The latest suggestion was made by an EU delegation led by Gerassimos Thomas, director general for taxation and customs union within the European Commission, who defended the proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) in its meetings with Indian officials.

Ajay Seth, India’s economic affairs secretary, told Reuters in an interview: “Their suggestion is not practical. Their team had come and met us … the solution they are offering doesn’t work for a developing economy like India.”

New Delhi has conveyed its stance to the EU delegation, labelling the proposed CBAM as unfair and detrimental to domestic market costs, Seth said.

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The EU last year approved the world’s first plan to impose tariffs on imports of high-carbon goods, including steel, aluminium and cement, aiming to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Negotiations between the EU and India continue at a “technical level,” an EU statement said after the delegation’s visit earlier this month.

EU officials are trying to win over countries like China, South Africa and India that have opposed the CBAM.

The European Commission delegation had told India that the carbon tax’s primary intent was not to raise revenue but to ensure the supply of greener goods to the EU market.

The EU delegation suggested India could implement its own carbon tax to fund advancements in supply chains and cut carbon emissions, while maintaining its share of the EU market.

Higher costs

Seth said the greening of the steel industry would entail higher costs for the economy, and “with income levels which are one-twentieth of the income levels in Europe, can we afford a higher price? No, we can’t.”

Assuming there is no domestic Indian plan to tax high-carbon production – and incentivise a move to lower-carbon methods – the EU plans to collect the carbon tax on each consignment of steel and aluminium from Jan. 1, 2026, potentially imposing tariffs of between 20% and 35%, according to industry estimates.

Analysts warn that the deadlock over carbon emissions could strain bilateral trade and affect discussions on a free trade agreement (FTA).

“As India is negotiating an FTA with the EU, it should be ready for the scenario that Indian products will attract a high 20%-35% CBAM tax in the EU and their products will enter India duty free,” said Ajay Srivastava, founder of Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a New Delhi-based think tank.

Pollution clampdown on Delhi kilns threatens brick workers’ future

The EU is India’s second-biggest export destination with nearly $100 billion of exports in total in 2023.

Seth said India wants that EU to adhere to the carbon emission rules agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which allowed developing nations like India more flexible emission-cutting targets compared with developed countries.

India, with a carbon intensity of 632 grams per KWh in 2022, according to think tank Ember, is expanding its renewable capacity and has reduced its carbon intensity by 3.5% since 2018. It aims to achieve net zero by 2070.

“We have now about 170 or 180 gigawatt of renewable energy, but that is not available during night time,” Seth said, noting the challenges of producing greener exports solely for the EU market.

The post Indian official calls EU carbon border tax unfair and unacceptable appeared first on Climate Home News.

In question is a proposed development called the Energy Transition Zone (ETZ), which is intended to bring in more renewable energy investments as the city tries to cut its dependence on the oil and gas industry that has defined it for half a century. 

As the UK’s new Labour government promises not to issue any more oil and gas licences, the future of the sector is in doubt and the company behind the ETZ says it wants to “protect and create as many jobs as possible” in the region through investing in clean energy.

But the ETZ has received significant pushback from community groups in the part of Aberdeen it is destined for. That’s because the proposed development, as currently designed, would pave over about a third of St. Fittick’s Park in Torry, the only public green space in one of Scotland’s most neglected urban areas.

The battle over St Fittick’s Park illustrates the friction that is emerging more frequently around the world as the ramp-up of clean energy infrastructure changes communities. Climate Home has reported on these tensions provoked by Mexico’s wind farms, Namibia’s desert hydrogen zone, Indonesia’s nickel mines and Germany’s Tesla gigafactory.

Just transition?

The ETZ is backed by fossil fuel giants BP, Shell and local billionaire Ian Wood, whose Wood Group made its money providing engineering and consulting services to the oil and gas industry.

The plan is to create campuses focused on hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, offshore wind, and skills development in an area initially the size of 50 football pitches, but expanding as private investment grows. 

To this end, ETZ Ltd – the company set up to build and run the zone – will receive up to £80m ($103m) from the UK and Scottish governments. Announcing some of that funding in 2021, the Scottish government’s then net zero, energy and transport secretary Michael Matheson said “urgent, collective action is required in order to ensure a just transition to a net-zero economy”, adding “Scotland can show the rest of the world how it’s done”.

But many Scottish climate campaigners don’t see this as a just transition. About 100 of them travelled to St. Fittick’s Park last week to hold a five-day “Climate Camp” in a clearing that would become part of the ETZ.

One camper, who did not want to give her name, told Climate Home that the energy transition should not “exacerbate existing inequalities, but try to redress existing inequalities”. A just transition, she said, must protect both workers in the fossil fuel industry and community green spaces.

Another protestor who did not want to giver her full name is Torry resident Chris. She said “the consultation process was flawed”. Not many people participated to start with, and some stopped going to meetings because “they were disillusioned with the way that good ideas were co-opted and then used to justify the expansion of the industrial area into the park”, she added.

Green MSP Maggie Chapman at the Climate Camp on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

Local Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) Maggie Chapman, from the Scottish Green Party, agreed, adding “the best transition zone plan in the world will fail” if it is done to a community rather than with meaningful input from them.

Another protesting resident, David Parks, said wealthier parts of the city would not have been disregarded in the same way. “You wouldn’t see this in Old Aberdeen and Rosemount,” he said. “[Torry] is just kind of the dumping ground for all these projects that you wouldn’t get off with anywhere else.”

Industrial developments have encroached on the old fishing town of Torry for decades. Today, residents are hemmed in by an industrial harbour, roads and a railway and live alongside a waste-to-energy incinerator, a sewage plant, and a covered landfill. 

David Parks at the Climate Camp in St. Fittick’s Park on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

Some of the activists also take issue with the emphasis the ETZ places on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, which they see as “greenwashing”. 

Hydrogen is a fuel that can be made without producing greenhouse gas emissions, and used to decarbonise industries like steel-making which are difficult to clean up.

But a Climate Camp spokesperson told Climate Home that, “given the industry’s tendencies” and the fact that 99% of hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels, they assume it will be produced in a polluting way at the ETZ.

Backers respond

ETZ Ltd told Climate Home in a statement that the project is committed to collaborating with the local community, particularly on efforts to refurbish what would be the remainder of the park. 

While the ETZ’s opponents argue there are existing industrial brownfield sites in the area that could be used instead of the park, the company said the area in St. Fittick’s Park next to the port is essential for the development to draw in substantial investment for renewables and for Aberdeen to compete in a new energy market.

Many brownfield sites are already planned for use by the ETZ, and would not provide the kind of logistical access needed for the planned projects, they added.

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“Almost all other ports in Scotland are making similar investments, and we simply don’t want Aberdeen to miss out on the opportunity to position itself as a globally recognised hub for offshore renewables and the significant job benefits this will bring,” said the statement.

The company added that the original plans for use of the park had been considerably reduced and the new master plan includes several measures to revitalise parts of the park and boost public access. It includes several parklets, a boardwalk, enhanced wetlands and a skate and BMX bike park.

While the oil industry’s backing has raised campaigners’ eyebrows, ETZ Ltd said the industry’s involvement is key to ensuring the development of skills and jobs central to the ETZ’s goals. 

The section of St. Fittick’s Park  up for development was rezoned in 2022 by the Aberdeen City council in order to allow industrial use of the land. Campaigners have challenged that decision and Scotland’s highest civil court will issue a judicial review later this month.

“You can’t just switch it off”

The ETZ dispute is just one example of efforts across Scotland to navigate the planned shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Tools to support a transitioning workforce have stalled. An offshore skills passport is meant to streamline and unify the certification process for both the fossil fuel and renewable offshore industries, to enable workers to go more easily from one sector to the other. But it was delayed for years before a “roadmap to a prototype” was released in May this year.

“The people can see a future, but it’s not happening – and they can see the current reality, which is [fossil fuels] declining, and that makes it very challenging,” said Paul de Leeuw, director of the Energy Transition Institute at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University. 

He said the focus needs to be on manufacturing and the supply chain, as that supports about 90% of employment in renewables such as solar and wind power. “If you don’t get investment, you don’t get activity, you don’t get the jobs,” he added.

That’s the key concern for Alec Wiseman, who spoke to Climate Home while walking his dog in St. Fittick’s Park on Saturday. He seemed mostly unbothered by the climate camp, but complained it meant he couldn’t let his dog off leash. 

Alec Wiseman walks his dog in St. Fittick’s Park on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

A Torry resident, Wiseman worked offshore for 25 years. He said he wants the ETZ to leave the park alone – and he also wants the overall energy transition to slow down until there is a clear plan.

“The government needs to sit down with the oil companies and figure out something proper” for both the transition and the ETZ, he said, expressing scepticism about employment in wind energy. Overall, operating wind farms, once they’re up and running, does not require as many skilled workers as operating an oil and gas field. “You can’t just switch it off [the oil and gas],” he said.

Lack of planning is what worries Jake Molloy, the recently-retired regional head of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT). Before leading the union, Molloy spent 17 years working offshore, and now sits on Scotland’s Just Transition Commission. He has spent years advocating for a fair deal on behalf of workers and local communities.

“We need to do that value-sharing piece, that community-sharing piece, which was lost with oil and gas,” he said, referencing the privatisation of the industry in the 1980s. Right now, he says, communities that bear the brunt of the impact of oil and gas production don’t see the majority of the benefits – those flow to corporations. “If we allow that to happen again, we’re a million miles away from a just transition,” he warned.

UK court ruling provides ammo for anti-fossil fuel lawyers worldwide

Molloy also thinks the investment and jobs promised by the ETZ are not realistic, because previous changes to government policies caused too much whiplash, making investors shaky. However, he is curious about what will come from Labour’s announcement of Great British Energy, described as a “publicly-owned clean energy company” headquartered in Scotland.  He also hopes to see climate change addressed on a crisis footing, similar to the approach to the COVID pandemic.

There are indications of renewed momentum on renewable energy in the UK. The Labour government has already lifted an effective ban on onshore wind in England and brought together a net-zero task force led by the former head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee,  Chris Stark. 

“In the context of an unprecedented climate emergency,” the ETZ said in a statement, “there are widespread calls from government and industry for energy transition activities to be accelerated.”

But, for many, it is still too soon to know whether that shift will materialise, and be implemented in a just way.

“The opportunities are there,” said MSP Chapman. But, she added, “it requires political and social will to make it happen and that’s the big challenge.”

(Reporting by Hannah Chanatry; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

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Veteran climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana is in contention to be France’s new prime minister, with three left-wing parties backing her as a compromise candidate following inconclusive legislative elections. But infighting among the leftist political coalition that won the most seats means she has yet to be confirmed as its official choice.

France’s Green Party (EELV), Socialist Party (PS) and Communist Party (PCF) have proposed Tubiana – a key figure in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change – for the leadership role, representing the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition of left-wing parties. She has no formal political affiliation.

The head of the PS, Olivier Faure, said Tubiana “completely corresponds to what we are promoting”, praising her as the “architect of COP21 [where the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015], commissioner for the climate convention, economist and diplomat engaged in both the environmental and social fields”.

But the biggest member of the NFP alliance, hard-left party France Unbowed (La France insoumise, LFI), is opposed to Tubiana getting the job, as they fear she is too close to the current President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist Renaissance party. “If this is the profile our partners are working on, I’ll fall off my chair,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on Tuesday, adding the suggestion was “not serious”.

In the July 7 elections, which resulted in a surprise defeat for the far right, no block won a majority of seats in the French legislature, known as the National Assembly. Of the 577 seats, the NFP left-wing alliance won 182, President Macron’s centrist party 168 and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) 143.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although he will lead a caretaker government with a limited mandate until a new government is named.

The choice of the new prime minister is ultimately up to President Macron, but in order to govern, the PM must have the support of a majority of National Assembly deputies.

The left-wing parties have been searching for a joint candidate and, after the LFI’s suggestion of Huguette Bello was rejected by the Socialists, Tubiana’s name was put forward. Faure said Tubiana had been consulted before the suggestion was made.

UK court ruling provides ammo for anti-fossil fuel lawyers worldwide

Tubiana, he said, is “someone who has strong convictions, who has never compromised. She has always been on that side [the left], she has never deviated. This is a demonstration of her ability to stand her ground.”

But according to French newspaper Le Monde, the LFI suspects she is too close to Macron. He twice offered her the job of ecological transition minister, which she declined, and she recently co-signed an editorial calling for the the left-wing block to reach out to Macron’s centrist party in order to govern.

Climate pedigree

Tubiana started out at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research before setting up and leading an NGO working on food security and the global environment called Solagral through the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1997, then French President Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party appointed her as his environmental advisor until he stepped down in 2022.

Tubiana next founded an influential French think-tank called the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) before re-entering government as France’s lead negotiator in the run up to COP21, at which the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

Since then, she has been an official United Nations champion on climate action, as well as president and CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), which funds green think-tanks and media outlets including Climate Home News.

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In these roles, she has pushed for governments at UN climate summits to agree to phase out fossil fuels, and called carbon capture and storage a false solution to the fossil fuel industries’ emissions.

In 2018, Macron appointed her as a member of France’s official climate advisory body, the High Council on Climate Change.

The ECF has recently worked alongside the French and Kenyan governments looking into global green taxes that could fund climate action.

Laurence Tubiana (left) celebrates the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (credit: IISD.ca/Kiara Worth)

Environmental lawyer Arnaud Gossement said Tubiana’s appointment as France’s prime minister would be “a really good idea” as she is “a recognised climate specialist”.

Florence Faucher, professor of political science at French university Sciences Po, told Climate Home that Tubiana’s appointment “would certainly be interesting” but “I really doubt it [will happen]”.

The leftist coalition has said it hopes to find agreement on a candidate soon, with the new National Assembly set to meet for the first time on Thursday. One way the matter could be settled is by holding a vote among the new left-wing deputies.

On Wednesday morning, EELV deputy Sandrine Rousseau told French TV: “The discussions are not over – we will find a solution.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana backed by some left-wing parties as next French PM appeared first on Climate Home News.

Europe’s first comprehensive climate risk assessment, published in May, sent a clear and unequivocal message: climate risks facing Europe have reached a critical level and urgently require decisive actions from European policymakers.  

Yet the recent EU parliamentary elections – which delivered significant gains for Europe’s far-right and dealt a blow to its green parties – alongside a recently leaked list of EU Council priorities for the next five years, indicate a marked U-turn in the EU’s commitment to climate action.  

The EU has faced a dramatically changed geopolitical situation over the past few years, marked by the upsurge of far-right political forces in several member states, growing trade-tensions with China, and a humanitarian disaster and heightened energy security risk caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Against this backdrop, EU policymakers have had to make tough decisions on strengthening security in Europe, diverting their attention to defense, security and migration issues, although this has come at the expense of the EU’s much flagged international climate leadership and green agenda.  

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We argue that the EU should stay the course on climate action. Despite geopolitical turns and a backlash from some industries over legislation brought on by the Green Deal, European policymakers have a responsibility to follow through on climate commitments – and thereby avoid the tremendous risks that face us if they do not. 

Exacerbating geopolitical risks 

Protests have included those by European farmers against sustainability provisions in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Recently, the EU Council only just managed to approve the highly anticipated, but embattled Nature Restoration Law, thanks to a rare display of political defiance by the Austrian environment minister.  

The law provides critical policy levers for improving Europe’s much degraded ecosystems, strengthening their resilience towards climate change. Hence this vote was critical, although it may still face a legal challenge.  

Despite dilution, officials say new nature law can restore EU carbon sinks

There is ample irony in the notion that political efforts and financial resources should be diverted to enhance Europe’s defence and security capabilities and strengthen the EU’s external borders from human migration. Climate change is certain to exacerbate the impacts and risks from geopolitical conflicts and wars and will be the mega-driver of migration over the coming years. 

And while legislation that requires businesses to take action on climate change and biodiversity loss is certainly going to be burdensome for some, these costs pale in comparison with the effects that climate change will have on the European economy.  

Corporate credit rating downgrades due to companies’ exposure to climate risks have already accelerated, according to S&P Global. And climate-induced disruptions of supply chains are likely to cost the global economy up to $25 trillion over the next 35 years under the current trajectory. Much of this cost will be borne by businesses. 

Ways to protect Europe 

EU-level policies are currently dangerously inadequate to safeguard European lives and livelihoods from the majority of the potentially catastrophic threats that will loom over Europe in the coming years and decades.  

But there are solutions, if bold action is taken in the following areas: 

• Protect and restore marine and coastal ecosystems by minimising pressures from overfishing, agricultural runoff and other industrial activities to avoid disastrous degradation of marine ecosystems. 
• Conserve and restore Europe’s forests through the recently passed Nature Restoration Law to safeguard Europe’s ecosystems and their many services on which the European economy and wider society heavily depend. 
• Leverage the Common Agricultural Policy to strengthen incentives and policy certainty for transforming and adapting Europe’s agricultural sector to extreme heat and drought. 
• Shore up the preparedness of healthcare systems and resources against the impacts of heat waves on vulnerable populations and outdoor workers, especially in southern Europe.  

