We must dramatically increase fossil fuel-free transport to avert a deepening climate crisis.

Globally, transportation causes over a fifth of all carbon emissions and at the current growth rate, this will rise to two-fifths within a decade.

And yet, a concrete target for clean transport is absent from the upcoming UN climate summit, Cop28, in Dubai.

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It is time the EU took the driver’s seat – both by cleaning up its own transportation system and leading the push at Cop28 to get all countries to shift away from fossil-fuel powered vehicles. 

Within Europe, road transport accounts for almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and is increasing.

Heavy-duty vehicles (trucks, vans and buses) are responsible for 28% of those emissions, despite only accounting for 2% of vehicles on the road.

Vehicle emission targets

Next week’s EU Council of Environment Ministers will discuss new emission targets for such vehicles as well as Europe’s negotiating objectives for the upcoming UN climate conference in Dubai.

It will be a first test for the new EU Commissioner for Climate, Maroš Šefčovič, to safeguard an ambitious EU Green Deal as currently the transport sector is a major stumbling block of the EU’s climate and zero pollution objectives for 2030 and 2050.    

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Furthermore, a concrete global goal to significantly lower the use of fossil fuels for the transportation sector is lacking in the international climate negotiations.    

The Council should support a target on doubling the share of fossil-fuel free transport by 2030. To put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C, a multi-solutions mobility strategy is needed; more efficiency in vehicles and systems, a shift to public transport, cycling and innovative urban planning to avoid short rides in the first place, and more electrification.

Going electric

There are three approaches to achieve such ambition:    

First, all global sales of new vehicles need to be electric for buses and two- and three-wheelers by 2030, cars by 2035, and trucks by no later than 2040.

Translating this to the EU means it would need to end the sale of all new trucks and buses with combustion engines by 2035 to reach its own target of climate neutrality by 2050, as heavy-duty vehicles have an average life span of 15 – 18 years.  

The proposal discussed at the upcoming EU Environment Council sets out a CO2 emission reduction target for trucks of 45% by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels) and a 90% reduction for 2040.

These emission targets are significant but fall short of what is needed to put the heavy-duty sector on track with Europe’s climate commitments.

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The European Parliament, as co-legislator, can spearhead a more ambitious clean vehicle amendment later in the year.

Promote alternatives to cars

Second, governments need to bend the curve on the growth of vehicle travel in this decade, by moving more trips to electric public transport, walking, biking, and micro-mobility by 2030.

This will require constructing bicycle networks, dramatically scaling up the quality and provision of public transport and smarter urban planning.

While several EU countries are leading on many of these points, Europe could still do better.

With the EU’s motorization rate growing by 18% between 2010-2020, the car is still often the default option. Metro rails and electric buses emit one-fifth the carbon of a private car while bicycling is inherently fossil fuel free, next to many other benefits such as road safety and a low-cost mode of transportation.

Decarbonising electricity

Third, countries also need to enhance these efforts by tripling renewable energy by 2030 and decarbonising the electricity grid which transport will increasingly rely upon. 

Transport emissions are veering alarmingly off course, demanding immediate action at Cop28, with the EU leading the way by setting an ambitious goal for negotiators in Dubai.

Simultaneously, Europe must intensify its efforts on the home front, aligning its domestic agenda with its climate objectives. The EU Environmental Council must seize this opportunity to act on both fronts. 

Stientje van Veldhoven is vice-president of World Resources Institute and a former minister and state secretary for the environment and infrastructure of the Netherlands 

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Electrifying the car industry took centre stage on “transport day” of the climate summit, in line with UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s slogan for the summit of “coal, cars, cash and trees”. There were also headline events on decarbonising shipping and aviation.

But an announcement on phasing out the internal combustion engine on Wednesday underwhelmed – leading many delegates to question why bikes, buses, trains and walking had not been given higher billing.

While a group of governments and companies signed up to eliminate new car emissions by 2040, the world’s top two automakers and major markets Germany, China and the US were not among them.

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In European cities, choosing a bike over a car for one journey a day cuts an average person’s transport emissions by 67%, according to research by the University of Oxford.

Outside the conference centre, campaigners gathered on their bikes, calling for increased funding in public transport as well as walking and cycling paths.

