EU leaders are expected to agree on cutting collective emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels, up from 40% currently, at a critical two-day Council meeting starting Thursday.

Member states are under pressure to approve the new target ahead of a virtual climate ambition summit on Saturday co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France to celebrate five years since the Paris Agreement was signed.

“The EU’s leadership and competitiveness are at stake,” said Manon Dufour, head of think tank E3G’s office in Brussels, adding that EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen could not arrive empty-handed at the summit.

While the proposed climate target is relatively uncontroversial, it risks becoming a victim of heated negotiations over a €1.8 trillion financial package, which includes €750 billion in coronavirus recovery funds.

The European Commission has proposed making access to the funds conditional on respecting the EU’s rule of law principles.

The clause could cost Poland and Hungary billions of euros, with both countries accused of backsliding on democratic standards enshrined in the EU’s founding treaties, including on the independence of the judicial system, the media and other institutions.

They have threatened to veto the budget, which would hold up funds to support countries meet the enhanced 2030 climate target. This includes support for communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry to transition to new sectors of employment, which would benefit workers in both countries.

“It’s possible that if there is no deal on the rule of law, there is no deal on the climate target,” Dufour told Climate Home News.

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In a joint declaration, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán said they respected common European values but that neither country “will accept any proposal that is deemed unacceptable by the other”.

Writing in Euractiv, Morawiecki said the current proposal threatened “the future of the entire union” at “a time of great test for Europe”.

They are heading for a showdown with more liberal member states and Commission officials on Thursday.

“The level of negotiations between Brussels and Warsaw has never been as high as it is now,” said Justyna Piszczatowska, a Polish financial journalist specialising in the energy sector.

The absence of an EU announcement at Saturday’s ambition summit would dampen momentum for climate action and be deeply embarrassing for the union.

Both Von der Leyen and German chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the EU Council’s rotating presidency, have made achieving a climate deal at the meeting a top priority. The increased 2030 target would put the EU on a credible path towards its 2050 climate neutrality goal and drive green investments for the next decade.

“It will be a very bad look for the EU not to agree on a new target if the EU fails where the UK has succeeded,” Dufour said, citing the UK’s recent pledge to deepen emissions cuts to 68% between 1990 and 2030.

Marcel Beukeboom, climate envoy for the Netherlands, told Climate Home the EU “wants to shine” on the global stage as the incoming US administration is about to reverse four years of retreat of climate action under Donald Trump.

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As Poland and Hungary focus their political capital on fighting the conditionality to accessing EU funds, observers fear it will leave little time to negotiate on the climate issues.

In private, European negotiators have expressed confidence a resolution can be found and leaders will approve enhanced 2030 ambition.

The latest draft on the 2030 climate target presented to member states on Monday, recommended the EU Council adopt a “binding” 2030 target of “net domestic reduction of at least 55%” from 1990 level – reflecting the Commission’s proposal earlier this year.

While there is widespread support for cutting emissions by 55%, including from eastern European countries, Poland, Czechia and Hungary have pushed back on the inclusion of “at least” in the target and called for additional financial support to meet it.

In an annotated version of the Council’s draft conclusion, seen by Climate Home, the three countries demand the extension of EU funds to support their energy transition beyond 2027 and full flexibility over how the money is spent.

They argue nuclear energy and methane gas should be recognised as “mid-term low carbon transition” energy sources.

Meanwhile, a small alliance of progressive member states are opposing the “net” in the target, which would count carbon sucked from the atmosphere and stored by forests and soils towards meeting the 55% reduction goal. This could reduce real emissions cuts needed from energy and industrial sectors by five or more percentage points, according to some estimates.

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In a letter to the Slovenian government, the company’s lawyers described the government’s actions as “arbitrary and unreasonable”. Environmentalists said it was the company whose behaviour was “outrageous”.

Friends of the Earth Slovenia accused Ascent of endangering the country’s drinking water supply and urged the new Slovenian government not to bow to pressure.

Paul de Clerck, economic justice coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “It’s a scandal that, amid a climate and environmental emergency, a country like Slovenia can be sued for doing the right thing, protecting its water and environment from destructive fracking.”

London-based Ascent Resources is taking legal action using the UK-Slovenia bilateral investment treaty and the controversial multilateral Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which the UK and Slovenia have both signed up to.

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The ECT has previously been used by a German energy company to fight the Dutch government over coal phaseout plans and by a Swedish company to sue the German state over its policies against nuclear and coal power.