• Bolster investments in climate adaptation abroad. This support will also be critical to reduce cascading climate risks that originate beyond Europe’s outer borders.   

With this comprehensive body of scientific evidence and advice at hand, European policymakers must resist the urge to adopt a tunnel-vision approach and focus solely on near-term risks, but rather approach climate change as a systemic threat to European’s economy, society and natural capital.  

The scientific community already has called on policymakers to reverse the current course of retreat from the EU environmental agenda, in an open letter to the EU’s legislative bodies.  

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The actions taken by the incoming group of elected lawmakers and appointed officials will determine the level of harm and damage European citizens will have to endure over the coming decades. It is critical that European policymakers take the long view.  

The decisions and actions they take today will lock our children’s future onto a path. Only today’s policymakers can make sure that path takes us towards a world that can sustain a functioning social order and human life.  

The post New European Parliament must act on climate change as a systemic threat   appeared first on Climate Home News.

The regulation, which tasks the EU’s 27 member states with reviving their land and water habitats and planting billions of trees, was narrowly passed by EU environment ministers.

The controversial law only gained enough backing because Austria’s minister for climate action, Leonore Gewessler, defied her country’s leader and voted in favour of it, a decision which may be challenged legally. 

But, while celebrating the bill’s approval, climate campaigners and scientists warned that its ambition had been diluted and it must be implemented effectively to reverse the destruction of Europe’s natural carbon sinks.

EU warns “delaying tactics” have made plastic treaty deal “very difficult”

The law requires each EU country to rejuvenate 20% of their degraded land and water habitats by 2030 and all of them by 2050, and to plant three billion more trees across the bloc by 2030.

It also requires countries to restore 30% of their drained peatlands by 2030 and 50% by mid-century.

Peatlands that have been drained, largely for farming, forestry and peat extraction, are responsible for 5% of Europe’s total greenhouse gas emissions. 

Climate breakthrough

Belgium’s climate minister Zakia Khatattabi told Climate Home that the law’s passing is “not only a breakthrough for nature but also for the climate”, and would enable the EU to meet its emissions-cutting targets.

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said that “without it, carbon neutrality in Europe would have been put beyond reach”.

The amount of carbon dioxide sucked in by Europe’s carbon sinks – including forests, peatlands, grassland, soil and oceans –  has been falling since 2010. For forests, the World Resources Institute blames logging for timber and biomass and more wildfires and pests for the decline.

The amount of carbon sucked in is shrinking (black line) when it needs to increase to meet targets for 2030 (orange dot) and 2050 (blue dot)

But the EU’s plan to meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 involves halting this decline and reversing it into a 15% increase on 2021 levels by 2030.

Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, vice-chair of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, told Climate Home the new nature law “can contribute substantially to this, as healthy ecosystems can store more carbon and are more resilient against climate change impacts”.

The law is extremely popular with the EU public, with 75% of people polled in six EU countries saying they agree with it and just 6% opposing.

Watered down

But farmer trade associations were fiercely against it, and it became a symbolic battleground between right-wing and populist parties on one side and defenders of the EU Green Deal on the other.

Several of the law’s strongest passages ended up diluted before it reached ministers for approval, including caveats added to an obligation for countries to prevent any “net loss” of urban green space and tree cover this decade.

A new clause was introduced to deter EU states from using funds from the Common Agricultural Policy or Common Fisheries Policy to finance nature restoration – raising questions as to where money to implement the law will come from.

And, most importantly, an obligation to restore peatlands that have been drained for farming – a major source of emissions – was weakened.

A peat bog under restoration in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, pictured in January 2022. (Photo: Imago Images/Rüdiger Wölk via Reuters)

The original regulation would have instructed countries to rewet 30% of peatlands drained for agricultural use by 2030 and 70% by 2050 – the most effective way of restoring them. 

But, as a concession to farmers, the final version of the nature law mandates rewetting just 7.5% of these peatlands by 2030 and 16.7% by 2050, with exceptions possible for actions such as replacing peatlands drained for agriculture with other uses.

Rewetting usually involves blocking drainage ditches. As well as reducing emissions, this helps an area adapt to climate change, protecting it from floods, and improving the water quality, soil and biodiversity.

But the Commission will also count other actions as peatland “restoration”, such as the partial raising of water tables, bans on the use of heavy machinery, tree removal, the reintroduction of peat-forming vegetation or fire prevention measures. 

That’s despite the European Commission’s own rulebook describing these measures as “supplementary to gain better results” and saying that “peatland restoration should always primarily focus on rewetting”.

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Where rewetting does take place, as with all restoration measures in the final version of the regulation, EU states will be obliged to prioritise action in particular areas known as Natura 2000 sites. These cover around 18% of the EU’s territory, and should already have been restored under existing legislation.  

Environmentalists maintain that the legislation still has tremendous potential, pointing to possible actions such as the restoration of seagrass meadows which cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor but absorb more than 10% of its carbon.    

EU countries will now draft national nature restoration plans over the next two years showing how they intend to meet their targets, for assessment by the Commission.

(Reporting by Arthur Neslen; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Despite dilution, officials say new nature law can restore EU carbon sinks appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a statement, a gathering of EU ministers called the Council of the EU said the decision “unlocked the process of modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) for its non-EU contracting parties”.

The compromise allows the EU as a body to withdraw from the treaty, while individual EU member states can stay in and approve the green reforms at a conference due to take place this year, if they wish.

The ECT currently allows all energy companies – including coal, oil and gas firms – to sue governments over climate and other policies they see as a threat to their current and future profits.

The proposed reforms to modernise the ECT, which are due to be voted on in November, would make it easier for ECT countries to prevent the treaty being used as a basis for lawsuits involving fossil fuel assets that are affected by green economy measures.

However, with several European countries already filing their notice to leave the ECT, it is unclear whether a sufficient number of EU states will stay in the treaty long enough to get the reforms approved. As part of today’s EU Council agreement, the EU confirmed it would leave the treaty.

Other ECT member states, including Japan and Kazakhstan, only grudgingly agreed to back the reforms under pressure from the European Commission.

For the ECT “modernisation” proposal to be adopted, none of the treaty’s member governments – now numbering 49 – must vote against it at November’s conference. Then three-quarters of ECT members need to ratify the reforms for them to take effect.

If the reforms fail, the ECT’s members across Europe and Asia will be unable to remove its protection for fossil fuel investments and – due to a 20-year sunset clause – even EU countries that have left would be exposed to lawsuits for that period.

Post-Soviet treaty

The ECT was conceived in the 1990s to boost investment flows between Western and post-Soviet countries. But its provisions to deter states from grabbing private assets have since been used by energy companies to fight back against climate policies.

In 2020, a British oil and gas company sued Slovenia over what it called “unreasonable” environmental protections”, while German energy company Uniper threatened to sue the Dutch government for €1 billion ($1.1bn)  over its coal phase-out plans.

In lawsuits brought under the ECT last November, British oil company Kelsch is suing the EU, Germany and Denmark for at least 95 million euros ($102m) over a windfall tax on energy firms.

G7 offers tepid response to appeal for “bolder” climate action

The European Commission reacted to these and other cases by attempting to remove fossil fuels from the list of investments protected by the ECT – with the aim that it would apply only to clean energy assets.

For two years, efforts by EU negotiators were repeatedly blocked by Japan and Kazakhstan. But in June 2022, a “flexibility mechanism” was agreed that would allow ECT states to end protection for fossil fuels, as long as no other ECT state objected.

Europe divided

Despite European Commission negotiators finally winning this right, EU member countries were divided on how to apply it.

Governments like France, Spain and Luxembourg wanted to immediately end protection for fossil fuel investments but faced push-back from several Eastern European countries.

They agreed a compromise to stop protection for new fossil fuel investments but to continue it for existing investments for ten years – a decision that angered climate campaigners.

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Friends of the Earth’s Paul de Clerck said at the time it would “lock the EU in fossil fuel investment protection” for a decade.

Despite this agreement, by the time the annual ECT conference came around in November 2022, EU governments no longer unanimously backed the reforms the European Commission had negotiated, and so they were shelved.

Locking in Asian fossil fuels

The EU’s stalling on the reforms drew an angry response from then head of the ECT secretariat, Guy Lentz of Luxembourg.

In a letter to the leader of the European Parliament in February 2023, he warned that if the EU withdrew as a bloc before approving the modernisation, it would amount to “an express prohibition” for other ECT members to better align with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal

He added that failure to agree reforms would essentially allow fossil fuel companies to sue EU states for longer because of an existing 20-year sunset clause, which means energy companies can bring lawsuits against governments for two decades even after a country leaves the treaty.

EU states wanted to neutralise this sunset clause by agreeing a side deal between themselves not to apply the treaty. But Lentz said these attempts “may not provide the expected legal certainty”. Campaigners accused him of “bluffing”.

Numbers game

EU countries then continued to debate among themselves whether to stay in or leave the ECT and – if they withdrew – whether to modernise it before exiting.

Despite the ongoing talks, France, Germany and Poland officially left the ECT in December 2023. Luxembourg and Slovenia will leave in June and October 2024 respectively. Portugal, the UK, Spain and the EU will leave next year.

This debate was resolved today, with EU states’ ministers agreeing to a compromise, brokered by the Belgian government. Governments that want to can stay and support the modernisation, but the EU itself can start process of exiting right away.

Belgian energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten said her government had “worked tirelessly to break this complex deadlock and found a balance acceptable and useful to all”.

The deal essentially makes the reforms contingent on timing and EU countries’ commitment to reform.

By November, after Luxembourg and Slovenia exit, there will be 47 ECT member states, including 22 from the EU. Eleven more – including the United Kingdom and Switzerland – are in Europe but not in the EU. Nine others are in Central Asia and three in the Middle East, with Japan and Mongolia the remaining two.

E3G analyst Eunjung Lee said ECT modernisation “is still uncertain” but added “with the EU Council decision today, it is probable that the modernisation might pass, particularly if the voting takes place via correspondence”.  

The ECT approved this option in October 2022. It means the conference’s chair sets a deadline by which any objections should be sent in.

“This will make things easier than voting at a conference, because unless there is a clear objection, the modernisation will be adopted”.

But even if the reform is approved, Lee said the ratification by three-quarters of countries “could take forever”.

De Clerck of Friends of the Earth agreed, saying “it is unclear if the reform would ever be ratified”.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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He added those countries should be “leading from the front” through much deeper emissions cuts, and bigger and better climate finance.

A day later, the gathering of the most powerful industrialised democracies responded with a tepid outcome, serving up a new commitment on ending coal power generation – weakened by a loophole in the language – a rehash of previous pledges and nothing new on climate finance, this year’s top priority in climate diplomacy.

For the first time, G7 countries all agreed to end the use of coal power generation in their energy systems “during the first half of the 2030s”.

While most members of the bloc are already planning to phase out coal before 2035, the commitment marks a step forward for Japan, analysts said. The Asian nation generates over a quarter of its energy from coal and, alongside Germany and the United States, had previously blocked international efforts towards setting a target date to shut down coal power plants.

Germany has written into its legislation a final target to exit coal by 2038 at the latest, but the government now intends to pull that forward to 2030. The United States unveiled new regulations last week under which coal plants planning to stay open beyond 2039 will have to cut or capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2032.

Not enough

But the G7 coal-power agreement struck on Tuesday in Turin, Italy, comes with a caveat that gives countries an alternative choice to phase out coal “in a timeline consistent with keeping a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise within reach, in line with countries’ net-zero pathways”.

Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, Italy’s minister for environment and energy security, told journalists at the end of the summit that the text “for the very first time uses a deadline, wherever possible”.

“G7 countries undertake to phase out the use of coal without jeopardising the various countries’ economic and social equilibrium,” he added.

Researchers say that, even if countries do stick to the mid-2030s deadline, it will not be enough to limit global warming in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

G7 countries need to phase out coal from power generation by 2030 at the latest, and gas by 2035, according to a recent analysis done by Berlin-based policy institute Climate Analytics.

G7 climate and energy ministers meet at the Reggia di Venaria Reale in Italy. Photo: G7 Italy

“It’s notable that gas has not been mentioned [in the G7 ministerial agreement],” said Jane Ellis, head of climate policy at Climate Analytics, pointing at increased investment in domestic gas facilities. “This is absolutely the wrong direction to be heading in – both economically and for the climate.”

In their final communique, ministers said that “publicly supported investments in the gas sector can be appropriate as a temporary response, subject to clearly defined national circumstances”, in their efforts to reduce dependency on imported Russian fossil fuels.

They also repeated a previous commitment to eliminate “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 or sooner”, without providing a clearer definition of “inefficient” or details on how that goal would be achieved.

Fossil fuel subsidies across G7 countries hit an all-time high of $199.1 billion in 2022, according to analysis by IISD and the OECD. “It’s very clear they are not going to meet that target,” said Farooq Ullah, senior policy advisor at IISD.

No progress on climate finance

This week’s ministerial meeting in Italy also failed to significantly move the needle on climate finance, as UN negotiations on a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) at COP29 in November are starting to gather pace.

G7 countries said in their final text they “intend to be leading contributors to a fit-for-purpose goal” and acknowledged the need for “mobilising trillions”, but stopped short of making any new financial commitment or offering clear ways forward.

The existing goal is set at $100 billion a year, but developing countries – excluding China – need an estimated $2.4 trillion a year to meet their climate and development needs, leading economists have said in a report commissioned by the Cop26 and Cop27 presidencies.

In order to loosen the purse strings, it is crucial that every minister across government cabinets – and especially finance ministers and treasurers – “push climate action into high gear”, the UNFCCC’s Stiell said on Monday.

But, according to Luca Bergamaschi, director of Italian think-tank ECCO, they appear “not to be caring enough about climate finance”.

“Climate ministers are hitting a wall on climate finance. These decisions rest on finance ministers so they need to step up, and step in, because they have the power and responsibility to do so,” he told Climate Home.

Meetings of G7 finance ministers in mid-May and country leaders in June are seen as last-ditch opportunities to push things forward.

Experts believe an ambitious deal on climate finance at COP29 can play a crucial role in getting developing countries, especially the poorest ones, to commit to stronger action on curbing emissions and boosting adaptation as they draft their new national climate plans due early next year.

The G7 ministers in Italy made a firm pledge to submit their own such plans – called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – by the February 2025 deadline “with economy-wide, absolute reduction targets” that cover all greenhouses gases and sectors “in line with 1.5C”. They also called on other major economies to do the same.

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But oil, gas and coal producers are still closing their ears. In 2023, they continued spewing near record-high amounts of methane into the atmosphere, according to the latest assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA) released on Wednesday. That is despite a raft of promises to stop doing so.

Now, however, analysts believe the tide may finally be turning. The introduction of stronger regulations in key fossil fuel-producing and consuming countries, coupled with better monitoring and transparency of harmful leaks, gives them cause for optimism.

“While emissions are still very high, 2024 is going to be a watershed moment on action and transparency on methane,” said Christophe McGlade, head of the IEA’s energy supply unit.

Methane role in 1.5C goal

Methane is a major contributor to global warming. Although it remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter time than carbon dioxide, it is 84 times more potent over a 20-year time horizon.

The energy sector represents the second-largest source of methane emissions linked to human activity, after agriculture, and has the biggest potential for reduction, according to analysts.

“If we can’t make real progress in cutting down methane, it is going to be impossible to limit warming to 1.5C,” said McGlade, referring to the most ambitious warming goal in the Paris Agreement.

The IEA estimates that the fossil fuel industry needs to reduce methane emissions 75% by 2030 for the world to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2050.

But last year methane emissions from fossil fuels remained near a record high first reached in 2019, rising slightly from 2022 to 120 million tonnes, according to the watchdog. The United States and China are by far the largest emitters of the powerful gas from oil and gas operations and the coal sector respectively.

Leaks from old or poorly maintained infrastructure and the practice of flaring – burning of excess gas – at oil and gas wells are the main energy-sector culprits for putting methane in the atmosphere.

Easy-fix

Reining in those emissions does not require rocket science. The IEA says well-known technologies and measures, such as upgraded equipment and more efficient practices, can cut the bulk of methane generated from fossil fuels in a fast and cheap way.

Just less than half of last year’s emissions could have been avoided at no net cost to the producers, with measures paying for themselves thanks to revenues from the additional gas captured. “It was a massive missed opportunity,” McGlade said.

Fossil fuel firms seek UN carbon market cash for old gas plants

If this is such a win-win, it begs the question of why fossil fuel producers are not stepping up to the plate. Lack of awareness over the scale of emissions and longer return on investment from plugging leaks are cited in the report as extenuating circumstances.

For Mark Brownstein, methane expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, up until very recently methane had simply been ignored by the global community as a serious threat.

“Aggressive action on methane is long overdue, but we are unfortunately still at a relatively early stage,” he told Climate Home. “Only now we’re starting to see some coordinated action from companies and countries to address this pollutant.”

