is a timely reminder of how random events and changing government priorities can blunt the effectiveness of emissions trading schemes.

“Setting an ambitious cap for emissions schemes is crucial. Carbon markets should really take the lead in reducing emissions at least cost, but also work in parallel with other policies rather than compete with them” said Sarah Deblock, European Policy Director with the International Emissions Trading Association.

Report: Fukushima to use 100% renewable energy by 2040
Report: Japan proposes huge smart meter roll-out to cut emissions

By 2015 EU member states are likely to agree how energy efficiency measures, potentially binding renewables targets and a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 will work alongside its emissions trading scheme, the world’s largest.

Before it formulates how to speed up power saving measures in the 28-nation bloc, the European Commission next month will outline in greater deal the lessons learnt from the EU’s current policies, which failed to meet a targeted 20% improvement in energy efficiency.

The EU’s executive is well aware of the potential for unexpected events to wreck its emissions trading scheme, as targets for the current phase were set before a deep economic downturn at the end of the previous decade prompted plunging demand for energy.

Although surplus of permits is viewed as the main reason for a collapse in carbon prices in Europe, advances in energy efficiency also curbed the appetite for power, analysts say.

Other emissions trading systems will have to calibrate multi-pronged efforts at cutting emissions alongside trading and see if caps on emissions have been set at a level that provides an economic incentive to cut emissions.

China’s pilot emissions trading schemes, which are a testing ground for a possible national carbon market, will also have work alongside other policy tools aimed at reducing the country’s reliance on coal and curbing worsening pollution.

Banking

Energy efficiency is a major priority in China, which aims to cut energy intensity by around 4% a year through rolling out smart meters and tightening standards in new buildings.

For most of China’s schemes, details on the cap are unclear and most permits are handed out for free, fuelling expectations of surplus.

In Tokyo, the main priority to conserve energy through measures such as LED lighting, low-carbon buildings and smart meters, helped  achieve a 22 percent reduction in emissions compared with the year 2000, the base year.

That means a target to cut 25% by 2014 will likely be met without the need to buy emissions permits at all, which will be banked into a future, and likely, tougher trading phase.

The Japanese capital’s annual emissions are around 60 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, around the same amount emitted by Denmark, but the government has balked at introducing a nationwide carbon trading scheme following the huge convulsions in the country’s energy industry after Fukushima.

A closure of the country’s nuclear power plants for safety checks meant Japan had to burn more gas and coal, almost all of it imported, worsening its balance of payments deficit.

The post Tokyo to reach CO2 targets without its carbon trading scheme appeared first on Climate Home News.

Source: IAEA Imagebank

By Sophie Yeo

Booming levels of oil production from shale formations will not affect the country’s commitment to cutting its carbon footprint, US energy secretary Ernest Moniz has told a London audience.

“Producing more oil should not be confused with increasing oil dependence. We are decreasing oil dependence even as we produce more oil,” he said.

In November, the International Energy Agency predicted that the US would surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, and be close to self-sufficiency in the next two decades.

Alongside the recent boom in shale gas, which has been largely credited with pushing down US emissions by 12% between 2005 and 2012, oil production has soared over the last five years. In 2011, the US became a net exporter of refined petroleum products for the first time since 1949.

Moniz said efficiency, alternative fuel use and electrification were the “three prongs” the USA would employ to wean itself off oil.

He added that, historically, innovation in the field of energy production tends to arrive at a time when production is booming: “It’s a lot easier to be introducing new technologies and new players when the pie is growing,” he said.

“At the same time as we celebrate our domestic production with all its benefits, we do not lose sight of in any way our commitment to lowering our oil dependency,” said Moniz. He added that natural gas was a “bridge to a low carbon future” envisaged by President Barack Obama in his Climate Action Plan, though it would at some stage require carbon capture and storage technology.

“Producing more oil should not be confused with increasing oil dependence. We are decreasing oil dependence even as we produce more oil.”

The glut of oil has led to an increasing debate over whether the US should lift its ban on the export of crude oil, which was put in place following the 1970s decision by Arab countries not to export to America. Moniz reinforced that, while this decision rested with the Department of Commerce, “There are many, many issues that need a relook from the 1970-1975 period.”