How much focus will there be today on #transport day at #COP26 on #bikes #cycling #mobility shift #publictransport #buses #trains or will it be all about #cars? We can’t just replace petrol/diesel cars with #ElectricVehicles pic.twitter.com/A29yfKKXN8

— Philippa Nuttall (@PhilippaNuttall) November 10, 2021

“I’m genuinely shocked by the absence of active travel in the COP26 transport discussions. Decarbonising road transport is a key part in tackling the climate crisis. We need fewer motor vehicles and those we do have, need to be cleaner/greener,” Will Norman, the mayor of London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said on Twitter.

“So unbelievably disappointing and elitist to present EV cars as the solution,” tweeted Sophie Eastwood.

Climate scientist Richard Betts tweeted in praise of the host city’s hire bike scheme and said better infrastructure was needed to make cycling an easier choice.

Public transport must double in cities over the next decade to meet the 1.5C target, according to analysis by C40 cities published on Wednesday.

Daniel Firth, transport and urban planning director at C40 Cities, told Climate Home News: “If we stopped the sale of fossil fuel vehicles tomorrow it would take 15-20 years to have 100% [zero emission vehicles] because of the time it takes to change the whole fleet. So it would take too long if that was our only strategy. Whereas we could start putting in bike lanes and bus lanes tomorrow.”

https://twitter.com/bikingbotanist/status/1458385857338122242

“It’s a missed opportunity,” Henk Swarttouw, president of the European Cyclists’ Federation, told Climate Home News. “Cycling is low-tech, low-cost and low-investment and provides quick climate wins,” he said.

“At the political level, leaders must confirm that the solution to reducing emissions needs to be a package that includes the electrification of vehicles, public transport and cycling,” Swarttouw said. “It’s not either or.”

The coronavirus pandemic led to a huge surge in cycling. In the UK, miles cycled per person increased by 62% during 2020, the highest levels since 2002. Each kilometre travelled by bike instead of car saves an average of 150 grams of CO2 emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme. “You could reach half a tonne over the year,” said Swarttouw.

Transport week at #COP26 so I think it’s time we started talking VERY LOUDLY about this wonderful crisis-beating machine and what it can give us all https://t.co/VCPDFms7mt

— Chris Boardman CBE (@Chris_Boardman) November 8, 2021

Increasing investment in green public transport, cycling and walking is part of the UK government’s 10-point plan for a “green industrial revolution, along with accelerating a shift to zero emissions vehicles. A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency had not responded to Climate Home’s questions at time of publication.

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But things did not go according to plan. First, Iskan crashed one electric sports car into a cliff on a test drive. Then one of his lead engineers, Dasep Ahmadi, was sentenced to seven years in prison for wasting state money, after his EVs were judged not fit for the road.

For several years afters this conviction, Indonesia’s entrepreneurs were too scared to go near the industry, leaving drivers with a choice between polluting domestic models or expensive imported EVs.

“After [Ahmadi’s] case, the research programme relatively stopped”, said Agus Purwadi, an EV researcher at Indonesia’s prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology.

Transport accounts for some 28% of Indonesia’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution kills an estimated 120,000 Indonesians a year. Although most Indonesians still get around by motorbike, demand for cars is booming, particularly in major cities. Just 0.15% of cars sold in Indonesia in 2020 were electric.

“If you walk in [Jakarta] for half an hour you will feel the pollution from the vehicles,” said Julius Adiatma, a Jakarta-based EV researcher at the Institute for Essential Services Reform. “You can see the smoke, from the breathing you can feel it, the smell of the air is not fresh”.

This week, the International Energy Agency said that, if the world is to reach net zero emissions by 2050, then 60% of global car sales should be electric by 2030. Indonesia has a long way to go.

Iskan came to prominence as the football-mad editor of the Java Post in the 1980s, with a reputation for humility and a youthful demeanour which he attributes to the transplant of a 21-year old’s liver.

He gained popularity by prioritising Indonesian, not foreign, football in his newspapers. He paid for the food of his local team’s fans when they travelled to Jakarta for games – and damages when they smashed up trains.

In 2011, after two years running the state electricity company, Iskan was appointed as minister of state enterprises and made it his mission to sponsor the development of a cheap electric vehicle.

One of the men he turned to was 46-year old Dasep Ahmadi. Raised by his mechanic father, Ahmadi had studied mechanical engineering at Indonesia’s prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology and on a scholarship in Germany. He had worked at big car companies and won a national robot-building competition.

In 1998, with southeast Asia shattered by the financial crisis, Ahmadi left a cushy job at Astra to start his own business providing motorbike testing equipment. When Iskan was looking for an electric car builder, his name came up.