Raft of pledges

More than 150 countries have signed up to a commitment first announced at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade.

Last year’s Cop28 in Dubai produced a host of new promises. The Global Stocktake assessment of national climate plans called for countries to substantially cut methane emissions. Meanwhile, more than 50 oil and gas companies pledged to speed up emission reduction efforts.

But for Romain Ioualalen from campaign group Oil Change International, the industry’s words only go so far. “The climate arsonists fuelling climate chaos cannot be trusted to put out the fire,” he said. “Government must take action to force the industry to clean up its mess on its way out the door.”

New regulations are now in the pipeline and provide experts with the biggest hope that things will finally move in the right direction.

Rules and satellites

In December 2023, the United States finalised new rules aimed at cracking down on U.S. oil and gas industry releases of methane. These include measures to eliminate routine flaring and force producers to better monitor leaks from equipment. Neighbouring Canada has also announced a new proposal for beefed-up methane-cutting standards.

Across the ocean, the European Union agreed at the end of last year on a new law that will require companies to report emissions, monitor and fix leaks, and limit flaring. Crucially, the rules will also apply to imports of oil, gas and coal into the bloc, effectively forcing overseas producers to improve their standards.

Despite Putin promises, Russia’s emissions keep rising

Alongside policy developments, the ability to track methane emissions is continuously improving – mainly thanks to satellite technologies – leaving polluters with less room to hide.

Advances on this front are expected to continue in 2024. MethaneSAT, a new satellite developed by EDF, was launched into space in early March and will soon provide free, near-real-time access to methane emissions data from wide areas that have so far been overlooked.

“This data will not only assist in the implementation of regulatory requirements, but it will also underpin the commitments made by fossil fuel companies at Cop28,” said Brownstein. “All of this is finally pointing us in the right direction.”

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Many climate and development organisations based in developing countries rely directly or indirectly for funding on the German government, which is among Israel’s strongest political supporters.

Three sources Climate Home spoke to said that, after criticising Israel’s actions for humanitarian reasons, they were either pressured by their German-funded employers to resign, had contracts put on hold, or were warned they would lose funding if they made further comments on the issue.

Tensions between German and international climate campaigners were evident at December’s Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, with several German campaign groups distancing themselves from criticism of Israel by Climate Action Network International. One accused the civil-society umbrella group of antisemitism.

Funding threat

Twelve climate activists – all of whom asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the subject – told Climate Home many climate organisations fear that speaking out about Israel’s military actions in Gaza will cost them German funding.

The German development ministry BMZ says on its website that it checks whether organisations it funds have been involved in “statements or actions” that “make it undesirable to provide support to that organisation”.

As examples, it lists incitement to hatred and violence, denial of Israel’s right to exist, antisemitism and support for the global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. It urges partner organisations to “sanction” staff who “violate these principles”.

A spokesperson for the German state development organisation GIZ told Climate Home the organisations it funds are “bound to comply” with its principles on non-discrimination.

The spokesperson added that, in line with the German government and parliament, GIZ uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The IHRA provides examples of what it considers antisemitic, which include arguing that the state of Israel is a racist endeavour or comparing Israeli policy to the Nazis.

Clean, cheap or fair – which countries should pump the last oil and gas?

One consultant to climate campaign groups told Climate Home they had an individual contract with a German foundation postponed after accusing Israel of genocide on social media. “It was going to be my main source of income,” they said, “I’m financially screwed.”

An activist from the Global South said their organisation’s German funder had told them not to criticise Israel. To keep the money, the organisation heeded this warning but “the relationship with the funder has become extremely tense”, the activist added.

“I completely get feeling guilt as Germans for an atrocity that occurred, but that should not trickle down into activist organisations and NGOs and civil society organisations trying to make a change on the ground,” they said.

Difficult position

Another activist from the Global South told Climate Home the German-funded climate and feminist campaign group they work for had issued guidelines advising staff on how to talk about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The activist resigned after declining to follow the guidelines. “I’m not going to allow anyone to censor me,” they told Climate Home, adding they were now unemployed and their mental health had suffered.

Revealed: UK civil servants’ secret doubts over climate techno-fixes

Another foreign employee of a German climate campaign group told Climate Home their bosses were “pretty pro-Israel”, while many of the organisation’s staff were not.

But even the group’s leadership is in a “very difficult position”, they said, because the German government funds the organisation and has discussed removing funding from groups that support the Palestinian cause or work with others that do.

Cancellations

Climate scientist Julia Steinberger, who specialises in ecological economics and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, told Climate Home she was uninvited from an event in Austria after she said she would speak about Israel’s “genocide”.

Another climate scientist, based in Germany, told Climate Home they had been warned by colleagues that support for Palestine would “cancel” them in Germany. 

It is not just climate activists who are running into problems over expressing their opinions on the Israel-Gaza conflict. In December, the chair of an Egyptian women’s rights charity told Egyptian news website Mada Masr that the German government had cut funding after she signed an open letter calling for an end to the war and support for the global boycott movement against Israel.

Asked about the case, the German embassy cited the government’s funding criteria that recipient organisations cannot call for boycotts against Israel. In 2019, the German parliament – with support from the Green Party – passed a non-binding motion calling for German funding to be cut to groups that support such boycotts.

Another NGO, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, ended its cooperation with the German government over the defunding of the feminist group and organised a petition, signed by nearly 1,000 people, calling for a boycott of the German-Egyptian cultural week.

Greta’s German critics

In Germany, support for Israel is more widespread than in most of the rest of Europe and goes beyond the far right to include liberals and leftists, who comprise much of the climate movement. 

This has led to conflict between German climate groups and their international counterparts, both online and in person at Cop28 in Dubai.

As a result, several German climate organisations have split from, or threatened to quit international networks like Fridays for Future and Climate Action Network International. 

On October 20 – two weeks after Hamas militants killed about 1,140 Israeli and foreign civilians and took more than 240 hostages, and with Israel’s military response ramping up – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg posted on X “in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza”.

Week 270. Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected.#FreePalestine #IStandWithPalestine #StandWithGaza #FridaysForFuture
Thread pic.twitter.com/0hVtya0yWO

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 20, 2023

She had previously posted similar messages “in solidarity with Ukrainians”, but this one proved more controversial, not just with the Israeli government and her traditional critics on the far-right but with the German branch of Fridays for Future (FFF), the student-led climate movement Thunberg inspired.

Two days later, FFF Germany’s most high-profile activist Luisa Neubauer spoke at a rally in Berlin on a podium showing the message “against terror and antisemitism, solidarity with Israel”.

In a statement, she sought to strike a balance, saying that FFF Germany had “unlimited solidarity” with the Jewish people as well as being concerned about anti-Muslim racism and civilians in Gaza.

Dubai divisions

In late November, the international climate movement gathered in person at Cop28 in Dubai. The Israeli army had by then invaded the Gaza Strip, killing 17,000 people, bombing a refugee camp and an ambulance convoy, and raiding a hospital.

Many climate activists felt those were actions they could not ignore. In solidarity, many wore keffiyehs and lanyards in the colours of the Palestinian flag, given out by the Palestinian pavilion at Cop28. 

At their big climate march in the venue, activists carried banners saying “ceasefire now, end occupation”, and chanting “no climate justice without human rights”.

At Cop28 in Dubai, protesters march behind a “ceasefire now” banner (Photos: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

The next day, the umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International gave its “Fossil of the Day” award to Israel, accusing the Israeli government of genocide and colonialism. That decision went down badly with CAN International’s German members.

The acting CEO of the Oeko-Institut, Anke Herold – which gets much of its funding from the German government – said that CAN used “antisemitic phrases” in its presentation of the award.

She told Climate Home: “The two antisemitic phrases in the statement are the references to ‘Israeli colonialism’ and the reference to ‘the intent of genocide’.” She declined to comment further on why she considers those phrases antisemitic.

At Cop28, she added that the institute would consider terminating its CAN membership if “universal values such as solidarity with all those affected, human rights for all and international humanitarian law” were not upheld.

Watch the #FossilOfTheDay ceremony from today, as we condemn Israel for its intention of genocide. #CeasefireNow

pic.twitter.com/ZhUaLabg96

— Climate Action Network International (CAN) (@CANIntl) December 10, 2023

Christoph Bals, policy director of environmental advocacy group Germanwatch, told the Deutsche Press Association: “Despite Israel’s very problematic actions in the Gaza Strip, we neither adopt nor support the justification for the Fossil of the Day to Israel.”

He said Germanwatch had voted against the decision, “and – when it was actually carried out – communicated our red lines for the reasons. Unfortunately, this input was not taken into account this time.”

As a result, Germanwatch stopped going to the CAN political coordination group, a daily meeting of around 50 people during Cop28 to discuss strategy. Germanwatch got  €2.7m ($2.9m) from the German government in 2022 – about €1m of which was from BMZ.

The German branches of Greenpeace and Oxfam also distanced themselves from Israel’s Fossil of the Day award.

Humanitarian crisis

Five months after Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens, Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip continues, amid growing international calls for a ceasefire.

The United Nation says about a quarter of Gaza’s population is on the brink of starvation, after attacks on aid convoys, and infectious diseases are spreading fast with little access to medical care.

With Germany’s position on the conflict largely unchanged, British climate justice activist Asad Rehman said many in the climate movement are questioning their partnerships with the German government and German climate campaign groups.

“How can we ally and work together with German organisations that are not prepared to stand up against their own government?” he asked.

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In risk assessments made public because of an ongoing court case, officials warned that technology to reduce methane emissions from cow burps is “nascent” and there might not be enough plants or hydrogen available to power the world’s planes more sustainably.

Yet despite the uncertainties surrounding these and other climate solutions like carbon dioxide removal, the UK government is relying on such technologies to meet a big chunk of its climate plans.

Internal government documents disclosed in court show civil servants had “low” or “very low” confidence in about half of the planned emissions reductions up to 2037 and “very high confidence” in just a tiny fraction.

UK civil servants rated about half their planned emission cuts as “low” or “very low” confidence

In court, the government’s lawyer said that these categories should not be taken out of context – and that certain measures could be rated “very low confidence” just because it is “early days”.

The risk analysis was put together by unnamed civil servants at the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in 2022 and was supposed to help shape the government’s latest carbon budget delivery plan, aimed at keeping the country on track for net-zero emissions by mid-century.

The plan was published in March 2023 along with a sanitised version of the risks and uncertainties that civil servants foresaw in meeting it.

But the full risk tables were made public this week as environmental campaigners took the government to court, arguing that civil servants did not give then climate minister Grant Shapps enough information to judge whether the UK’s climate plan was sufficient.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://twitter.com/goodlawproject/status/1760210497800962252?s=46&t=1evSGSBoh-eT20bb9Nq91g

Katie de Kauwe, a lawyer for Friends of the Earth, one of the groups bringing the case, said the analysis shows “much of the government’s ‘strategy’ to meet legally-binding climate targets amounts to wishful thinking”.

ClientEarth lawyer Sam Hunter Jones, said: “These risk tables only further prove that the government is choosing to look the other way when it comes to the clear possibility of its climate plans failing.”

Where’s the green fuel?

The government has said it plans to cut 611 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2023 to 2037 from international aviation and shipping – about an eighth of its total emissions reductions over those 15 years.

Plans to decarbonise aviation currently rest largely on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), made from plant material called biomass.

Countries draw battle lines for talks on new climate finance goal

But the civil servants privately warned there may not be enough of this biomass required to power the planes.

“Feedstock availability is a key dependency to supply necessary quantities of SAF,” the risk assessment says, adding “increased global demand for biomass could impact the deliverability of these project savings”.

“Zero emission flight technology is at an early stage of development and delivery of this ambition will be challenging,” it notes.

Planes could also – at least in theory – be powered with hydrogen but this may also be in short supply.

The civil servants say “the availability of low carbon hydrogen at scale from 2030 onwards is likely to be critical”.

The government’s plan does not mention strategies to reduce flight numbers or encourage people to travel by train.

Cow super-foods

The carbon budget delivery plan also estimates that the damage done by livestock, particularly cows, burping the potent greenhouse gas methane can be reduced by 4 million tonnes between 2023 and 2037 by giving them special food and not feeding them too much.

But the previously unpublished analysis warns that the emissions savings from this are “uncertain” as the technology is “nascent”. The plan does not include measures to reduce the numbers of ruminants like cows or to promote a move away from meat-based diets.

The most recent summary of climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that technologies that ease pollution from livestock flatulence based on seaweed or algae are “promising” but there are doubts about the environmental side-effects and whether the emissions cuts from using them will be lasting.

The UK government’s plan also relies on technologies that suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to contribute 30 million tonnes of CO2 reduction between 2023 and 2037.

Despite Cop28 pledge, France keeps fossil fuel subsidies for farmers

But the civil servants say they are “uncertain” this will be delivered. This is partly because “greenhouse removals technologies have never been deployed at scale, creating inherent uncertainties and risk”, and “additional research and innovation” is required.

These technologies vary but include burning plant material or hydrogen for electricity and capturing the carbon emitted, as well as sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere with direct air capture machines.

In addition, the officials flag concerns about using hydrogen – a gas that doesn’t damage the atmosphere when burned and can be made with carbon-free electricity – to heat homes as an emissions-cutting bet.

“The use of hydrogen for heat is not yet a fully established technology,” they say, adding “there is uncertainty on the carbon savings associated with hydrogen heating policy”.

They do not raise doubts about heat pump technology except with regard to cost and how to heat buildings where pumps are not suitable.

Climate finance fail

Despite cuts to the UK’s development aid budget since the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government has insisted it will deliver on a much-hyped promise to deliver £11.6 billion ($14.7 bn) in climate finance to developing countries between 2021 and 2026. But in the newly released documents, civil servants warn of “material risks” to meeting that commitment.

They blame this on the UK cutting its annual aid spending from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%, and the redeployment of almost a third of the aid budget to cover the cost of hosting Ukrainian refugees.

This supports the claim made by former environment minister Zac Goldsmith, who resigned in June saying the government had “effectively abandoned” the climate finance pledge, which was “one of the most widely reported and solemn promises we have made on this issue”.

Loss and damage must be a focus of IPCC’s next reports

The Guardian newspaper also last year published a leaked government document warning the UK would find it a “huge challenge” to respect the pledge. At that time, the foreign and development ministry said “claims that the international climate finance pledge is being dropped are false”.

Emma Dearnaley, legal director of the Good Law Project, asked: “How can the UK credibly claim to be a world leader in tackling climate change when it is falling behind on its legal commitments to help those who will bear the brunt of it?”

Developing countries have been angered by news on the expected shortfall in Britain’s climate funding. Last June, an African negotiator told Climate Home it was “disappointing”, while Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco said the UK would not be respecting the United Nations climate change convention or the Paris Agreement.

The court hearing finished today, but it is likely to be months before the judge returns a verdict.

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“Leading by example is obviously a key way to move forward and to show that the solutions are under our eyes,” she told a press conference, alongside ministers from Canada, Spain and other – mainly European – governments.

But, just two months later, in efforts to placate protesting farmers, her government U-turned on plans to remove subsidies for the fossil fuels that power agricultural machinery like tractors.

And the political fallout of the decision could reverberate beyond France’s borders, Sussex University international relations professor Peter Newell told Climate Home.

“It doesn’t send a good signal about these commitments if, at the first sign of trouble, richer countries relent for short-term, narrow electoral reasons,” he said.

The then French environment minister (second from left) posing for pictures after joining an initiative to end fossil fuel subsidies

The G20 group of big economies has been promising to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies since 2009, but to little effect. Globally, explicit subsidies – undercharging for the supply costs of fossil fuels – more than doubled to $1.3 trillion in 2022, according to International Monetary Fund figures.

Bad example

Newell warned that France’s move “sends a signal that it’s okay to capitulate in the face of social pressure when it comes to difficult choices around fossil fuel subsidy reform”. 

It could spur on other groups to push back against similar reforms, he said. Farmers in Germany and Lithuania are also currently fighting plans to remove their fuel subsidies.

A team of researchers found that between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot associated with popular demand for fuel. Their study concluded that the removal of subsidies had often led to social unrest. In France in 2018, for example, the rising cost of driving sparked a wave of protests by the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, leading to a rollback of fuel tax hikes.

French farm machinery produces about ten million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, which is just over a tenth of France’s farming’s emissions, according to a recent analysis by the French government’s official climate advisers (HCC). 

About half of French agricultural emissions come from cows releasing methane through burps. Just over a tenth is from fossil fuel-based fertilisers, with smaller amounts from pigs, sheep and other sources.

French farmers currently receive an annual €1.7-billion ($1.8-bn) taxpayer subsidy to make the diesel that runs their machinery cheaper.

The HCC analysis says that about a tenth of farm machinery’s carbon pollution can be stopped through driving in a way that uses less fuel and engine maintenance.