In 2007, Ascent entered a joint venture with a state-owned Slovenian company called Geonergo to extract gas from Petišovci in eastern Slovenia and sell it to Croatian company INA. It says it has since invested €50m (US$59m) in the project.

In 2017, the company decided it needed to inject water underground to stimulate gas flow, known as fracking, and applied for government permission. Ascent’s lawyers say that they did not need to apply for this but Geonergo did so anyway “in an abundance of caution”.

In March 2019, the Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO) ruled that the company must conduct an environmental impact assesment because the site is close to water sources.

Ascent’s lawyers said this decision went against expert opinions from several other government bodies and was “manifestly arbitrary and unreasonable”. They add that the Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning’s public criticism of the company and leaks from ARSO to the press show that ARSO was “biased” and its decision was “politically motivated”.

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Geonergo challenged ARSO’s decision but, in May 2020, the Slovenian court ruled against the firms. In July, Ascent’s London lawyers told Slovenia they were taking legal action.

Lidija Živčič, from Friends of the Earth Slovenia, told Climate Home News she feared the Slovenian government elected in March 2020 would reverse the previous government’s opposition to fracking.

The previous government, led by Marjan Šarec, had been preparing a law which would ban fracking. It was voted out before the law could pass and, Živčič said, Janez Janša’s new government seems much more in favour of fracking.

If fracking went ahead in Petišovci, Živčič said, the nearby sources of drinking water and thermal waters could be affected by the fracking chemicals. In other countries, poorly-built shallow fracking wells have injected gas into underground freshwater aquifers.

Fracking could also damage nearby ecosystems and would contribute to global climate change, Živčič said. The site is near the borders of Hungary and Croatia.

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Friends of the Earth has brought attention to the case at the same time as members of the ECT are negotiating ‘modernisation’ of the treaty, which dates from the early 1990s.

The European Union wants to improve governments’ ‘right to regulate’ on climate change without facing legal action under ECT but nations like Japan and Kazakhstan are resisting reform.

Luxembourg’s energy minister has said his nation and others could leave the ECT if its environmental protections are not improved. Russia and Italy have already left the treaty after it was used to sue them.

An Australian mining company called Prairie Mining also announced ECT legal action this week. It says the Polish government has unfairly damaged its coal mining prospects by not renewing one of its concessions and granting part of another to a rival firm.

The post Fracking company sues Slovenia over ‘unreasonable’ environmental protections appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 3-page document was significantly watered down from a “climate emergency” declaration originally put forward by an opposition lawmaker last August.

It followed a day after the government issued a €1.5 billion green bond, with the bulk of funds earmarked to run, maintain and upgrade the railway system.

Climate and energy minister Péter Kaderják said in a government statement the country was choosing “the path of the future” and could cut emissions while growing the economy.

In a hint the plans relied on EU funds, he said the costs of moving to net zero emissions should be borne by the big polluters. Brussels should not divert the “cohesion fund” for poorer member states into climate action, Kaderják added.

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The law reaffirmed Hungary’s existing 2030 target of a 40% cut in emissions from 1990 levels, leaving the heavy lifting until next decade. In the initial proposal by the green Dialogue party, that would have been strengthened to 55%.

Zsolt Lengyel, co-founder and chair of the Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy, told Climate Home News the failure to raise the ambition of interim targets showed the government was not serious about climate neutrality.

The green bond, he said, “qualifies both for a greenwashing prize and a corruption medal”.

Lengyel, a Hungarian national living in Canada, expressed fears that the money would line the pockets of prime minister Viktor Orbán’s friends and not substantively decarbonise the Hungarian economy.

On Twitter, former government climate official András Huszár took a more optimistic line, saying the move was “not imaginable” a couple of months ago and could be the basis for further action.

Just a couple of months ago it was not imaginable to pass such a law in HU. W r only the 7th country to do so! 2050 net zero is the int benchmark. Wish that or would have same plans at least in law…Let’s try to fill the other half of the half empty/full glass

— András Huszár (@climate_hussar) June 4, 2020

According to the government prospectus, 90% of the proceeds will go to transport projects. Of this, 25% is to electrify railway lines and 72% for other railway expenditure, including routine operating costs like staffing.

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Norwegian climate research institute Cicero rated the bond “medium green”, based on its intended purposes. That means it was judged to avoid locking in fossil-fueled technologies but not be fully consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“It is a very solid step forward to being Paris-aligned but it is not quite there yet,” said Christa Clapp, research director of climate finance at Cicero. To be upgraded to “deep green”, Hungary would need to fully electrify the railway network, not just parts of it, for example.