Although he admits he once felt “very embarrassed” about driving an electric car, Iskan took such a personal interest that he insisted on test driving the prototype cars himself.

While driving a group of journalists around one of Jakarta’s busiest roundabouts in Ahmadi’s bright green Evina, the car broke down. In a later test drive, it failed to make it up the hill to Bandung.

It could, and did, get worse. While Iskan and one of his engineers were test driving a sporty red electric car at around 70km an hour, he swerved off the road, later blaming brake failure.

The prototype Tuxuci, which had been developed at Iskan’s request, crashed into an electricity pylon, wrecking the car. The minister emerged unscathed: “Not even blisters,” he said. He claimed he would rather be used as a guinea pig for new technology than let the general public take the risk.

https://twitter.com/agusjurnalis/status/287541326097031169

The incident did not put him off electric vehicles. A few months later, Iskan persuaded three state-owned enterprises to sponsor the construction of sixteen of Ahmadi’s electric vehicles to ferry world leaders around the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in Bali.

The cars were supposed to advertise the new Indonesia to visiting bigshots like Xi Jinping and John Kerry. They were home-made, modern and (both literally and figuratively) green.

But they never made it to the summit. The attorney general’s office later said their brakes were too strong, their rims too wide, their engines over-heated when they tried to go uphill and they were too similar to the Toyota Alphard.

Prosecutors said Ahmadi’s car was too similar to the Toyota Alphard. (Photo: M93/Wikimedia)

The cars were donated to Indonesian universities to help in their research. In most countries, this would be classed as a promising start or, at worst, a failed experiment. Tesla, the pioneering American company founded by Elon Musk, took five years to release its first car.

But Indonesia has a law against causing kerugian negara, a financial loss to the nation. So, after a change in government, Ahmadi was arrested and detained at the attorney general’s office in July 2015.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of RP200m ($14,000). Iskan, now an ex-minister, was also questioned by investigators and his old ministry office was raided although he was not convicted.

Ahmadi and his lawyer Vidi Galenso argued the conviction was unfair. At court, Ahmadi told reporters: “We do our best, if there are still shortcomings, that’s normal. But, if this is called a crime, I don’t accept it.” His lawyer Vidi Galenso added: “In research, failure cannot be considered wrongdoing”.

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Ahmadi was supported by prominent commentators too. Indonesian economist Faisal Basri said it would be ridiculous if those behind every project sponsored by state companies were prosecuted for poor performance.

Should the organisers of the Java Jazz festival, which is sponsored by a state bank, be prosecuted if no one turns up to hear the music? Basri asked.

Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa) analyst Elrika Hamdi said several CEOs of state-owned companies had been convicted of corruption “when they were simply making wrong or slightly off-track business decisions”.

“Making a mistake on business decisions should not be equal to corruption,” she said. “But when you do it in a [state owned company], that means (in the Indonesian legal system) you’re causing losses for the state, and that translates to corruption.”

Purwadi suggested there was a political motivation for Ahmadi and Iskan’s persecution. After Joko Widodo was elected president in 2014, Iskan was an ex-minister from an opposition party and Ahmadi was an opposition candidate for the West Java regional parliament.

The effects of Ahmadi’s conviction went beyond the engineer himself. Fear of the same fate, plus the drying up of research funding, put off engineers from trying to develop Indonesia’s answer to Tesla.

A 2018 report by the Jakarta-based Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) found that Indonesia was “still at a very early stage of EV diffusion” and the prospects for EV adoption were “dismal”. EVs were 2-3 times more expensive than fossil fuelled cars, it said, largely because they had to be imported and were subject to import duties.

https://twitter.com/MacoanaBawalipu/status/768824487710117889

Ahmadi’s Indonesian EV was supposed to be priced at IDR 200-300m ($14-21,000) while  Nissan, Hyundai and Toyota EVs cost in the region of IDR 400-700m ($28-49,000).

Putra Adhiguna, an Indonesian energy analyst at Ieefa, said: “The case created a bad precedent for inventors… it tarnished some of the grand ambition.”

To encourage the kind of domestic EV industry that India, China and Malaysia have the government needs to support the industry for decades, he said.

According to Adiatma, the government has taken some measures to address the price difference between electric and fossil fuel cars but these have not gone far enough.

In 2019, the government introduced measures to encourage investment in electric vehicles and battery manufacturing. Despite this, and even if foreign companies avoid import taxes by manufacturing their EVs in Indonesia, Adiatma said an EV would still cost over $30,000 compared to $10-20,000 for a conventional car.