To reduce emissions further, it recommends tractors should be converted to biodiesel or electric engines “as soon as possible to avoid the risks of lock-in” given that many tractors bought today will still be in use as France gets close to its deadline of reaching net-zero emissions in 2050.

Just transition

Stéphane De Cara, director of research at the French agricultural research institute INRAE, sees the failure to address this “low-hanging fruit” as a clear signal that France is “not moving in the right direction” when it comes to emissions targets.

But, he said, if the fuel subsidy were to be scrapped, then the money saved should be channeled back to poorer farmers so that they can invest in greener technology.

Since Cop28, Pannier-Runacher has been appointed to France’s agriculture ministry and put in charge of ecological planning, energy issues and the production of biomass. She has vowed to devote all her energy to “farmers and food sovereignty”.

Ahead of European elections in May, farmers’ protests have been dominating headlines across Europe, pushing their grievances over foreign competition and falling incomes, coupled with rising costs, up the political agenda. Some farmers have targeted climate and nature policies at the national and European Union levels.

According to Newell, right-wing political parties are using the issue as a “lightning rod for broader social discontent” as part of a “weaponisation” of climate policy across Europe ahead of June’s EU elections. 

Farming is the “new battle line in discussions around just transitions”, the researcher added. 

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The UK is considering a new law which would invite applications for new oil and gas production licenses in the North Sea every year.

This Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill will not help with the UK’s energy security, reduce bills or serve anything but fossil fuel giants’ short-term profits. 

On top of this, if it passes into law, the UK faces the grave risk of economy-wrecking lawsuits.

This is because the UK is a member of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) – a multilateral investment pact which allows investors in energy to sue governments over policies that affect their investments in over 50 countries across Europe and Asia.

Investors weapon

The ECT is the most litigated investment agreement in the world. It contains Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions which are used by fossil fuel companies to deter, delay or raise the cost of climate policies. 

ISDS enables them to sue governments for billion-dollar payouts over their climate policies, in secretive tribunals outside of national legal systems. 

Weak attempts at reforming the Energy Charter Treaty have failed numerous times over the years, and thus many European countries including Germany, France and the Netherlands have decided to exit over the risks to their climate action. 

Loss and damage must be a focus of IPCC’s next reports

The UK government launched a review of its membership last year and is overdue announcing its outcome. 

Recent research by CommonWealth found that at least 40% of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas licenses are owned by foreign investors, many headquartered in ECT member countries like France or Spain.

If the UK government fails to leave the ECT, foreign investment into North Sea oil and gas means not only a headlong sprint in the wrong energy policy direction, but invites a huge bill even if a future government changes course. 

The Labour Party, which is far ahead in the polls, says it will stop new oil production. An election will be held this year.

Coming clash

Carbon Tracker recently showed that North Sea oil and gas companies are financially planning for far slower energy transition scenarios than governments are working to. 

Switzerland proposes first UN expert group on solar geoengineering

As a result, they are setting up a clash between climate policies and their financial expectations, raising the risk of ISDS claims.

Producing the first oil and gas from a field can take more than 18 years. By then, the climate policy landscape will be vastly different.

The 1.5 C warming limit is likely to be passed within the next decade or two, so the imperative to reduce fossil fuel use will be even greater. 

The dearth of long-term thinking in Westminster means policymakers are ignoring the risk of leaving the fossil fuel industry with such a powerful weapon.

An investor using ISDS can claim not only for costs sunk by a government policy but for any future lost profit it expected to earn over a project’s lifetime.

These companies can decry far bigger losses than is reasonable given the fast-moving renewables revolution, and ISDS tribunals are rigged to back them up.

Problems mount for Sahara gas pipeline, leaving Nigerian taxpayers at risk

Facing an ECT claim, any reasonable argument the UK may have developed about the environmental, social – even economic – imperative to phase out fossil fuels will have to be left at the door: it signed up to the fossil fuel giants’ charter, failed to leave it when it had the chance, and breached it. 

So much for the polluter pays: the UK taxpayer will have to bail them out.

Failed reforms

There’s no reforming the deadly oil and gas bill, in or out of the ECT. But remaining a member of the treaty adds an incredulous new dimension of fiscal irresponsibility.

The European Commission is proposing a mass withdrawal to neutralise the Energy Charter Treaty’s sunset clause – which extends the right to ISDS claims for 20 years even after countries leave – among exiting parties. 

If the countries leaving together agree to cancel the sunset clause between themselves, then the benefits of exit are magnified.

Given how many ECT-covered investors in 1.5C-incompatible projects on British soil are European, the UK joining this coordinated withdrawal would eliminate 99% of the ISDS risk – leaving little logical argument to remain bedfellows with climate laggards in a collapsing treaty.

It’s time to rip up the get-out-of-jail-free card that dirty North Sea projects, fast becoming obsolete, have up their sleeve. 

At stake is a chill on policies to address the biggest crisis facing humanity, and an unjust transition that would be billed to the UK public. 

Cleodie Rickard is trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now.

The post Oil drilling while in the Energy Charter Treaty is economically reckless appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yesterday, the European Commission recommended a 90% cut on 1990 levels by 2040 to complement the existing targets to reduce net emissions 55% by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

This is the lower end of the 90-95% range called for by the EU’s scientific climate advisers. But it was the most ambitious of the three targets the Commission was considering. The others were 80% and 85-90%.

After the EU elections in June, the next Commission will decide whether to accept this recommendation and work with member states and the EU parliament to turn it into law.

While Europe’s green backlash grows, Poland tells different story

The recommendation drew a mixed reaction from campaigners. Jeroen Gerlag from Climate Group Europe said the EU had “boldly signalled its climate leadership” but Friends of the Earth’s Colin Roche said it “fails its historic responsiblity to tackle the climate crisis”.

While most major nations set goals to reduce emissions by 2030 and target dates to reach net zero, the European Union is the first to float a 2040 emissions reduction target.

Farm emissions

The Commission backed away from spelling out how agriculture should contribute to the headline goal. A previous draft recommendation, seen by Euractiv and others, said that farming was “one of the core areas to reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions” and “it should be possible” for farming to cut its emissions by at least 20% by 2040 compared to 2015.

This did not make it into the final document. Neither did a reference to applying carbon pricing to farming or to “healthier diets based on diversified protein intake”, a reference to eating less meat.

Marco Contiero, Greenpeace’s EU agriculture policy director accused the Commission of “ignoring scientific advice on helping farmers move away from overproduction of meat and dairy, [which] makes climate change worse”. Agriculture accounts for around 10% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Rich nations miss loss and damage fund deadline

This backtracking follows farmers’ protests across Europe against plans to protect nature and reduce emissions, with anger at several national governments’ plans to reduce taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels used in farming.

At a press conference yesterday, the EU’s lead climate diplomat Wopke Hoekstra was asked if backing down to protesting farmers gave them too much power. He replied that “we need to make sure that there is broad enough support to continue on this journey together”.

In 2022, farmers protests in Australia and New Zealand led to measures to tackle farming’s emissions being watered down and the farming lobby in Brazil has pushed against measures to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

The post EU floats 90% emissions target but drops green farming measures appeared first on Climate Home News.

Not long ago Poland embodied Europe’s worst nature-destroying tendencies. 

The post While Europe’s green backlash grows, Poland tells different story appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a summit in Rome with two dozen African and European leaders on Monday, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni unveiled a long-awaited initiative aimed at boosting economic ties and curbing migration.

The transformation of Italy into “an energy hub” that creates “a bridge between Europe and Africa” is a central plank of the ‘Mattei Plan’ – named after Enrico Mattei, founder of state oil and gas company Eni.

Biden misses chance to tackle “huge” US landfill emissions

Meloni said initial resources for the scheme would total 5.5 billion euros ($5.95 billion), including loans, guarantees and grants. Over half of the budget would come from a climate fund set up in 2022 to finance international projects in line with the Paris Agreement, she added.

Widespread concerns

Campaigners in Italy and across Africa have expressed concerns over the initiative.

Silvia Francescon, from Italian think tank Ecco, told Climate Home that the plan presents “enormous ambiguities” that leave the door open to fossil fuel investment.

A document released by the Italian government indicated the initiative would strengthen the use of renewables and  “accelerate the transition of electricity systems”, but did not explicitly rule out oil and gas projects.

Zimbabwe looks to China to secure a place in the EV battery supply chain

“There is no reference to the Paris Agreement or the Cop decisions. Based on what we currently know, there is undoubtedly a risk that funds meant for climate and international development could be used for projects managed by companies like Eni”, she added. “The ambiguity is very worrying”.

Eni’s long shadow

Eni has extensive oil and gas operations across a dozen African countries, including Nigeria, Mozambique, Ivory Coast and the Republic of Congo.

Its CEO Claudio Descalzi attended the launch of the Mattei Plan in the Italian Senate alongside executives of other state-controlled companies.

At a political event organised by Meloni’s right-wing populist party last December, he said Italy was “ready to invest in Africa both to get the energy needed for economic growth but also to tackle migration flows”.

Cop29 host Azerbaijan launches green energy unit to sceptical response

Concerns over Eni’s looming presence over the initiative have been widespread ever since Meloni named the plan after the company’s founder.

Enrico Mattei led the company’s quest in the mid-20th century to capture a significant share of the fast-expanding market.

His willingness to give oil-producing states a larger share of the profits than its American and British rivals is widely credited as a key reason behind Eni’s success at the time. Mattei died in 1962 in a plane crash caused by a suspected sabotage.

Mutual benefits

Meloni hailed Mattei as an inspiration for her plan that, she said, would be “a cooperation among equals” and “non-predatory”.

But African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told the summit that African countries would have liked to have been consulted beforehand.

“We need to pass from words to deeds,” he said, striking a cautious note. “You can understand that we cannot be happy with promises that often are not maintained.”

The Italian government has put energy at the centre of the partnership but details of which energy sources will be included have been very limited.

Governments fail to agree timeline for climate science reports in fraught IPCC talks

Italy signed several gas deals with African countries over the last two years as it sought to replace Russian supplies. But gas was the “elephant in the room” at the summit, as Kenyan president William Ruto described it in his address.

Ruto said he believed “that no African country can be asked to halt the exploration of its natural resources, including fossil fuels”. But “that does not mean that it makes economic sense to build a dependency on fossil fuels in our economies”, he added, calling gas “a temporary solution, primarily for export”.

‘False solutions’

Among a limited number of “pilot projects” referenced in Meloni’s speech is a biofuel production operation launched by Eni in Kenya in 2021.

Supporters of biofuels see them as an important contributor to the energy transition away from fossil fuels. But critics argue they can do more harm than good by diverting land away from food production, destroying forests, worsening water scarcity and unleashing significant amounts of emissions across their supply chains.

Amazon nations to tackle rainforest crime together in donor-funded new office

Dean Bhebhe, campaigns lead at Power Shift Africa, called Meloni’s focus “very problematic”. “Africa has an enormous amount of solar and wind – genuine renewable energy sources – and instead she chooses a false solution like biofuels”, he told Climate Home.

Concerns have also been raised over the lack of engagement with civil society representatives that were not invited to the summit. Ahead of the event, over 50 African groups wrote a letter to the Italian government asking for an “end of neo-colonial approaches” and “a more consultative approach”.

“Currently the Mattei plan does not offer Africa a path to escape the systematic traps that prevent its development”, said Bhebhe. “We need plans that rebalance Africa’s position globally in truly innovative ways, not convenings that keep it at the bottom of the food chain”.

The post Italy launches ‘ambiguous’ Africa plan fuelling fears over fossil fuels role appeared first on Climate Home News.

In November 2023, pressure tests revealed several tiny holes in the 55 km pipeline, designed to bring gas from a new floating import terminal in Brunsbüttel to the gas distribution network in northern Germany.

The pipeline was supposed to start operating by the end of last year but it remains out of action. The company building the pipeline says it will open it next month.

While they did not claim responsibility for the holes, radical climate activists from Ende Gelände, meaning ‘here and no further’, have demonstrated against the pipeline.

Zimbabwe looks to China to secure a place in the EV battery supply chain

They posted a thread on X, saying that “those responsible are unknown” but “anyone who builds an LNG [gas] terminal, a highway or other fossil fuel infrastructure should know: we will not leave you alone.”

“Where appeals fail,” they said, “we resort to blockades. Since we cannot block everything, sabotage against the destruction of our climate is legitimate”.

In their thread, they referred to climate activists setting fire to a cement factory in Berlin and to demonstrations against coal mining in Lusatia.

The group’s spokesperson Jule Fink told Climate Home News this week: “We are not going to stop protesting against public infrastructure, and we don’t plan to just let new LNG terminals be built”.

Solidarity with the US

She added that gas imports were “extremely destructive” and that “German hunger for gas” was driving the expansion of gas export terminals in the USA.

She said this was particularly an issue in the South of the USA. “We can see that this is an issue of climate injustice because places where marginalised communities live become sacrifice zones,” she added. Gas export terminals release air pollutants, damaging local residents’ health.

Cop29 host Azerbaijan launches green energy unit to sceptical response

The US had planned to build dozens of new terminals, particularly in the southern states of Louisiana and Texas, attracting anger from US and international climate activists.

But today, US President Joe Biden announced he would halt decisions on new gas exports. “This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” he said.

Not necessary

Franziska Holz is a gas expert at the German Institute for Economic Research. She said that Germany does not need new gas import terminals.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2021, Germany was getting more than half of its gas imports from Russia. Since the invasion, its government has been scrambling to find different sources of gas fast, announcing plans to build 12 new gas import terminals.

A spate of LNG terminals are either proposed (orange) or under construction (red) (Photos: Global Energy Monitor)

“In the short term, it was understandable that the German government and traditional importers wanted to replace Russian natural gas with natural gas from other sources,” Holz said.

“But it was not necessary to build massive LNG import capacity in Germany. Rather, the pipeline capacities from Norway and the LNG import capacities in the Netherlands and Belgium would have been sufficient”, she added.

Germany aims to be greenhouse gas neutral by 2045 and the European Union aims to reach net zero by 2050. To meet this, analysts expect gas demand, which is already falling, to reduce rapidly.

The post After gas pipeline sabotage, German activists claim solidarity against US gas export terminals appeared first on Climate Home News.

Poland generates 70% of its electricity and two-thirds of its home heating from coal. With coal mining an essential economic activity in rural areas, maintaining state support for the brown stuff was a central part of past governments ruled by the nationalist PiS party.

But as a new centrist government took over in Warsaw, change is now underway.

“I’m coming here with a message of Poland stepping up its efforts to fight climate change,” said state secretary for climate Urszula Zielińska, who arrived in Brussels on Monday for an informal meeting of the EU’s Environment Council.

“We will step up our efforts and cooperate with European Union from now on in a much faster, much smoother, and much more confident way,” said Zielińska who was appointed three weeks ago.

Veteran US and Chinese climate envoys step down

In EU matters, “we need to embrace the 90% reduction emission reduction target” that the European Commission is expected to table in the coming weeks for 2040, she said.

That means Poland will back EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and ambitious countries like Denmark and Germany, which are supporting a 90% greenhouse gas reduction target for 2040, to be presented on 6 February.

But she also stuck to Poland’s long-standing policy by insisting that richer EU countries continue to support the poorer Eastern Europe in their green transition.

“If this target is agreed, we will be at the same time emphasising the need to help countries like Poland, like many countries in central Eastern Europe, look after the social part of delivering such ambitious target,” Zielińska said.

Coal exit date to be brought forward

Domestically, the new government is also reevaluating the country’s coal policy.

“We are currently in the process of reviewing policies that concern climate and transition and energy plans,” the new state secretary explained, indicating that Warsaw was looking to undertake a “very fast” update of its National Energy and Climate Plan (NCEP).

These multi-year plans must be submitted in their final form by mid-2024, leaving the new government several months to overhaul the plan submitted by its conservative predecessor.

All policies are “under revision” and the objective is “to step up the efforts,” she said.

High stakes for climate finance in 2024

Could the country pull its planned coal exit forward? “I believe we must, and we must do it very soon, because only with an end date we can plan,” Zielińska said.

Last year, Poland’s state-owned power utility PGE expressed its support for a 2040 coal exit, drawing an immediate rebuke from the nationalist government, which had set a political deadline of 2049 – one year before the EU is expected to hit its net-zero emissions target.

“We will be looking to set an end date,” Zielińska confirmed, asking for “another six months” to finalise the plan.

“One thing is sure: we are accelerating and stepping up, and Poland is on board with climate efforts with the rest of Europe.”

The post Poland’s green tide arrives in Brussels appeared first on Climate Home News.

His 35-years-long career in the UK civil service culminated in him taking on the role of the EU’s lead negotiator – at a time when the UK was still in the EU.

Widely praised for his ability to build bridges and challenge entrenched positions, Betts is credited by some as having laid the foundations of the Paris Agreement.

“He had a huge influence on international negotiations”, recalls Kaveh Guilanpour, who worked closely with Betts for nearly a decade. “If Pete had not been involved, it is questionable whether the Paris Agreement would have happened at all. He put in place the conditions to rescue the climate process at a critical time.”