Fracking

Moniz’s perspective on the recent changes in America’s energy landscape took on particular relevance during his address to the UK audience, as the government attempts to push for a similar shale gas boom across the UK, amid concerns that this would blight the landscape and lock the country into a new source of fossil fuel.

After an impressive decline over the past few years, US emissions rose by 2% again in 2013, the International Energy Agency announced last week, as gas prices move up again, leading to a greater use of coal. This trend, said Moniz, was partly seasonal and could be attributed to the polar vortex.

“The price of gas has gone up there has been some switch back to coal, but keep this in perspective: it wasn’t long ago that we were talking about 50% coal and 20% gas in the power sector,” he said.

“Now the gas is 28%. I think there will be some ups and downs, but fundamentally the trend is towards substitution.”

He added that the impact upon the landscape would be less avoidable, as the process of fracking for the shale gas will inevitably lead to a rise of industry. A House of Lords committee heard last week from the CEO of US company Liberty Resources that the UK would need about 35 rigs in the UK, drilling around 700 wells, in order to replicate the American boom.

“Producing that amount of gas or oil is a big industrial enterprise,” said Moniz.

“You can avoid the fact that there are a lot of truck movements coming in and out and that’s something that communities and the government are going to have to deal with in terms of mitigating those impacts.”

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(Pic: Flickr/Avatarshark)

Water droplets have an electric charge which could lead to more efficient power plants and a new way of drawing power from the atmosphere, say MIT researchers.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications says tiny water droplets that condense on metal surfaces are capable of generating an electric charge.

This occurs when droplets fuse together. They spontaneously jump from the surface, as a result of a release of excess surface energy.

Miljkovic said the charging process takes place because jumping droplets gain a net positive charge that causes them to repel each other mid-flight.

“By placing two parallel metal plates out in the open, with one surface that has droplets jumping, and another that collects them … you could generate some power just from condensation from the ambient air,” Miljkovic said.

“All that would be needed is a way of keeping the condenser surface cool, such as water from a nearby lake or river. You just need a cold surface in a moist environment,” he says. “We’re working on demonstrating this concept.”

The post Electricity could be generated from condensation appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Tesco)

By Nilima Choudhury

Supermarket giant Tesco will launch a collaborative buying club this week to help suppliers invest in energy efficient products by offering discounts and advice.

The launch follows a successful pilot of four suppliers who trialled the model with LED lighting between February and September 2013.

The results of the pilot showed that it had helped businesses cut their lighting costs by up to 80%, enough to light a small town of 1500 houses.

Typhoo was one of the companies to sign up and as a result of the lighting designs they adopted under the pilot, emissions at Typhoo’s single factory site will be cut by nearly 900 tonnes.

Tesco’s ‘Buying Club’ will be available to the 700 plus businesses that are members of the Tesco Knowledge Hub – a global and exclusive online community for Tesco suppliers which encourages members to share information, experiences and best practice in carbon reduction.

It has been developed with online business community 2degrees and the UK advisory Carbon Trust.

“Our suppliers have told us that cost and lack of knowledge can be the biggest barriers to making investment in energy savings,” said Chloe Meacher, Tesco climate change manager.

“The Buying Club will address these concerns and support them in reducing their carbon footprint in a really practical way.”

The scheme will work by using the collective purchasing power of the suppliers in the Knowledge Hub to negotiate discounts on energy efficient lighting equipment.

Downturn

Despite this initiative which has so far proven to be a success, this week, Tesco is expected to report at best flat quarterly UK sales, while on the same day rival supermarket chain Sainsbury will likely report accelerating sales growth as online and convenience stores continue strong.

According to investment bank JPMorgan Cazenove, until last week Tesco’s house broker, the supermarket chain has been hit hard by the economic downturn because compared to rivals it sells a higher proportion of non-food items, where consumers have cut back the most.

Bruno Gardner, director of energy efficiency ventures at The Carbon Trust, said: “Energy efficient lighting is one of the best investments many businesses can make right now. In theory it should be an easy decision, but in practice that’s not always the case.

“By joining forces with Tesco and 2degrees, we were able to make the business case for energy efficient lighting even more compelling for Tesco’s suppliers – giving them the confidence they needed to invest in saving money and cutting carbon.”

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