“We need to do something with the conventional cars to make electric cars competitive,” Adiatma said. “The conventional car price is too low”. He proposes a carbon or luxury tax on conventional cars and raising the price of fuel, which state-owned oil company Pertamina regulates.

While Indonesia’s answer to Elon Musk languishes in prison, any government initiative on EVs is greeted with a chorus of scepticism on social media.

Below, in response to president Joko Widodo praising a student EV project, a Twitter user writes: “Hopefully it doesn’t have the same fate as Dasep Ahmadi’s electric car.”

Smoga tidak bernasib seperti mobil listrik Dasep Ahmadi pic.twitter.com/cT6QwRjvAZ

— Abuzhafir (@budiagani) December 20, 2017

In 2019, the government posted a “fact check”, claiming that an article titled “only in Indonesia, electric car creator imprisoned for 7 years” was “disinformation”. But it did not refute the basic facts of the case.

Indonesian ministers are weighing up scenarios for reaching net zero emissions between 2045 and 2070 and the country’s biggest utility has pledged to stop building new coal plants.

As the country’s electricity system gets greener, the climate benefits of EVs increase. IESR’s research found that an ambitious EV transition could do 6% of the emissions reduction necessary to change a 3C global warming trajectory to 1.5C.

Sadly for Indonesia though, the companies who cash in on this EV transition are likely to be foreign giants like Hyundai and the price of these foreign cars will mean the transition is slower than the melting polar ice caps and Indonesian lungs would like.

The post With Indonesia’s answer to Elon Musk in jail, electric vehicles are going nowhere appeared first on Climate Home News.

Data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI), a London-based price reporting agency, predicts that by 2030 there will be at least 16 plants operating across the continent with a total annual production capacity of 446 GWh.

This would make the region the second largest producer of lithium ion batteries after China.

“We have seen some issues with cell producers in Europe struggling to ramp cell production in new facilities to meet demand, but in terms of construction timelines the plants to date have remained on schedule,” said Caspar Rawles, head of price assessments at BMI.

“The virus this year may have slightly pushed back some schedules but there doesn’t seem to be any significant issues so far.”

Norway sets electric car record as battery autos least dented by Covid-19 crisis

The market analysts forecast that by 2030 European demand will increase to over 300 GWh of cells a year, well below the expected capacity plans.

This spells good news for the ever-growing electric vehicle industry and for the fight against climate change. A recent study showed that plug-in vehicles emit less greenhouses gases than petrol and diesel in all but the most coal-intensive electricity markets.

So far, five gigafactories are operating in the region. Plants like LG Chem in Poland and SK Innovation in Hungary take advantage of relatively low production costs in eastern Europe.

Germany leads the way for the future of European battery production capacity, with plans to reach more than 200 GWh by the end of the decade; almost half of the continent’s proposed total.

“Whilst this is one of the more expensive regions in Europe in terms of labour and land costs, the German government has a large auto industry and if it fails to attract cell production it will risk significant job losses,” said Rawles.

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Various incentives have been put in place in Germany, such as a €9,000 subsidy for purchasing a fully electric vehicle priced up to €40,000 as part of the nationwide Umweltbonus programme.

Many other European nations have similar incentives to align with objectives set out in the Paris Agreement.

Daimler, CATL, and BMZ are among a growing list of companies with solid plans to establish gigafactories in Germany, making it the central hub for Europe’s contribution to the global battery race.

Swedish battery maker Northvolt, which is planning to establish one of the region’s largest factories, has teamed up with car manufacturer Volkswagen to build an additional plant in Germany.

This will form part of the European Battery Union, a joint venture led by the two companies to research, develop, and implement battery technology in several EU member states.

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At the end of last year Elon Musk revealed he had chosen Germany as the home of Tesla’s newest facility over the UK – a decision he said was due to uncertainties around Brexit.

More recently it was reported that the firm was in talks with the British government and considering a potential site in south-west England.

“The government is working with industry to help make the UK the location of choice to develop world-class electric vehicle technologies,” a press officer from the Department for International Trade told Climate Home.

“The Department For International Trade is working closely with partners to scope out sites for new investment into electric vehicle research, development and manufacturing across the UK,” she added.

Although the tech giant has been the face of the electric vehicle movement with its CEO having coined the term ‘gigafactory’, Tesla, as well as the entire European continent, still only contributes a small amount to global battery capacity output.