Spain’s deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera, Germany’s deputy climate envoy Norbert Gorissen, the UK’s Cop26 president Alok Sharma and Venezuelan ambassador to Belgium Claudia Salerno Caldera were among many tweeting tributes.

“One thing I do hope: I led the EU climate negotiating team for 6 years,including in Paris.I always served the EU loyally.I hope that the EU and the UK can be close partners.Somehow we need to build a new relationship”.
Pete Betts
Bye bye, dear friend
Txs for all.We’ll miss you

— Teresa Ribera (@Teresaribera) October 21, 2023

Bridging divisions

Betts’ behind-the-scenes efforts were credited with putting international climate diplomacy back on track after the disappointment of the Copenhagen Cop in 2009, when countries failed to agree on basic targets to cut emissions.

As disillusionment began setting in, a small group of negotiators, including Betts, set up the Cartagena Dialogue, a network designed to help developed and developing countries heal deep divisions on tricky issues.

The initiative became one of Betts’ proudest achievements, as he himself told the Outrage and Optimism podcast earlier this year.

So sorry to hear the news about Pete Betts, a masterful diplomat and relentless force for climate ambition.

Here is two pics from how I will remember him, in full flow at Paris with

⁦@AmberRuddUK⁩…. pic.twitter.com/hmcOmUc5Hk

— guynewey (@guynewey) October 23, 2023

“We didn’t always agree, but we trusted the other side enough to know that if they said something, it was because they had reasons to say it and you had to listen,” Betts said. “And when you did listen, it was amazing how often you found common ground. Either you ended up being convinced by the other side or you could find win-win solutions”.

Road to Paris

In the lead-up to the Paris agreement, Betts played a role in the creation of a group calling themselves the ‘High Ambition Coalition’, founded by the Marshall Islands in 2014 to make sure the Paris Agreement was as ambitious as possible.

When the gavel eventually came down the following year to mark the approval of the landmark treaty, Betts was in the EU negotiator’s seat.

V sad to learn about the passing of Pete Betts – who for many years led the UK and EU negotiations at the COPs.

My sympathies to Fiona and the rest of his family

It was a delight for me, personally, to hand him the #CBQuiz trophy in 2018 when he captained the winning quiz team https://t.co/ubNgqOsdgp

— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) October 23, 2023

“I’m approaching the age Pete was at the time of the Paris Agreement and I wonder where he got his energy from,” says Guilanpour. “He had a huge amount of energy. He was always asking “how can we do more?” – that was always the question. He never settled on assumptions on how things could be done.”

Betts also had a great and very famous sense of humour that livened up the marathon-long negotiations, Guilanpour added.

Post-civil service life

After leaving the civil service in 2018, Betts advised a range of international bodies including the International Energy Agency (IEA) as it produced its landmark net zero report.

The UK government called him back in 2021 as a strategic advisor helping prepare for Cop26 hosted in Glasgow.

Alok Sharma, president of that climate summit, tweeted on Monday that “Pete was a hugely experienced source of wide advice and a good friend of the Cop26 team”.

So very sorry to hear about the loss of Pete Betts – deepest condolences to his family

Pete was a hugely experienced source of wise advice and a good friend to the 🇬🇧 @COP26 Team

He will be hugely missed https://t.co/w8k5C4Dry4

— Rt Hon Lord Alok Sharma (@AlokSharma_RDG) October 23, 2023

Betts was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2022 and was given 15 months to live.

“Pete was always asking: ‘How can we do more to fight climate change?’, even up to a few weeks ago, despite being unwell,” says Guilanpour. “We owe it to him to make sure that COP28 answers that question.”

The post Climate diplomats pay tribute to Pete Betts, EU negotiator who helped land Paris Agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

After ruling for eight years, the right-wing Law and Justice party got 35% of the vote – the biggest share for a single party but not enough to stay in power. The opposition is expected to form a government by the end of December.

Robert Tomaszewski, a senior energy analyst at Warsaw-based think tank Polityka Insight told Climate Home the results, driven by a high turnout, came as a surprise to many observers and felt like “spring in the autumn”.

But while Tomaszewski and Forum Energii analyst Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk said that the new government was likely to speed up Poland’s renewable roll-out and cooperate better with the rest of Europe, it was unlikely to take on the country’s powerful coal mining unions directly.

Block removed

The outgoing Polish government, led by the Law and Justice party, has been a brake on the European Union’s climate ambition, opposing several measures.

In June, it threatened to take the European Union to court to try and stop its phase-out of polluting vehicles and other climate laws. The new government is likely to withdraw this legal challenge, Tomaszewski and Gawlikowska-Fyk said.

Africa and India push rich nations to phase out fossil fuels faster

Polish ministers and state-owned utilities also launched a misinformation campaign against the EU’s climate policies, writing opinion pieces and putting up billboards blaming the EU’s carbon pricing system for the rising cost of energy.

The head of E3G’s Brussels office Manon Dufour told Climate Home that the change in government would raise the chances of the EU’s 2040 emissions reduction target being ambitious. The EU’s scientific advisers have said it should be 90-95% below 1990 levels.

No coal fight

Tomaszewski and Gawlikowska-Fyk said that the outgoing government had taken some steps to encourage renewables and the new government was likely to go further, working with the EU and private investors.

Tomaszewski said the new government was likely to change the rules around onshore wind turbines, to make them easier to build.

Gawlikowska-Fyk said that investment was needed to integrate these renewables into Poland’s energy system. “It’s grids, grids, grids,” she said.

World Bank approves green reforms, appeals for more money

On the other hand neither expected the new government to take on the coal mining unions. Local and European elections are scheduled for next year and the government will not want miners  to protest during the election campaign, they said.

Poland is among Europe’s most coal-dependent countries – both for electricity and for heating – and under a deal signed with the mining unions in 2020 does not plan to stop coal mining until 2049.

Tomaszewski said that, while it would cause a political headache, pushing this date forward wouldn’t help the climate because market forces would phase out coal way before 2049 anyway.

Gawlikowska-Fyk agreed. “There’s an awareness in Poland that 2049 is impossible,” she said, as the EU’s carbon trading scheme means licences to pollute will become scarce and expensive for coal power plants.

The post Polish election result improves prospects for EU climate ambition appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU’s 27 environment ministers met in Luxembourg on Monday to agree on the EU’s stance for the Cop28 summit opening in Dubai on 30 November, throwing their weight behind a goal to triple global renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

The European Union will also push for a “predominantly fossil-free” global energy sector “well before 2050” and strive to reach a “fully or predominantly decarbonised power system in the 2030s,” according to wording agreed by the bloc’s environment ministers.

However, the most ambitious countries had to accept watered-down language on the EU’s push to phase out fossil fuels and reduce emissions as the decision needed to be taken by unanimity.

“Would [the Commission and Presidency] have been able to go even further? Absolutely. And yet, you know, this is a Union where, in the end, we create a mandate with 27 countries,” said EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra after the meeting.

The European Commission and EU presidency holder Spain pushed for stronger language on emissions reduction, saying the EU’s updated legislation would raise the bloc’s climate target from a 55% net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to a 57% reduction.

But they had to bow to pressure from Eastern EU countries, which have a more significant challenge decarbonising their economies because of their heavier reliance on coal.

“Texts adopted by unanimity always take a little longer to agree. European countries have quite different energy situations, with some still very dependent on coal,” explained a source in the cabinet of French energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

Updated pledge, but no new target

EU member states will go to Cop28 stressing the importance of scaling up the global ambition to remain within the 1.5ºC global warming limit, said a statement released after the meeting.

While the EU will not come with a new emissions reduction target, it will update its pledge to reflect the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ package of legislation adopted to meet its 2030 climate goals.

According to the European Commission, fully implementing the package will result in a 57% reduction in net emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, more than the initial 55% goal agreed two years ago.

The higher objective reflects the EU’s ambition to grow its carbon sinks and increased level of ambition on renewables and energy efficiency, pushed forward last year in reaction to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But according to Ribera, some countries had concerns about putting this figure to paper. “The main argument was that they did not want to create any confusion. It was not a new goal,” she explained.

In the end, a compromise formulation stipulates that “the Fit for 55 package, when fully implemented, could enable the EU to exceed its target of at least -55%,” said the French ministerial source.

Environmental activists, for their part, want the EU to support a Cop28 outcome that is grounded in science, and to recognise that more must be done to align climate action and finance with Europe’s historical responsibilities.

“For the EU’s climate targets, this means the EU needs to commit to substantially overshoot its current target of -55% net emission cuts and achieve at least -65% gross, or -76% net emission cuts by 2030 and net zero emissions no later than by 2040,” said Sven Harmeling, international climate policy coordinator at the NGO group Climate Action Network Europe.

“Unabated” fossil fuels

The EU’s Cop28 position also includes calls to peak emissions this decade and phase out “unabated” fossil fuels, a controversial term referring to carbon capture and storage technologies.

“We still have this idea that we have to try and avoid using fossil fuels if they have no abatement system and that the long term objective is that they should be phased out of our energy mix as we try to promote decarbonisation,” Ribera explained.

“The agreement in the Council conclusions is that these [abatement technologies] are technologies which should be tied to those sectors where it’s going to be difficult for them to engage in decarbonisation, where it’s difficult to wean themselves off fossil fuels,” she added.

Here too, a compromise solution was found in order to reach a unanimous decision among the 27 member states.

“The term ‘unabated’ appeared twice. There was a compromise: we kept it once in the second line of paragraph 14 and deleted it the second time,” the French source said.

Another complex issue related to subsidies for fossil fuels, which is sensitive for Eastern EU member states like Poland where coal makes up 70% of the electricity mix.

“There, we found a sentence that says: ‘calls for a phase out of fossil fuel subsidies’,” the French source explained. “We removed the word ‘inefficient’ because we believe that all fossil fuel subsidies are inefficient,” he added.

Similarly, the EU text does specify an exact date for when coal power should be phased out. “But we did say that there is an objective of achieving a completely or predominantly decarbonised energy system during the 2030s, ‘leaving no room for new coal power’,” the French source said.

“This is a compromise formulation – there is no EU date for a total phase-out of coal. But given that many countries use a lot of coal, it’s still a significant result.”

According to Ribera, fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or the just transition should also be phased out “as soon as possible”.

Greens slam EU climate commissioner ‘crash landing’

Environmental campaigners and the Greens in the European Parliament were quick to criticise the Council’s Cop28 conclusions, with German Green lawmaker Michael Bloss calling it a “crash landing” for climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra who is entering his second week in office.

“The new climate commissioner has promised a lot and not delivered,” Bloss said, referring to the final outcome on EU’s target and the references to unabated fossil fuels.

The post EU countries hammer out joint stance for Cop28 climate summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a hearing in the European Parliament on Monday, Dutch politician Wopke Hoekstra said that the absence of taxes on kerosene jet fuel was “the biggest absurdity of all”.

“When I drive my car to a petrol station, 50-60% of what I pay is taxes,” he said. “But when a jet is refueled, there is no tax due – zero. What European thinks that makes sense?”

Hoekstra said a tax on jet fuel and other fossil fuels could provide reliable revenue for a planned loss and damage fund for victims of climate disaster in developing countries.

Lawmakers from the parliament’s environment committee are set to decide whether to accept Hoekstra for the position on Wednesday. Some from the centre, Greens and left-wing oppose his candidacy because he’s from the centre-right and, they say, has shown minimal interest in climate change as a minister in the Netherlands.

But the EU has so far failed to agree to tax jet fuel internally to raise revenues for member states, let alone send them to developing countries.

Convincing other countries to renegotiate aviation agreements would be harder still, experts told Climate Home News, particularly as Hoekstra is only going to be in post until EU elections in June 2024.

No wider support

Avinash Persaud is a finance adviser to the government of Barbados, which is pushing the influential Bridgetown Initiative.

Although this initiative is calling for taxes on polluters to fund climate action, he told Climate Home that calls for aviation taxes were only coming from a handful of European nations.

He said he hadn’t heard any officials from developing countries or from the US express enthusiasm.

Far from increasing taxes on air travel, the US recently handed $25 billion of public money to airports to help them expand and improve their facilities.

Greenpeace East Asia campaigner Li Shuo said that China will see proposals taxes on planes, fossil fuels and shipping emissions as shifting the responsibility of climate finance away from rich nations.

“For all the ideas of innovative finance, this is where we get stuck, between large developing countries’ skepticism and developed countries’ inability to pay,” he said.

Transport and Environment campaigner Jo Dardenne said that there had been efforts to get a global tax in the UN’s aviation body but “we’ve been disappointed time and time again”.

Tourist islands opposed

Dardenne said a group of nations could implement their own taxes in a “coalition of the willing”.

EU nations like Hoepstra’s Netherlands have pushed for an EU-wide aviation tax but this requires consensus from all 27 member states and tourism-reliant islands like Cyprus and Malta have blocked it.

Persaud said that in developing island nations like Barbados, tickets are already heavily taxed to pay for expensive airports built to international standards.

“The scope for adding to these without undermining development is limited,” he said, “but there maybe more scope in rich countries”.

Legal complications

While taxing plane tickets is relatively straightforward, taxing jet fuel is complicated legally as well as politically.

A 2020 study by Transport and Environment found that EU countries can tax most flights within the EU. These make about 40% of flights in the EU.

But taxing the other 60%, flights travelling outside the EU , sometimes requires renegotiating air service agreements with countries like the USA.

Some EU member states have acted unilaterally to cut air travel. France has banned domestic flights on routes where train travel is possible in less than two and a half hours.

The post EU’s nominated climate lead wants a global tax on jet fuel appeared first on Climate Home News.

Export credit and development agencies from six developed nations have approved $4.4 billion in funding for oil and gas projects overseas since the start of 2023, research from campaigning group Oil Change International shows.

More than half of the total financing has been provided by the United States ($1.5 billion) and Italy ($1.2 billion), followed by Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Claire O’Manique from Oil Change International said the countries are “going rogue by backtracking on their commitment to end international public finance for fossil fuels”.  “Public money that should be going to support a just transition to renewable energy is instead being pumped into more climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects”, she added.

One pledge, many interpretations

Twenty countries signed up to the Glasgow Statement at Cop26 pledging to end new direct public finance for overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.

However, the signatories have interpreted the promise in different ways.

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The United Kingdom and France have stopped all public subsidies going to international fossil fuel projects. Italy carved out a wide range of energy security exemptions for the continued support of fossil fuel projects. Germany published a draft policy for its export credit agency last July planning to support new gas projects overseas until 2025. The US has not made its guidelines public.

The Glasgow pledge allowed exceptions in “limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5C warming limit”. The International Energy Agency warned last year that investment in new coal, oil and gas production was incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

LNG and oil expansion

The US and Germany have backed projects aiming to boost the production and trade of liquified natural gas (LNG), which has been in heightened demand since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The expansion of an oil refining facility in Indonesia’s Borneo has received support from the Italian and US export credit agencies. The US Export-Import Bank justified its backing of the project by claiming it would allow Indonesia to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels.

African leaders skirt over fossil fuels in climate summit declaration

Analysts and campaigners told Climate Home News that expansion of oil refining falls within the scope of the Glasgow agreement.

The majority of the $4.4 billion greenlit in 2023 comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

Climate Home News has contacted the export credit agencies of Germany, Italy and the US for comment.

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The wildfires which have engulfed parts of Europe this summer have not spared Portugal.  As temperatures soared, blazes in the Alentejo and Algarve last month forced more than 1,400 people to evacuate.

The country is Europe’s biggest eucalyptus pulp producer, and these plantations provide the raw material for our country’s powerful pulp and paper industry, whose exports account for 1.5 per cent of Portugal’s GDP.  

A eucalyptus plantation (right) sits beside natural forest (left) in Indonesia (Photo credit: Greenpeace/Daniel Beltra)

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The head of the EU’s executive branch Ursula Von Der Leyen announced yesterday that she was nominating Hoekstra to lead the EU’s climate finance work and climate diplomacy in the run-up to Cop28.

But while he has the approval of Von Der Leyen’s European Commission, Hoekstra still has to win over the European Parliament’s environment committee.

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That will be difficult as left-wing members argue that the centre-right Dutchman does not have a good enough climate record.

Analysts and campaigners have expressed similar concerns, arguing that Hoekstra has not expressed interest in climate change and that his hardline fiscal conservatism is likely to obstruct climate finance to the developing world.

Fiscal hawk

In Europe, Hoekstra is best known for opposing wealthier north European nations like the Netherlands lending money to poorer southern European countries.

In March 2020, Portugese prime minister António Costa branded Hoekstra “repugnant” and “senseless” after he called for the EU to investigate why some countries did not have enough savings to deal with the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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If he is confirmed, Hoekstra will lead the EU’s negotiations at Cop28 on the new fund for the loss and damage caused by climate change and on other climate finance issues.