“Of course we are concerned about corruption and it could have some impact here,” Clapp told CHN, but stressed it was outside the scope of Cicero’s assessment, which focused on environmental credibility. Investors should do their own due diligence on corruption risk, she said.

The Hungarian government has committed to reporting annually on the impacts of the green bond spending and subjecting that to an external review.

Democracy watchdogs warn that under Orbán, Hungary has become increasingly authoritarian, with little space for independent media or civil society to scrutinise government.

In a report published last month, NGO Freedom House said the prime minister had “dropped any pretense of respecting democratic institutions”. Transparency International ranks Hungary as one of the most corrupt countries in the EU.

Green opposition wins Budapest mayoral election in blow to Orbán

In January, the ruling Fidesz party launched a climate and energy strategy with a “Christian-democratic approach“.

This majored on a Russian-built nuclear programme, with some support for solar, to achieve 90% low carbon power by 2030. Wind energy is effectively banned by a prohibition on turbines within 12km of any house. The country’s last coal power plant, aging and rendered unprofitable by carbon pricing, is to be closed by 2025.

When it comes to intra-EU negotiations, Hungary typically sides with Poland in resisting higher ambition. While it is far less dependent on coal than its northerly ally, this negotiating stance can be used to leverage financial support from richer member states.

A Hungarian lawmaker last month asked if the government would show its support for a “green recovery” from coronavirus, by signing an open letter from 17 EU climate ministers. He was told in a one-line answer that was “against the interests of the Hungarian people”.

The post Hungary sets 2050 climate neutrality goal in law, issues green bond appeared first on Climate Home News.

Gergely Karácsony, 44, a pro-European centre-left candidate, won 50.86% of the vote in Sunday’s mayoral election in a surprise victory over the incumbent nationalist Istvan Tarlos.

Tarlos, who had been in office since 2010, was supported by Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party. Karácsony, from the green Dialogue for Hungary party, was backed by a coalition of opposition parties to the ruling Fidesz. Besides Budapest, opposition parties now control 10 of the countries’s 23 biggest cities.

Karácsony has compared his run to Istanbul’s mayoral election earlier this year, when the candidate backed by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party was defeated by opposition challenger Ekrem İmamoğlu.

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“Istanbul voted against an aggressive illiberal power in many ways similar to Orban’s regime,” Karacsony told AFP before the vote. Karácsony met with İmamoğlu in the lead up to the Budapest election.

Karácsony made climate action one of the three pillars of his vision for the city, pledging to boost the transition towards clean energy, and build climate resilience.

He promised to declare a climate emergency and to launch an information campaign about climate change.

His manifesto includes commitments to “prioritise the climate aspects of all new development projects”, with city-wide legislation enforcing clean energy requirements for all new municipality buildings and improve energy efficiency.

In an overhaul of the city’s public transport system, Karácsony (whose surname means ‘Christmas’) committed to expand and improve the existing system, ensure cheaper prices and make the city more bike-friendly. Other proposed measures include the introduction of law emissions zones and a “green corridor” to expand Budapest’ parks and green spaces.

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Cities have become key players to jump-start decarbonisation at the local level. Globally, cities consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of CO2 emissions, according to the C40 network of cities.

The proposals to green Budapest contrast with prime minister Orbán’s climate record and the downgrade of the Hungary’s environmental protection laws since he came to power in 2010.

Hungary was one of four countries to veto an EU agreement in June to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050. Along with Poland and Czech Republic, Hungary has not yet agreed to the EU’s long-term decarbonisation goal.

At the UN climate action summit in New York last month, Hungary’s president János Áder promised to phase out all coal-powered electricity production by 2030 – but critics were left unimpressed by the proposal.

Hungary isn’t as coal-reliant as some of its central and eastern European neighbours. Coal generated 15.5% of Hungary’s electricity in 2017, according to the OECD, and coal mining and power production across the country are already in decline.

An EU poll, carried out earlier this year, found that 85% of people in Hungary believe climate change to be a “very serious” problem, above the EU average of 79%.

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Fast rising prices in the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) have pushed the government into talks with the owners of Hungary’s last big lignite power plant, Mátra, about phasing out coal use and installing clean and renewable energy.