Of the 142 large-scale battery plants worldwide, 109 are in China – a capacity share of more than 70%.

Models suggest that the country will maintain its share over the next 10 years to reach a total manufacturing capacity of 1,887 GWh, four times what Europe is expected to produce in the same time frame.

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Worldwide, car sales have plunged in 2020 but government measures to promote a greening of the auto industry in nations from China to France have made electric cars a relative bright spot in the market.

Shares in US electric car marker Tesla shares hit a record high on Wednesday at $1,333 and it overtook Toyota as the world’s most valuable carmaker.

In Norway, the global electric car leader thanks to huge tax breaks, low road tolls and free parking, sales of battery electric cars edged up to 48% of all new car registrations from January to the end of June, from 45% in the same period of 2019 and 42% in all of 2019.

Data from the independent Norwegian Road Federation showed it was the best percentage share for battery electric vehicles in a half-year even though total sales were hit by lockdowns to slow the spread of Covid-19.

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Overall car sales in Norway crashed 24.3% compared to the same period of 2019 to 59,224, while sales of electric battery electric cars fell by a less steep 19%. The electric Audi e-tron was the most sold car.

Norway is by far the world’s biggest market by percentage for electric car sales, ahead of Iceland and the Netherlands and Sweden. Worldwide, electric cars make up about 3% of new cars, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That figure includes plug-in hybrids, which are omitted from the Norwegian numbers.

The Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, which represents electric car owners, said that sales were lagging a parliamentary goal that all new cars sold should be zero emissions by 2025.

“To be on track for the 2025 goal the share of electric cars should be well above 50 percent by the end of the year. That is still possible but more and more difficult,” deputy leader Petter Haugneland told Climate Home News.

“It’s been a setback, hopefully it will be short term.” Amid big economic uncertainties, he  said it was hard to tell how factors such as lower oil prices affected sales.

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Norway’s goal is earlier than targets set in other countries such as Britain in 2035 or France in 2040 as part of efforts to step up action to slow climate change under the Paris Agreement.

The IEA, in a report last month based on data to the end of April, estimated that the global passenger car market would contract by 15% this year compared to 2019, while sales of electric vehicles (EVs) would be roughly stable at 2019 levels.

“The EV market has been less impacted than the overall car market… and there have been additional measures to stimulate EVs, for instance in France and Germany,” Marine Gorner, an energy and transport analyst at the IEA who was one of the authors of the report, told CHN.

She said global car sales trends since April broadly confirmed the report’s findings. But the outlook was still highly uncertain – second waves of the virus and lockdowns would hit sales, as could new policy measures.

In 2019, the IEA said the share of electric cars rose in all nations except Japan, South Korea and the United States. US President Donald Trump, who favours the fossil fuel industry, is relaxing auto emission standards.

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So far, many governments were backing electric vehicles, Gorner said.

China, for instance, the biggest overall market with 47% of 7.2 million electric cars on the roads, extended an exemption of new electric vehicles from a 10% purchase tax until 2022.

France, from June, introduced huge subsidies under which a buyer could get up to €12,000 discount for buying a new Renault Zoe while scrapping an old petrol car, reducing the purchase cost to €20,000 from €32,000.

Electric car sales in Europe this year were also boosted by the entry into force of new carbon emission standards for each manufacturer’s fleet, forcing a shift away from selling big, more profitable  and higher polluting petrol SUVs.

In early 2020, more than 7% of cars sold in the European Union had a plug, double rates in 2019, said Julia Poliscanova, Senior Director, Vehicles and Emobility, at Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment.

The outlook was unclear but the experience of lockdowns might even help sales of less polluting cars.

“People saw during the lockdowns how great it is to live in cities with clean air,” she told CHN. “That’s also driving awareness.”

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The lockdown emptied the roads and cleared the skies over the world’s largest and most polluted cities. It opened a window on what cleaner cities could look, sound and smell like.

At its peak in early April, the slowdown of road, rail and maritime transport contributed the largest drop in global emissions – just under half of a 17% daily fall in CO2 emissions, according to a study published last month in Nature.

Now restrictions are lifting, while the risk of infection puts people off public transport, a shift to private cars threatens to send emissions rocketing. Global emissions have already bounced back to just 5% below pre-pandemic daily levels.

City authorities have a challenge to make sure commuters can travel to work at a safe distance from each other.

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Many mayors have promised to rebuild greener and fairer. From Mexico City to London and Bogota to Milan, plans for hundreds of kilometres of new bike lanes have been announced – strengthening a pre-pandemic movement to reduce car dominance.