“I think the parallel between intra-EU solidarity and international solidarity is an obvious one,” said Dutch E3G analyst Pieter De Pous,”I’m sure he’s going to get a lot of questions on that.”

Domestic disinterest

Hoekstra’s domestic climate record has also been criticised, with Greenpeace EU campaigner Silvia Pastorelli saying it “doesn’t inspire much confidence”.

After leaving university, Hoekstra spent three years working for the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell in various junior positions.

Much later, as finance minister, he bailed out the airline KLM without putting substantial green conditions on the money.

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Pastorelli accused him of having “led the attack in government against rules to cut nitrogen pollution”.

These rules provoked fierce protests from farmers, who De Pous said are the traditional voters of Hoekstra’s centre-right party.

Partly as a result of this pushback, Hoekstra’s party has sunk in the polls and so, with elections scheduled for November, his domestic political prospects have sunk.

Dutch election

Since 2019, the EU’s climate work has been led by Dutch politician Frans Timmermans.

Last month, he announced he was stepping down from that role to campaign to be prime minister in the Netherlands’ November elections.

The Dutch government chose Hoekstra to replace him and, after an interview, Von Der Leyen accepted their choice.

If approved, Hoekstra will lead on climate action “under the guidance” of Slovakian commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

Parliament hearing key

Hoekstra will soon have a hearing with the European parliament’s environment committee where he will be grilled on his record and suitability for the job.

To get approval, Hoekstra needs a two-thirds majority of the committee’s 87 members.

But his and Von Der Leyen’s centre-right European Peoples Party group only has a quarter of these members.

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Members from other groups have already expressed scepticism. Centrist French member Pascal Canfin said that his confirmation was “not a done deal” and “he will have to prove that he is the right man”.

Left-wing Dutch member Mohammed Chamim told Euractiv: “I was not very enthusiastic upon hearing about Hoekstra’s nomination. He has never shown any interest or ambition regarding climate policy before.”

The date of the hearing has not yet been set. If rejected by the European parliament, the Dutch government will have to nominate another candidate.

Dutch media has suggested that Centrist Sigrid Kaag may be chosen. De Pous said the former profesional diplomat be “more qualified” because of her international experience.

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The Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, announced yesterday that the current long-time climate lead Frans Timmermans officially resigned to campaign to become prime minister of his native Netherlands.

His role leading on climate policy would go to Šefčovič “until the appointment of a new member of the commission of Dutch nationality”, they said. All 27 member states need to be represented in the commission.

The seasoned Slovakian politician is a staunch believer in gas as a “transition fuel”, but he has also overseen an expansion in renewables and energy efficiency as energy commissioner.

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It is not clear how long the Slovakian will lead on climate. A new commissioner is likely to be appointed by the Dutch government before their national election on 22 November.

But Manon Dufour, the head of E3G’s Brussels office, said a new commissioner is unlikely to be given a high-profile job so Sefcovic will probably have the role at least until the current administration ends its term in November 2024.

Brussels big-shot

Šefčovič is a European Union veteran. After serving as Slovakia’s ambassador in Brussels from 2004 to 2009, his national government picked him for the commissioner role.

Since then, he’s led on a variety of issues like education, energy, health and consumer policy.

Announcing his appointment, the Commission’s president Ursula Von Der Leyen said: “Having successfully dealt with the most challenging files in the past, Maroš Šefčovič is one of the most senior and experienced members of my college.”

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E3G’s lead in Brussels Manon Dufour told Climate Home he was the “best person for the job given his experience, credibility and networks”.

Friederike Röder, vice-president of Global Citizen told Climate Home he was “seen as a heavyweight in EU politics and now needs to prove he can use his clout to push ambition in international climate diplomacy”.

Gas buyer in chief

Šefčovič has been central to the European Union’s push to get off Russian gas, first as the energy commissioner after Russia first invaded Crimea and then in his current vice-president role after the rest of Ukraine was invaded.

Over this time, Šefčovič has sought to replace Russian gas with gas from other countries like the US and Azerbaijan and still claims gas is a “very important transitional fuel”.

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On a trip to the US in February, he said that the EU could keep buying gas right up to its 2050 net zero target date. “We have still – we have still 30 years to go,” he said.

On the same trip, he told US gas producers to “keep it coming”. He said the EU needed more gas import terminals and pipelines and he hoped they “will fast track incorporation and arrival of big quantitities of [liquified natural gas] to Europe”.

“Basically, his job over the past two years has been to find other [non-Russian] sources of gas”, said Dufour. “The challenge now for him in this position would be to look beyond that and to look at how we actually reduce or almost eliminate European gas demand”.

In February, Šefčovič said that all different types of hydrogen are needed including so-called blue and grey hydrogen, which are made with fossil fuels.

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Dufour said that green hydrogen, which is made with renewable energy, is “the only sensible solution going forward” and “the other colours of it are dead ends”.

On the other hand, Dufour said that Šefčovič had pushed forward renewables, energy efficiency and improvements in Europe’s electric grid as energy commissioner. He “did pretty well on climate”, she said.

Chief climate diplomat

Frans Timmermans led the EU into two Cop climate talks and travelled around the world pursuing climate diplomacy and building good relations with counterparts, particularly in the US and China.

Dufour said that international topics like climate finance and loss and damage will be relatively new to Šefčovič and he will have to rely on his team to advise him.

In Šefčovič’s unsuccessful campaign to become Slovakia’s president in 2019, he called for more “protection of the Mediterranean” from migrants “so that people who have no business here are sent to their country of origin as soon as possible”.

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As well as decarbonising Europe, Šefčovič will be tasked with negotiating the EU’s response to the United Nations global stocktake of climate action, which will find the world is not doing enough to limit climate change.

In November, he is likely to lead the EU’s delegation to Cop28 in Dubai, where nations have already agreed to set up a fund to compensate developing countries for the loss and damage caused by climate change.

The rules of this fund, like who pays in and who benefits, are still to be worked out and the EU will be expected to make one of the biggest donations.

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A law adopted by European governments in June requires companies to prove a series of products, including cattle, soya and palm oil, were not grown on land affected by tree loss.

The EU says the rules are a key building block in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. But some of the world’s biggest commodity producers have been voicing increasing discontent calling the measures “protectionist” and “discriminatory”.

The latest sign of opposition comes in the Belém Declaration signed on Tuesday by eight South American countries following a major rainforest summit in Brazil. The final document includes a rejection to trade measures such as the EU’s rules.

In the Brazilian city of Belém, Presidents and top officials from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the Amazon Summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit

Environmental ‘trade barriers’

The countries failed to agree on a common goal for ending deforestation but issued unified policies and measures to bolster regional cooperation.

The final document does not single out the European law specifically, but it condemns “the proliferation of unilateral trade measures based on environmental requirements and norms which constitute trade barriers”.

The signatories go on to claim that such measures “primarily affect smallholder farmers in developing countries, the pursuit of sustainable development, the promotion of Amazon products and the efforts to eradicate poverty and fight hunger”.

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Marcio Astrini from the Observatório do Clima called the inclusion of the paragraph in the joint declaration “a disgrace”. He told Climate Home News that if countries like Brazil and Colombia are serious about ending deforestation, they should have vetoed this statement.

“What’s wrong with a commercial partner saying they don’t want to buy products linked to deforestation?”, Astrini added. “Environmental and climate issues are already part of business and market standards around the world, this is a new reality, and it is better to adapt to it.”

Brazilian backlash

The attack on trade measures in the declaration follows a week of heated rhetoric by top government officials in the region.

Brazil’s agriculture minister Carlos Favaro slammed the European deforestation law, calling it “an affront” to global trade regulations. He added Brazil would boost trade relations with other partners if the EU continues not to recognize Brazil’s efforts to protect the environment.

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Deforestation accelerated sharply under the far-right then-president Jair Bolsonaro, but rates have been coming down since the new administration led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power at the start of the year.

Brazil is the single biggest exporter of agricultural products to the EU, shipping almost $12 billion worth of soya, corn and beef to the bloc in 2022. The commodities have been a historical driver of tree loss across the Amazon region, including in Brazil. The government says only 2% of Brazilian farmers commit environmental crimes.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva waits for the official family photo with leaders of countries attending the Amazon Summit at the Hangar Convention Centre in Belem, Para State, Brazil. (Photo: Reuters)

Astrini claims for the overwhelming majority of producers the new rules will not be a problem, making the criticism of the European regulations “meaningless” in Brazil.

Other major commodities-producing nations like Indonesia and Malaysia have previously criticised the regulations.

‘Critical step’

Companies have until December 2024 to adjust to the new legislation, which requires them to trace the products they are selling back to the plot of land where they were produced.

André Vasconcelos from the supply-chain transparency group Trase says the EU law is a “critical step” in making sure consumer markets play a role in driving down deforestation. But he added that for the new regulations to be “effective and equitable”, the EU needs to cooperate with producer countries.

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“Such collaboration needs to include the provision of financial support to boost enforcement of environmental regulations as well as the provision of incentives for farmers, particularly smallholder farmers, not to deforest”, he told Climate Home News.

The EU says it is stepping up its engagement with producing countries to ensure an inclusive transition to deforestation-free and legal supply chains.

Mercosur stumbling block

The issue is likely to come back to the fore at upcoming talks over a long-awaited free trade agreement between the EU and South America’s Mercosur bloc.

Paraguay’s President-elect Santiago Pena told Reuters this week that the EU’s current environmental demands in trade talks are “unacceptable”. He said that the European bloc’s proposals would hinder major soy exporter Paraguay’s economic development.

Brazil is also pushing the EU for better trading terms in return for offering environmental guarantees over the protection of the Amazon rainforest. Mercosur officials are working on a counter-proposal before meeting with EU negotiators. The two sides hope to reach an agreement before the end of the year.

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The court’s interim charging order – meaning it is not yet final and can be objected to by the debtor – was issued on Wednesday but made public on Friday.

The judgement was issued under the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT) which protects investments in both clean and polluting types of energy.

The Spanish state-owned land that can be seized by the foreign investors – Infrastructure Services Luxembourg and Energia Termosolar – houses the an international private school located in a former Dominican convent.

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Nick Cherryman, one of the lawyers representing the investors, said the step was “only necessary because Spain, a recalcitrant debtor, refuses to honour the judgment against it”.

The investors took Spain to arbitration under the ECT nearly 10 years ago for withdrawing subsidies for renewable energy.

Spain, which relies heavily on foreign energy sources, tried in the early 2000s to lure renewables investors with a programme combining subsidies, tax breaks and guaranteed fixed feed-in tariffs.

But after the 2008 financial crisis, it started altering the framework under which renewables could receive support, which some investors saw as a violation of their legitimate expectations.

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The World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) awarded the investors 101 million euros plus interest in 2018, with the award later being registered at London’s High Court.

Spain tried to overturn the award citing sovereign immunity, but the High Court dismissed Madrid’s application in May.

Alongside other European countries, Spain has announced its intention to leave the treaty – although both renewable and fossil fuel investments will remain protected for 20 years under the treaty’s  so-called sunset clause.

The European Commission negotiated reforms to the ECT last year which allowed countries to stop protecting fossil fuel investments while continuing to protect renewables.

But these reforms were rejected by Spain and other EU countries, who decided to leave under the unreformed treaty and try to limit the effects of the sunset clause through agreements with other EU member states.

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Timmermans has led the climate policy of the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, since December 2019. He led the EU’s delegation to three Cop climate talks but he will not do so at Cop28 in December.

His successor currently unknown but may be just a stop-gap until the next set of commissioners come into power next year, around June. One commissioner from each country is nominated by each of the EU’s member states.

Under Timmermans leadership, the EU pushed internationally for measures to cut methane emissions at Cop26, ended its long-standing opposition to a loss and damage fund at Cop27 and is pushing for a commitment to phase out fossil fuels and ramp up renewables at Cop28.

Domestically, during Timmermans tenure the EU set to target net zero by 2050 and to reduce emissions 55% by 2030 on 1990 levels through a package of measures known as “fit for 55”. But the bloc was widely criticised for endorsing gas as a transition fuel last year.

Alessia Virone, Clean Air Task Force’s European government affairs director, told Climate Home Timmermans would be missed.

“He was the driving force for the green deal,” she said, “now we will have to see who will ensure the remaining green deal legislations are going across the finishing line”.

The 62-year old speaks English, German, French, Italian and Russian in addition to his native Dutch. He is known for speaking frankly and emotionally at international climate talks. At Cop27, he threatened to walk away from talks unless he won concessions before failing to follow throw on that threat, saying that to do so would hurt vulnerable countries.

At a summit to discuss adaptation finance last September, he told African leaders that many European citizens would not be persuaded by the “moral point that those suffering the most consequences are not responsible for creating the crisis” because “what is closer to your own worries is always bigger on your agenda than someone else’s worries”.

Dutch opening

Before joining the European Commission in 2014, Timmermans was the Dutch foreign minister. He represented the centre-left Labour Party in a coalition government led by Mark Rutte.

Earlier this month, Rutte’s latest coalition government collapsed after failing to reach an agreement on restricting immigration, triggering a vote on Nov. 22.

Timmermans formally announced his candidacy to lead the ticket for Labour and Green Left parties, which are joining forces in a bid to stem a decline in support for left-leaning parties.

“This morning I told the Labour and Green Left parties that I would love to be a candidate to lead them in the next elections,” Timmermans said on national Dutch television.

An EU commission spokesperson declined to comment on his possible departure, first reported by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.

He was expected to leave his EU post before the autumn to join campaigning in the Netherlands.

This article was updated to include Alessia Virone’s comment on 20 July

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Europe’s economic relations with Argentina are strong. Despite the geographical distance, EU investment in the country accounts for half of foreign investment. Similarly, the bloc is Argentina’s third-largest trading partner, behind Brazil and China.

While the more comprehensive trade agreement between the EU and its Latin American counterpart, Mercosur, flounders, von der Leyen agreed on a bilateral agreement with Buenos Aires on Monday (17 July). It follows a similar agreement on materials agreed in June.

“Europe and Argentina are partnering for a more secure, sustainable and prosperous world,” she said.

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The non-binding agreement hinges on four key aspects: hydrogen and its derivatives, renewables, energy efficiency, and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

With Russian gas flows into Europe at an all-time low, the two partners committed to “enabling a stable delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Argentine Republic to the European Union.”

Argentina’s export dreams

The 45 million-strong country, which heavily relies on natural gas for its own energy consumption, is a serious player in the gas industry – bolstered by the rich shale gas stemming from Vaca Muerta in the South-West.

To export its fracked riches, Buenos Aires is working on a law to boost its LNG industry – with an eye to begin exporting at scale as early as 2027.

The agreement insists that supplying LNG will be  “consistent with [the EU’s and Argentina’s]  respective long-term decarbonisation objectives and consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

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Likely as a concession to Brussels, the agreement also insists that Argentina tackles its leaky gas wells. In 2022, at least one new gas well was drilled in Vaca Muerta per month.

Meanwhile, the formerly Argentina-based NGO Center for Human Rights and Environment warned in 2018 that at least 5% of produced gas was entering the atmosphere, often due to operators venting surpluses to maintain operational security.

“The Participants endeavour to reduce methane leakages in the fossil gas supply chain to the maximum technically feasible level,” the EU-Argentina agreement stresses, adding that new technologies should help tackle “venting and flaring.”

Both venting and flaring are commonplace methods of ensuring production equipment does not get damaged by too much fossil gas. Given methane’s extreme climate impact, it is 28 times worse than CO2 on a 100-year basis, uncontrolled venting is among the most climate-damaging by-products of producing fossil gas.

The agreement also points to integrating “recovered methane into the supply chain.” Methane that would otherwise leak into the atmosphere can be captured and used regularly. One key source may be landfills, like Norte III in Buenos Aires, which account for about half of the city’s methane emissions.

With corporate climate cheats on the chopping block, net zero is growing up

Renewable potential

“In large parts of your beautiful country, in the large plateau of the South, you can only hear one sound: this is the sound of the wind, running undisturbed,” explained von der Leyen in June when speaking to business executives.

Argentina has all it takes to become a “renewable energy powerhouse,” she said, adding that “the extraordinary Patagonian winds are a blessing of nature.”

In practice, the EU-Argentina agreement is sparse on the details – aside from a commitment to “facilitate investments necessary to increase energy trade between the Participants.”

European investments are largely expected to come through the European Gateway Initiative, which has a “Team Europe” approach, meaning that EU countries invest under the banner of the bloc.

For example, France and the EU have supported upgrading and bringing the country’s electricity grid up to speed. Other projects include waste and water management support and aid in exploiting the country’s rich mineral resources.

Whether similar initiatives will help fund the country’s nascent LNG infrastructure is unclear.

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The 1998 Energy Charter Treaty, which has around 50 signatories including European Union countries, lets energy companies sue governments over policies that damage their investments – a system initially designed to support investments in the sector.

But in recent years it has been used to challenge policies that require fossil fuel plants to shut, raising concerns in some European capitals that it is an obstacle to addressing climate change.