“Electricity production based on lignite has no more long-term economic viability in Europe, due to the sky-rocketing ETS quota prices and also the lack of any available future support scheme for coal-based energy production,” Barbara Botos, deputy secretary of state for climate at the innovation and technology ministry, told Climate Home News.

Botos said the government’s “preferred coal exit date” was 2030, although this is not yet supported by an official decision or strategy.

“Hungary intends to provide smart, clean and affordable energy for all,” Botos said. The government is outlining a “positive and innovative” development plan based on low greenhouse gas emissions, she added.

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Hungary is not as coal-reliant as some of its central and eastern European neighbours. Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria have the highest percentage of coal power in the EU. Yet on climate policy, the Visegrád Group – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – tend to stick together in resisting measures that would price out the dirtiest fossil fuel. The Three Seas Inititaive, of which Hungary is a member, plans to host a climate policy cooperation summit this Thursday.

That cohesion may be breaking, and not just because of Hungary. Slovakia, which also uses less coal, said in December 2017 that it was considering ending coal-fired power and mining in 2023. Economy minister Peter Ziga told reporters on Monday that the government plans to pull subsidies for mines and power plants that year, Reuters reported.

Hungary, meanwhile, is about to begin a political discussion about a coal phase-out, Botos said earlier this month in a presentation to the European Commission’s Coal Regions in Transition Platform. The platform, launched last year, aims to help the EU’s poorest and most coal-reliant regions shift to clean energy by re-training workers, funding renewables and other projects.

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Her comments, along with a presentation from a Mátra power plant representative, marked a “milestone” for the country, said Csaba Vaszkó, an independent Hungarian energy consultant who also spoke at the meeting. Even though Hungary’s coal industry has declined significantly, it is still strong in the region around Mátra, in the northeast.

If it sets an end date for coal, Hungary would join a growing group of western Europeans aiming for exits by 2030 at the latest, including France, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden. Even coal-powered Germany is expected to set an end date for coal by the end of this year.

In Hungary, the move is motivated by rising costs of EU carbon prices after years of lagging and the fact that Mátra already has concepts for low-carbon projects, rather than making a political break from the Visegrád position, said Vaszkó.

A graph produced by Hungary’s transmission operator and presented by Barbara Botos, deputy secretary of state for climate

Hungary’s second national climate strategy, approved by the parliament in October, aims to reduce carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuels, improving energy efficiency, developing a green economy and adding forests, Botos said in the presentation. Coal-fired power could drop sharply in 2025, according to a scenario she was given by Hungary’s transmission system operator.

Also at the commission’s meeting, Zoltán Orosz, head of strategy for the Mátra power station’s owner, talked about the potential for replacing coal with biomass, gas, solar energy and battery storage in order to keep the plant alive beyond 2030. Further down the line there was also the potential for building a solar panel factory, he said.

Coal mining and power production in Hungary are already declining, according to the presentations from Botos, Vaszkó and Orosz.

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The fuel generated 18% of Hungary’s electricity in 2016 – almost all from the Mátra station. Nuclear provided around half and gas roughly 20%. Most of the country’s coal and lignite basins have been closed, and the number of miners is down to 2,000 this year, from 125,000 in 1965.

However, Mátra’s lignite produced nearly 14% of the Hungary’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2016 and half of the energy sector’s pollution.

The fall in costs for solar and wind energy and lithium-ion batteries over the past 10 years can help create new industries, jobs and economic growth, Hungarian president Áder János told the parliament before it voted on the climate strategy last month.

Specifically, Budapest now aims to boost solar power capacity from 500 to 3,000 MW as early as 2022, Botos told CHN. The Mátra owners have installed a 16 MW photovoltaic plant on an abandoned slurry deposit, and plan to add two 20 MW solar plants nearby.

Russia’s state-owned Rosatom is also building a new nuclear power plant, which would replace older units in the later 2020s.

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The post Hungary wants end to coal power by 2030 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Did you pick Hungary? Well think again: Budapest is home to an unlikely climate leader.

A lawyer-turned-politician, Janos Ader was elected President of the Republic in 2012, and his 1980s popstar moustache belies his progressive stance on tackling global warming.

Last month, Ader wrote a letter to the heads of state from the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas polluters. The message was simple: set an example and tighten your reduction targets.

“We suggested to the 10 top emitters they should speed up the implementation of the Paris Agreement and it might make sense for those states to go ahead and start ratcheting up,” said Csaba Kőrösi, head of the president’s environmental sustainability directorate.