A Commission spokesperson told Reuters it will make legal proposals for a coordinated EU exit “in the coming weeks”, after EU countries – some of which already plan to exit the treaty – could not agree to pass reforms to it which would have allowed government to phase out protection for fossil fuels.

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“As it stands, the treaty is not in line with the EU’s investment policy and law and with the EU’s energy and climate goals,” the spokesperson said.

Four sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters the EU executive will make the proposal next week. Three of the sources said Brussels had considered a partial exit that would let some countries stay in the treaty, but opted against it over legal concerns.

Pressure has mounted on Brussels to lead an EU-wide exit after Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain announced they planned to quit the treaty. Italy left in 2016.

But the proposal is likely to be opposed by countries including Cyprus, Hungary and Slovakia, which have said they would prefer to stay in an updated version of the accord.

Spain proposes improved 2030 climate target as it awaits Supreme Court ruling

Any proposal will need backing from a reinforced majority of member states and support from the European Parliament, which has publicly backed the idea.

“A coordinated withdrawal would remove one of the main obstacles to realising the EU’s binding climate targets,” said Lukas Schaugg, an analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development think tank.

Treaty signatories last year negotiated reforms designed to address some of the climate concerns, but which received a mixed reception from EU countries and criticism from campaigners. The reforms would struggle to pass without EU support.

The unreformed treaty has a “sunset clause” that would protect existing fossil fuel investments in Europe for 20 years even after the EU quit.

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Despite leaving in 2016, Italy was last year made to pay €190 million ($206 million) to a British oil company for restricting oil drilling.

European officials hope that they can arrange that the treaty is not enforced between EU member states, partly neutralising the sunset clause.

The reformed version would have let governments end investment protections for fossil fuels, a power the EU and UK planned to use to phase out protections in ten years.

Switzerland plans to remain in the treaty while the UK’s position is unclear. Other states in Central Asia and Japan have shown no interest in either reforming the treaty or leaving it.

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It published a draft version of an updated climate and energy plan yesterday, which toughens the 2030 emissions target from the previous 23% to the new 32% compared with 1990.

It has tougher targets too for increasing energy efficiency and renewables and new measures to boost green hydrogen and biomethane.

However, campaigners do not think this is ambitious enough and say it doesn’t represent a “fair share” of the country’s global responsibility for climate change. They are calling for at least 55%.

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Greenpeace Espana, Ecologistas en Acción and Oxfam Spain first challenged the government on its climate measures in 2020, filing a lawsuit because it had not approved a national climate and energy plan that covered the period to the end of 2030. Such a plan was required under EU law by the end of 2019.

While the case was going through the courts, Spain agreed a long-term decarbonisation strategy and passed its first climate law – a decade after it was first called for – which included a net zero target for 2050. It also finally approved a national energy and climate plan in March 2021.

Campaigners dropped part of their claim about the existence of the plan, saying it “represented an important advance compared to the policies of previous governments”.

But they continued to argue that the plan was too weak and that the goal of cutting emissions by “at least” 23% by 2030 compared with 1990 was not consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C global warming threshold. They called instead for a goal of at least 55%, consistent with the wider EU target for that year.

Together with campaigners from Coordinadora de ONG para el Desarrollo they filed a second case making these arguments.

Compromised objectives

The Spanish government, in its responses to the court, stressed that the Paris Agreement did not impose specific levels of emission cuts on state signatories.

It said the EU target of a 55% cut by 2030 was a bloc average, which had to take into account cost efficiency, justice and individual state economies.

Norway approves oil and gas fields despite Cop fossil phase-out push

Spain said the 55% EU-level cut had been pushed for by a group of like-minded countries, including Spain, which it described as “ambition leaders”.

It also claimed that the invasion of Ukraine had caused a serious energy crisis which would “undoubtedly” compromise climate objectives.

This has been contracted by the International Energy Agency’s head Fatih Birol who said that “the crisis is set to accelerate the clean energy transition”.

Javier Andaluz, of Ecologistas en Acción, did not expect the latest version of the climate plan to include such a big jump in the 2030 target but said it still falls well short of Spain’s fair share based on climate science and its contribution to global emissions. From a climate justice perspective, he maintains “Spain has to lose at least 55%”.

Spain’s Supreme Court voted on the pair of lawsuits last week, although its decision is not yet public.

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The lawsuits are the first climate litigation against Spain and campaigners hope to build on previous legal successes against European states, including in the Netherlands, Germany and France. In Germany, the landmark ruling led the government to raise its 2030 emissions target to 65%.

But Ana Barreira, founding director of environmental law organisation IIDMA, does not think there is a strong legal case against Spain.

She pointed out that, since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 governments have generally accepted the principle that they have “common but differentiated responsibilities” to protect the environment, a principle that carried through to the Paris Agreement.

Barreira added that the EU accepted Spain’s original climate plan and its contribution to the bloc’s emission cuts.

The slow pace of developing climate policies in Spain was largely due to deadlocks in parliament where for months no political party held a majority.

The incumbent government has done a substantial amount of work over the past two years. Spain is about to take over presidency of the EU for the next six months, and has made efforts to accelerate the climate transition one of its key priorities.

The government has also been forthright in attributing extreme weather and disasters on the ground to climate change.

More drought

The country is currently in the grip of a long-running drought that threatens its agriculture, industry and domestic water resources. Minister for ecological transition Teresa Ribera recently said climate change was leading to “a much greater incidence of more frequent and intense episodes” of such episodes.

Spain is particularly vulnerable to global warming. This year’s spring was the hottest ever – a record made “almost impossible” without climate change, according to a scientific attribution study. Deaths from heat soared during last summer’s heatwave.

Andaluz said the impacts of climate change were already “quite clear” in Spain, and there was a widespread acceptance of the causes.

However, the issue of water management to tackle drought was an issue during regional and municipal elections earlier this year and is likely to crop up again ahead of a general election in December.

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Britain in 2019 became the first member of the Group of Seven wealthy nations to set a target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, requiring major changes in the way Britons travel, eat and use electricity.

But strategies in place are unlikely to deliver the required emission cuts and last year’s announcements on new fossil fuel projects have tarnished Britain’s reputation as a climate leader, an annual progress report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) said on Wednesday.

“The UK has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action,” it said. “We have backtracked on fossil fuel commitments, with the consenting of a new coal mine and support for new UK oil and gas production.”

US ‘still on the fence’ as nations debate global shipping emission tax

The impact of climate change is already evident in Britain, which experienced record temperatures over 40C (104F) last year.

“There is a worrying hesitancy by ministers to lead the country to the next stage of net zero commitments,” CCC Chairman John Gummer said.

Over the last year, the leadership of the UK has passed from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss briefly before the current prime minister Rishi Sunak took over in October. All are from the ruling Conservative Party and there were no public elections held.

The CCC, set up as an independent adviser on climate action to the government, found Britain had fallen behind in areas including improving energy efficiency in buildings, rolling out heat pumps, curbing emissions from industry and increasing the rate of tree planting, which must double by 2025.

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Internationally, it said the UK could move past general statements of support for the Bridgetown agenda and back specific proposals to reform the global finance system so that it works for the developing world and climate.

It added that the UK had used its aid budget to support refugees in the UK, “creating pressure” on international climate spending.

“Even if they are compensated for in future years, temporary cuts cause disruption to programmes and can make outcomes less effective,” it said. The UK froze “non-essential” new aid spending last July.

Last year’s CCC progress report also flagged Britain’s lack of action, saying the UK had done “surprisingly little” to deliver on its ambitious climate targets.

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Since then, the government has launched its first oil and gas exploration licensing round since 2019 and approved a new coal mine.

A spokesperson said the government was proud of its record in cutting emissions, had attracted billions of pounds in investment in renewable projects and backed new industries, including carbon capture and floating offshore wind.

“With a new department dedicated to delivering net zero and energy security, we are driving economic growth, creating jobs, bringing down energy bills, and reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels,” the government spokesperson said.

The Labour opposition, however, was highly critical.

“This is by some distance the most damning indictment of a government since the climate change committee was established in 2008,” Labour’s Shadow Climate and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband said.

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At climate talks in the German city of Bonn last week, governments negotiated how much money to give the UNFCCC for the next two years.

The UNFCCC wanted €83m ($91m) but governments could only agree to give it €74m ($81m), leaving its work at the mercy of what governments want to fund voluntarily.

Three sources in the room during negotiations told Climate Home that the European Union, one of the UNFCCC's major funders, would not allow any increase above this figure.

Ignoring inflation, its a 19% increase on the previous two years' budget. A spokesperson for the EU confirmed that the block "together with other Parties" supported a 19% increase.

One small island negotiator told Climate Home: "The big issue with the budget is that we agree as [governments] to mandates at Cops. We all make compromises and then 6-18 months later, in a sparsely-attended budget room, we decide on how much of those mandates get funded".

"It's inefficient and fundamentally unfair," the negotiator added, "all the power in the budget room is with the countries that contribute a lot".

Status quo

The budget increase is 19%, most of the extra money will be eaten up by inflation and by increases in staff salaries ordered by the UN's headquarters in New York.

The small island negotiator said it was "just maintaining the status quo" with "no new staff, no new capacity to fulfill the expanded mandates the [governments] have given the secretariat".

In his pitch for funds, Stiell said that, on top of its normal tasks, the UNFCCC has to help governments respond to the global stocktake of climate action, negotiate a new climate finance goal and submit new and improved climate plans in 2025.

The UNFCCC also wants to do more work to hold polluting governments and corporations to account, he said.

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Carrying out all its jobs will cost €131m, he said, so it will have to try and drum up more money, mainly from governments, on a voluntary basis.

Stiell said this funding is "unpredictable" which "jeopardises the delivery of mandated activities".

Relying on voluntary funding gives bigger and wealthier countries more power over what work the UNFCCC is able to carry out.

The UNFCCC does get some donations from private companies although there are restrictions on this.

If they don't receive enough extra funding, then work like organising a ministerial round-table on climate ambition in the 2020s could be jeoparised, as could engagement with companies and training on scrutiny of governments climate plans.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said: "The EU and its member states not only contribute a significant share to the core budget, but also make a contribution to the supplementary trust fund and to the fund that supports developing country travel."

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NGO Feedback has launched a formal legal challenge against the UK government, arguing that it risked flouting its international climate obligations by not properly assessing the environmental impacts of the deal.

The UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which enters into force at the end of the month, gives Australian producers better access to the UK market to sell beef, lamb and dairy.

Then UK prime minister Boris Johnson, trade secretary Liz Truss and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison celebrate the trade deal in London in 2021 (Photo credit: Number 10/Flickr)

Agreeing the deal in 2021, the UK government said Australia shared domestic “beliefs in high standards in areas such as animal welfare and the environment” and maintained that the deal would uphold these.

Brexit dash for deals

But critics believe it was passed in haste and risks undercutting UK producers with food that does more damage to the environment.

Carina Millstone, executive director of Feedback, said the UK government had recklessly sacrificed both British farmers and the climate in a rush for positive headlines after the UK left the European Union and faced accusations that it was now globally isolated.

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“At a time of crisis in food and farming,” she said “the government must ensure all trade deals work towards our emissions reduction targets rather than towards further catastrophic heating.”

A government impact assessment of the free trade agreement suggested there would be an increase in transport-related greenhouse gas emissions as more goods are moved between Australia and the UK.

They estimated that increase would be 0.1-0.3 MtCo2 a year, about the annual emissions of Liechenstein.

Claims of uncertainty

But it said data uncertainties on the emissions impact of farming, particularly of beef, made drawing conclusions on these emissions difficult.

Campaigners instead point to a 2021 independent review of the UK’s national food strategy. It used a 2020 study in Global Environmental Change to conclude that carbon emissions from UK beef was 30kg Co2/kg compared to 45kg Co2e/kg from Australian beef.

The authors of that study found that these differences between different countries were “largely attributable to deforestation for grazing lands and higher methane emissions from…belching”.

Campaigners said the food strategy clearly shows that the free trade agreement will have a material impact on the UK’s legally binding climate targets.

Cheap meat

They also say the impact assessment fails to quantify the carbon impact of any changes to overall domestic UK meat and dairy consumption. 

Cheaper Australian goods were touted as one of the key benefits of the agreement for the UK. Australia’s biggest cattle farmer suggested that the trade deal could result in Australian beef exports to the UK rising tenfold. 

However, Feedback says the greater availability of cheap meat on UK supermarket shelves and in the food service industry will increase the amount that gets eaten.

This would go against recommendations from both national food strategy review and those of the UK’s advisory Climate Change Committee that substantial reductions in meat and dairy are essential to tackle climate change. 

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Feedback sent a letter to environment secretary Thérèse Coffey last year, warning that it was prepared to take legal action, and said the response it received was unsatisfactory. 

Rowan Smith, a solicitor for law firm Leigh Day which is representing Feedback in the case, said they would be arguing that the legislation implementing the new tariff rules was based on an impact assessment that completely ignored the science.

“It is argued that this irrationality renders the statutory instrument unlawful, and our client is asking the court to quash it,” he said.

The government would not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

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The tax credit makes France the first EU country to take advantage of a loosening of European state aid rules in recent months in response to new tax subsidies in the United States made available by the Biden administration’s $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Le Maire’s ministry said the tax credit, which will be available on a temporary basis in line with the new EU rules until 2025, with the possibility of an extension to 2029, was expected to generate private investments totalling 23 billion euros by 2030 and directly create 40,000 jobs.

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The tax credit aims to spur investment in environmentally friendly projects and revive France’s industrial sector as European companies come increasingly under pressure from U.S. companies, major tax subsidies in the IRA to cut carbon emission, boost domestic production and manufacturing.

“We have no reason to be embarrassed by comparisons with the United States,” Le Maire said on Tuesday, adding that various European and existing French aid available was of a similar scale.

The tax credit will cover companies’ capital expenditures on 25-40% of their investments in wind and solar power facilities, heat pumps and batteries.

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It will be included in the 2024 budget law and its cost will be offset by reducing tax breaks available for certain types of carbon-intensive fuels which remain to be determined.

The bill also aims to make 2,000 hecatres (4,900 acres) available for new industrial sites and cut in half how long it takes to approve a new industrial project from 17 months to nine months.

It also will create a new class of tax-free savings accounts available to people under the age of 18 through their banks, which the finance ministry expects to generate 5 billion euros that can be used to finance green industrial projects.

The post France proposes tax credits for green technology appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2021, the German government agreed to require new heaters to run on 65% renewable energy from 2025 – a de-facto ban on fossil boilers running on natural gas. When Russia invaded Ukraine, and Germany’s gas supply became tight, the date was pulled forward by a year.

But the liberal FDP party, a junior member in Germany’s three-party coalition which is dominated by the social democrats and the greens, was never a fan of the proposal.

A draft law to implement the ban was leaked to the press in March, sparking controversy within the coalition, which spent 30 hours in a meeting to fix the situation. Ultimately, the government endorsed the 2024 ban – although the FDP disavowed the deal within minutes.

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Now, Germany’s two legislatures –  the parliament and the Bundesrat representing the country’s 16 federal states – are currently examining the law. The Bundesrat is adamant that the 2024 ban is too early, while the FDP has vowed to change the law as much as possible in the lower house.

What is almost certain now is that the 2024 start date for the ban will not go ahead.

That much became clear from the annual meeting of Germany’s powerful landlord association Haus & Grund. Germany, unlike other EU states, is a renters’ country. More than half of the population rent, making the country a landlord’s paradise.

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The prospect of a boiler ban caused “pure desperation” among his members, explained Kai Warnecke, the landlord association chief, who spoke in Berlin on Thursday (11 May). He himself recently gained some notoriety for suing political activists in Berlin for defamation.

At a landlords’ association gathering, Green MP Christina-Johanne Schröder was booed while trying to communicate the party line on the boiler ban.

She explained that no heaters will be forcibly removed and biomass can be installed in existing buildings. But landlords were not happy and they can count on support from the smallest party in the German government: the FDP.

The law’s architect, top-level official Patrick Graichen – who is currently embroiled in a cronyism affair – cancelled his participation at the last minute.

Time for a delay

“When exactly the [boiler ban] law enters into force is of secondary importance,” explains Lukas Köhler, deputy chief of the Bundestag-FDP.

“It is important that the [boiler ban] is good and practicable to implement – otherwise, climate protection will not be helped,” added Köhler who is considered to be among the most progressive voices in the FDP on climate issues.

In theory, Germany’s boiler ban seeks to ensure that future heating purchases have a credible pathway to climate neutrality.

A favoured technology is heat pumps – the cornerstone of clean heating – but the law also allows for connecting to district heating and allows for heating with hydrogen, although in a very limited way. Existing homes may switch to biomass, too.

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One essential part of the puzzle, municipal heat plans, are missing.

The boiler ban is “not yet synchronised” with municipal heat planning, noted Köhler – something his party aims to change in parliament. “Do we have to do that? Yes,” he told the landlord association.

In practice, tying the boiler ban to municipal heat plans could delay its full implementation until 2030 when insiders expect a hard deadline to complete them.

The fight for a workable compromise to ensure the necessary climate savings is currently underway. By 2030, the boiler ban must reduce CO2 emissions by a total of 40 million tonnes, according to the government’s plan.

Germany’s Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has signalled some openness to delay the law. During the negotiations, it may be “just as relevant to think about starting later or starting a bit later,” he told Deutschlandfunk on 8 May.

German states weigh in

Another group that would like to see the law delayed are Germany’s “Länders”, the 16 federal states that make up the country.

A draft of their recommendations, seen by Euractiv, sees the states insist on the boiler ban starting in 2027 instead of 2024.

The states also insist that biomass heating be allowed in newly constructed homes too.

The Bundesrat, where the states get their say, is the main avenue for the opposition centre-right CDU/CSU to influence Berlin politics. They are slated to discuss the law on Friday (12 May), a

The post German landlords set to defeat gas boiler ban appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a controversial move last year, the European Commission gave gas power plants a ‘sustainable’ label under the EU’s green finance taxonomy, provided they meet a strict CO2 emissions threshold.

Gas power plants will be considered as a “transitional” technology under the EU taxonomy provided they replace existing coal-fired power stations, and “subject to clear limits and phase-out periods”, the EU executive said.

That decision was challenged by four environmental groups – ClientEarth, WWF’s European Policy Office, Transport & Environment (T&E), and BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany).

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The four started legal action in September to stop the inclusion of fossil gas in the bloc’s sustainable finance rulebook, arguing that the legislation clashes with the European Climate Law and does not respect the EU’s obligations under the Paris Agreement.

However, in February the Commission rejected their request, and the NGOs are now challenging this decision by filing a case with the Court of Justice of the European Union. 

Absurd and unlawful?

“Labelling fossil gas as ‘sustainable’ is as absurd as it is unlawful. It goes against the EU’s own scientific advice and fundamentally undermines the credibility of the EU’s climate action. Fossil gas is not clean, not cheap and not a secure source of energy,” said a spokesperson for the four green organisations. 

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The NGOs argue that gas cannot be considered a sustainable source of energy and has a huge impact on climate change as it is a high-carbon source when burnt, while its extraction and transport also lead to the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. 

Including fossil gas in the ‘green’ taxonomy would also worsen the EU’s dependency on imported fossil fuels, exposing EU member states to more price volatility, dependence on producing countries, and supply crises in the future, they add. 

“We’re taking the Commission to court in the hope of restoring some credibility to the Taxonomy and avoiding this huge risk to the climate and people’s energy security,” the spokesperson said. 

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Contacted by Euractiv, a Commission spokesperson said the EU executive “takes note of the legal action undertaken by several NGOs” but prefers not to comment on the substance of the case “before EU Court judgments are delivered”.

A hearing at the General Court is being scheduled for the second half of 2024, with a judgement expected to be released in 2025.

Nuclear challenged too

A separate lawsuit at the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice against the inclusion of gas and nuclear in the taxonomy regulation will also be filed by Greenpeace on Tuesday.

In September, Greenpeace organisations from eight countries asked the EU to review its decision, but their request was rejected. 

As the lawsuit is being filed on Tuesday, activists from Greenpeace Luxembourg are planning to gather in front of the Court to protest the “green” label for gas and nuclear. 

Unlike gas, nuclear is a zero-carbon technology. But Greenpeace opposes it due to concerns over the disposal of nuclear waste and about safety and cost.

The post Campaigners sue EU for labelling gas sustainable appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU bloc sees hydrogen made with renewable energy – known as “green hydrogen” – as a cost-effective way to reduce emissions, especially in industries that are difficult to decarbonise such as aviation and heavy land transport.

While the European industry is in its infancy, hopes of achieving short-term goals largely rest on production overseas. Countries, especially in Northern and Sub-saharan Africa, have been attracted by the sector’s opportunity for investments and new jobs, analysts told Climate Home News.

But experts warned the enthusiasm hides significant risks. Incentives built into the EU regulations mean the massive scale-up of green hydrogen exports could take up most renewable electricity in developing nations, at the expense of local populations.

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This would be a problem for countries like Namibia – one of the EU’s key hydrogen partners – where just over half of the population has access to electricity.

For Godrje Rustomjee, an analyst at the African Climate Foundation, countries need to find the right trade-off between domestic needs and export potential.

Otherwise, he says, the risk is that green hydrogen may turn into “another neo-colonial project”.

“There is a real possibility that foreign countries come in with direct investment, but all the benefits and added value end up being extracted and sent across to Europe”.

Marta Lovisolo, a hydrogen analyst at Bellona, says the risk developing countries will divert resources toward production for exports is “extremely high”.

“Green hydrogen is something Europe desperately wants and developing countries could potentially mass-produce for a lucrative market,” she says. “As it happened with fossil fuels, countries seem ready to stake everything on becoming exporters without being given the necessary safeguards.”

Very glad to meet President @hagegeingob

Namibia is a trusted partner of the EU. We stand by your side in the fight against the pandemic.
#GlobalGateway can support Green Hydrogen plans and sustainable raw minerals value chains.

Let’s develop a full-fledged partnership. pic.twitter.com/uU4HdYnIIO

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 18, 2022

Betting big on hydrogen

Despite being a nearly non-existing energy source today, green hydrogen has become a cornerstone of Europe’s decarbonisation plans.

Green hydrogen is mostly produced through electrolysis, a process that separates water into hydrogen and oxygen, using electricity generated from renewable sources.

The bloc has set a target of reaching annual domestic production of 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen by 2030 and importing the same amount. It is a tall order, considering that last year worldwide green hydrogen production capacity was 109 kilo tonnes – a fraction of what the EU wants to achieve.

Currently, most hydrogen is created using fossil fuels. Around three-quarters is derived from methane gas and a quarter from coal. Green hydrogen is more expensive to produce and accounts for less than 1% of total global production.

To fuel its ambition the EU is pouring billions of euros into the sector. Alongside investments in the build-up of domestic capacity, funds are being committed towards partnerships with future exporting nations.

The EU has signed agreements with a series of countries including Egypt, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Namibia. The partnerships are billed as a win-win situation.

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Rules exemption

The Commission has also recently set out the rules on renewable hydrogen. Among various provisions, it includes a criteria for developing renewable electricity called 'additionality'.

In the future, hydrogen producers will have to make sure that only new renewable electricity generation capacity is used for green hydrogen production. This is to ensure hydrogen production does not take away existing renewable energy from the grid, potentially increasing reliance on fossil fuels elsewhere.

Additionality can be achieved either by directly connecting a solar or wind farm to a hydrogen production facility or through purchase agreements with clean power generators.

But European lawmakers have included a phase-in clause to speed up the industry with the hope of meeting its 2030 goals. Any green hydrogen installation that starts production before 2028 will be exempted from the additionality rules for the following ten years, until 2038.

That means the projects developed before that date will be able to use already installed capacity, for instance taking clean energy directly from the grid.

Analysts say the rules have set off a race between exporting nations to meet the 2028 deadline. Namibia, for example, hopes to begin exporting green hydrogen in 2026, although analysts believe this will be very difficult to achieve.

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Risk of 'cannibalisation'

Maria Pastukhova, a senior policy advisor at E3G, says the rules allow hydrogen projects to “cannibalise” the existing local infrastructure for the purpose of export production.

“For many countries, especially in Africa, this energy is needed at home, where grids need to be decarbonised or local citizens don’t have access to electricity,” she added.

Only 56% of Namibians had access to electricity in 2022. The nation imported 60-70% of its electricity demand, most of it coming from fossil fuel sources.

The Southern African nation, in particular, is racing to become Africa’s first green hydrogen exporting hub, but faces a context of high unemployment and one of the most unequal economies in the world, according to the World Bank.

Namibia's pitch

Namibia’s President Hage Geingob sees green hydrogen as an “engine of growth” that will make the country an industrialised economy and create a large number of jobs.

“Because of our national green hydrogen efforts, Namibia remains well-positioned to become a major supplier of clean and green energy to the world,” he said at Cop27.

In 2021 the Namibian government began pitching its proposition to European leaders, luring them in with the promise to supply up to three million tonnes of renewable hydrogen every year.

Namibia's Tsau Khaeb National Park has been earmarked for green hydrogen projects. Photo: Olga Ernst and Hp Baumeler

Germany was first to respond to the calls and quickly partnered with its former colony. A German private joint venture is now working with the Namibian government to develop a $9.4 billion green hydrogen project. The huge infrastructure is expected to take up 4,000km2 of land (roughly four times the city of Berlin) within the Tsau Khaeb National Park.

Its goal is to begin hydrogen production by the end of 2026.

Money for hydrogen

Following Berlin’s lead, the European Commission signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Namibia on renewable hydrogen, something they have also done in at least other three developing countries

The agreement aims to facilitate “the production and export of renewable hydrogen”, while offering Namibia the “possibility to achieve its own energy security and decarbonisation objectives”.

At the same time the European Investment Bank pledged to give Namibia a loan of up to 500 million euros to finance renewable hydrogen and renewable energy investments. The EIB President said “the development of a green hydrogen economy will bring Namibia and Europe closer together - as partners”.

A similar memorandum of understanding was signed on the sidelines of Cop27 between the European Union and Egypt. The partnership is aimed at "contributing to the EU future plans to import renewable hydrogen", while accelerating "the Egyptian energy sector's transition and decarbonisation".

The agreement does not yet contain any binding commitment but it expects to encourage investment in infrastructure and easier access to financing options.

Upon unveiling the deal, the European Commission Vice-President said Egypt is "ideally placed" to transport green hydrogen to Europe. He added that Egypt is blessed with "unlimited potential for solar and wind energy", which goes beyond local electricity needs and, therefore, can also be used for green hydrogen.

Despite this potential, the country's energy sector is still hugely dominated by fossil fuels, with only about 6% of the supply coming from renewables.

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Bellona’s Marta Lovisolo says the agreements are “full of nice words, but do not have any legal safeguards” to prevent European interests come first.

She adds developing countries are particularly attracted as the European Union has signalled it would subsidise the big premiums needed for green hydrogen.

More money to come

Brussels is working on a subsidy scheme to bring down the prices of hydrogen for buyers. Green premiums would cover the cost gap between renewable hydrogen produced overseas and the fossil fuels it would replace.

The money pot is expected to be large. The green premium to achieve the 2030 targets for hydrogen could come up to €115 billion in total.

For the African Climate Foundation's Godrje Rustomjee the financial incentives are just too good for developing countries to ignore. "On one hand they could use renewables only for domestic consumption but this could come at extreme cost," he says, "on the other, the nature of these export deals has the potential of doubling a country's economy".

The key, he says, it's striking the right compromise and securing safeguards in the deals with rich importing countries.

He believes these should include safeguards for local electricity provision and incentives, such as the localisation of manufacturing in the country.

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The EU Council approved a common position on climate and energy diplomacy, which sets out the bloc’s priorities ahead of the Cop28 summit.

Member states agreed to “systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050” but recognised “a transitional role for natural gas”.

The text stresses that “a dependence on fossil fuels leaves countries vulnerable to market volatility and geopolitical risk” and that climate neutrality “will require the global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels”.

It repeats a Cop26 commitment to “close the book” on unabated coal power and calls for an immediate end to international financing for coal.  This, however, does not extend to ending financing for overseas oil and gas – despite a pledge to do so signed by 10 EU countries in Glasgow.

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Alex Scott, who leads think tank E3G’s climate diplomacy work, told Climate Home News the agreement formalises the position the EU adopted at the Cop27 talks in Egypt but left room for improvement. 

The bloc was among a coalition of more than 80 countries that took up a call by India to extend Cop26’s groundbreaking call to phase down coal to other fossil fuels. But faced with opposition from oil and gas producers, Egypt didn’t include the proposal in the final text.

The issue is set to dominate discussions at Cop28 in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers.

The pledge to actively pursue a global fossil fuel phase out  “is a step up in EU climate diplomacy,” Scott said. But the timeline “needs to be clearer and sooner to set the direction” and the term “unabated” needs to be defined to avoid loopholes, she added.

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Sven Harmeling, a campaigner at CAN Europe, said the deal “sends an important signal that the EU is speaking out on the need to move away from fossil fuels”.

“What is of course missing is a clearer signal by the EU that it needs to be quicker than ‘well ahead of 2050’ because of its historic emissions and its capacity to decarbonise,” he said.

He added that the focus on coal should not distract from the need to wind down oil and gas production.

Nuclear divisions

The document, initially expected in February, was delayed because of a dispute over the role of nuclear-derived hydrogen in meeting carbon targets. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine compelled many EU countries to reconsider their long-standing opposition to nuclear power as they seek alternatives to Russian energy imports. 

France, which relies heavily on nuclear energy, argues that nuclear-made hydrogen should be considered green. Germany and Spain fear this would distract from efforts to boost renewables. 

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On Thursday, an advisor to German chancellor Olaf Schulz, told an event in Paris that Berlin was not opposed to hydrogen made from nuclear energy and would import it from France. 

The final text doesn’t specify the type of hydrogen the union will back. But countries agreed to “promote the deployment of safe and sustainable low-carbon technologies” – language which usually refers to nuclear energy.

Alternative gas supplies

The EU said it remains steadfast to its commitment to phase out its dependency from Russian fossil fuels “as soon as possible”.

Eurostat figures show coal imports fell from 45% in 2021 to 22% in 2022, and gas from 36% to 21%.  Ministers said volumes have continued to decline in recent months. 

While countries are still seeking to diversify their gas supplies, ministers agreed there was “no need for a one-to-one replacement of former Russian natural gas import volumes” and warned against creating “fossil fuel lock-ins and stranded assets”.  

Recent analysis by Climate Action Tracker found that the global dash for gas that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is threatening the world’s ability to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C.

Call for cooperation

At a time of deepening geopolitical tensions, the EU emphasised the need for cooperation between nations.

In addition to the Just Energy Transition Partnerships, the bloc wants to increase cooperation with its coal-reliant neighbours, including in the Western Balkans, and with other developing countries with high energy-related emissions.

The emphasis on cooperation comes as the EU is scrambling to respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act – a $370bn green subsidy package with generous climate incentives for products “made in America”. Brussels is concerned the incentives will encourage companies to relocate production to the US.

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At the G20 leaders summit on the Indonesian island of Bali in November, a group of governments and banks announced they would give $20 billion to move Indonesia away from the coal that currently generates most of its electricity.

Indonesian investment minister Luhut Pandjaitan said the just energy transition partnership (JETP) was a “groundbreaking model of international cooperation” which would fulfill a promise to his granddaughter to “make policy that would benefit future generations”.

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But the governments would not reveal who was paying which part of the $20bn or what form the support would take. One bank said its stated contribution to the figure was only the amount it was “willing to consider”.

Tight lips

A spokesperson for one of the governments told Climate Home they would not reveal how much they were giving because “we agreed among the partner countries that we communicate only our cumulative contribution as a group at this point”.

The Indonesian government has been sworn to secrecy too, according to a source close to it.

“Indonesia is being hostage by [the other governments] not to disclose their funding commitment and the financial modalities,” they said.

Just an estimate

One of the few entities to reveal its contribution is the EU-funded European Investment Bank (EIB), whose commitment is counted  as €1bn ($1.06bn).

But a spokesperson told Climate Home that this amount was just what it is “willing to consider committing” and is “subject to agreement on key policy aspects and to a suitable pipeline of eligible investments”.

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The only breakdown of the $20bn that that has been publicly revealed is that $10bn will come from the public sector and $10bn will be from private banks that are part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz).

When a similar deal with South Africa was announced at Cop26, only the public money ($8.5bn) was included in the announcement. But subsequent deals with Vietnam and Indonesia have pumped up the headline figure by including private money.

As with Indonesia, the details of this South African deal were kept secret until Climate Home revealed the figures.

Grants vs loans

They showed that only 3% of the funding was grants and the rest are loans, which will add to South Africa’s debt.

The breakdowns of loans versus grants for Indonesia has not been revealed.

But the EU has revealed that just 1% of its $2.5bn, which includes the EIB’s contribution, will be grants.

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The UK says its $1bn contribution will be a World Bank guarantee.

The US, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Norway have not announced how much they are contributing or how it will be spent.

Political risk

Despite the lack of transparency, implementation of the financial agreement is now stepping up.

On 16 February, the US and Japanese governments sent officials to Jakarta to commemorate the establishment of a JETP secretariat, hosted by Indonesia’s energy ministry.

A delegation of bankers from Gfanz is expected to visit Indonesia on a scoping mission next week and a full investment plan should be drawn up by September.

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However, the source close to the Indonesian government said the money may come too slowly due to donor country conditions.

Under the deal, the Indonesian government has to implement reforms first, to the satisfaction of these countries. But the reforms are complicated and risky, particularly with a presidential election scheduled for February 2024.

So the risks will be taken before the election while the rewards will only start flowing afterwards, the source said.

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