“If they move, it would be a good example for the rest of the word to follow – for sure. We were hoping his push could be part of a larger diplomatic push.”

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A former Hungarian ambassador to the UN, Kőrösi told Climate Home the letters were specific to each country. China, the US, Japan and Canada were among the recipients.

Former US president and climate hawk Al Gore was consulted before the letters were sent; so too was the recently departed UK prime minister David Cameron.

In April, 175 governments signed the new Paris Climate Agreement, a record for a new international treaty.

But given a spate of broken temperature records and extreme weather events across the planet, Ader felt he should take the initiative, said Kőrösi.

“He has very attentive ears to science. Some politicians do pay attention…. some others a little lower. He is one of those who tries to alarm the others and motivate action,” he said.

Until recently Csaba Korösi was permanent representative of Hungary to the UN (Pic: UN Photos)

More was to follow: Hungary’s parliament became the first in the EU to ratify the Paris deal, with a unanimous vote from lawmakers in late May.

Climate Home understands Ader, who hails from the same centre-right Fidesz party as prime minister Victor Orban, was instrumental in ensuring the quick approval.

Still, his influence has limits. It’s a position that, like his counterparts in Germany and Austria, is largely confined to ceremonial tasks: “powerless,” in the words of one Hungarian political observer.

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Critics of the government argue Orban is far from a green leader, keen to embrace fossil fuels and Russian nuclear technology while dismissing the potential of renewables.

Gas accounts for 34% of the country’s energy mix, according to a government brief, nuclear 17%, oil 25%, coal 10%, while biomass dominates the 8% of renewables.

The right-wing populist Jobbik party – the country’s third largest political force – issued a withering press release during last December’s Paris climate summit, accusing Fidesz and Orban of inaction.

“While Áder keeps campaigning for the drastic reduction of gas emissions causing the climate change, he fails to voice criticism of the Fidesz government’s domestic actions that are quite contrary to this agenda,” said Jobbik MP Lajos Kepli.

“He sees no problem with the taxation on solar panels, he is not bothered by the arbitrary cessation of energy efficiency tenders and neither was he bothered by the gradual deterioration of Hungarian environment protection, including the non-existent wind power plant development projects.”

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Andra Lukacs, president of Hungarian environmental NGO Levego Munkacsoport, sees Ader’s office as an anomaly in an administration he describes as “bad for the environment”.

This month the country’s energy efficiency association closed, he said, because members saw little evidence their alliance or lobbying was changing government policy.

A special tax has been raised on the sale of solar panels, while Lukacs said no new wind turbine has been built since 2006 “with the pretext that the grid could not cope with more”.

It paints a bleak picture, but it’s one that will change over time, said Kőrösi, who argued awareness over the threat posed by rising temperatures is growing.

Last year there were 40 days when the top temperature was about 30C, above Hungary’s usual extremes. A 2014 EU study of climate change in the Carpathian mountains suggested temperatures could rise 3-4.5C by 2100.

“Hungary is more exposed to climate change than the European average. 80% of the changes we are experiencing are through water… we are vulnerable to [flood] water across borders,” he said.

“96% of surface water comes from neighbouring mountains… it means if there is a fast melt of snow and heavy rain we are likely to experience flash floods.”

Áder and Orban regularly speak about climate change, he said, while efforts to offer MPs more information, data and the economics of a low carbon transition are ongoing.

Signs are the president’s message is well-received abroad, less so at home. But Kőrösi is undeterred, citing his initial conversation with Áder after taking office.

“When I joined I asked him: what would you consider a success? He said I want climate change and environmental sustainability be constantly among 10 most important questions for the public.”

The post János Áder: Hungary’s unlikely climate change leader appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to parliamentary records, lawmakers voted unanimously to approve the pact, which was agreed by 195 countries in Paris last December.

France is expected to be the second EU member state to ratify the treaty, with the Senate set to vote on 8 June. Its lower house has passed the law.

All 28 of the EU’s member states need to gain domestic backing from their parliaments before Brussels can join the UN deal.

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Analysts say the early move is unusual, as Hungary has historically sided with Poland and other eastern European states in opposing tougher EU-wide climate laws

But Climate Home understands president János Áder was instrumental in getting lawmakers to sign up quickly.

55 countries covering 55% of global emissions need to ratify the deal before it comes into force.

Budapest is also one of the few EU capitals to have ratified the 2013-2020 extension to the Kyoto Protocol, currently the world’s only legally binding climate deal.

The post Hungary becomes first in EU to approve Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.