Nearly 40 members of C40, a network of major cities working to address climate change, committed to use the recovery to drive investments in “excellent public services” and increasing community resilience against future threats, including climate change.

This will require a holistic approach, going much further than a few cycle lanes.

“Cycle lanes shouldn’t be an end in themselves – they are a means to live differently,” Carlos Moreno, scientific director of the Entrepreneurship, Territory, Innovation chair at Sorbonne University in Paris and a planning advisor to mayor Anne Hidalgo, told Climate Home News.

Moreno believes the transformation of cities needs to align with a pathway to holding global warming to 1.5C, the tougher target of the Paris Agreement. To achieve that, the best available science says global emissions need to nearly halve by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

“We have 10 years to radically transform our cities,” he said.

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To live within today’s climate, biodiversity and public health constraints, Moreno argues for an overhaul of urban design to bring essential services closer to people’s homes. People get around by foot or cycle and streets are redesigned not merely as places of transit but as “living spaces”.

The pandemic compelled local authorities in densely populated areas to reclaim streets for public use: entire road sections were pedestrianised in Tel Aviv, pavements enlarged in Auckland, parking spaces became bikes lanes in Tirana, and restaurants were encouraged to use outdoor spaces for dining in Vilnius.

Janette Sadik-Khan, former transport commissioner for New York city, said the move would have been considered  “almost revolutionary” a decade ago.

“This is a historic moment when cities can change course,” she wrote in a report by the National Association of City Transportation Officials which she chairs. “Empty lanes… form the outline of the future cities we need to build,” she said.

While there is clear public support for policies that would maintain air quality improvements, private cars are still perceived as the Covid-safe transport option.

“It would be naïve to think the pandemic is going to lead to the death of the car, in a context where public transport is associated with risk,” said Tim Schwanen, director of the Transport Studies Unit at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.

Comment: Coronavirus shows why we need an economy designed for wellbeing

The swing back to private cars is a serious concern, he told CHN. In the absence of holistic transport policies, it could cause emissions to rebound sharply.

A spike in air pollution would aggravate any future respiratory pandemic. Researchers established a link between long-term exposure to PM2.5 air pollution, much of which comes from diesel cars, and a higher death rate from Covid-19.

Yet in Wuhan, ground zero for the pandemic, car sales boomed to unprecedented levels when the city reopened after being sealed off for weeks.

An Ipsos survey in March found 66% of Chinese respondents used private cars after lockdown, compared with 34% before the outbreak. Use of buses and public transit dropped from 56% to 24%.

The study also found an uptake in people’s intention to buy a car – a trend so stark it is likely to foreshadow a similar rise in other parts of the world, Schwanen said. Early indications suggest this could already be happening.

Data published by Apple Maps on searches for directions to travel by car shows notable increases compared with volumes recorded on 13 January – a 16% rise in the US and 14% in Germany.

“Cities cannot do without public transport. It’s absolutely vital that it is brought back to some forms of normality within the constraints of public health,” Schwanen said.

“There’s no reopening cities w/o reopening transit,” tweeted Sadik-Khan in response to guidance to employers by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggesting incentives for staff to drive private cars to work.

“Let them drive cars.”

The CDC telling workers to drive alone assumes that everyone owns a car and that cities can handle the traffic.

This is a fever dream.

There’s no reopening cities w/o reopening transit. Ruling it out doesn’t make it safer. https://t.co/CduIy87kma

— Janette Sadik-Khan (@JSadikKhan) May 30, 2020

The document sparked considerable backlash, with University of British Columbia urban planning professor Lawrence Frank telling CNBC: “Promoting private vehicle use as public health strategy is like prescribing sugar to reduce tooth decay.”

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There are some positive signs the recovery to Covid-19 could help accelerate the transition to low-carbon transport.

Germany’s economic rescue package, which includes €5.9billion to incentivise electric vehicles and supporting infrastructure, was hailed as a “watershed moment” by local media. Notably, the government snubbed the powerful carmaker lobby’s calls to extend a buyer’s premium to petrol and diesel cars.

The UK, which is presiding over next year’s UN climate talks, has made the move to zero-carbon road transport one of five key themes for Cop26.

Electric cars are not the whole answer. While they pollute less than fossil fuelled cars, they take up the same amount of space, causing congestion.

Yet without government intervention, it could take years for public transport usage to resume to pre-pandemic levels, as confidence in the safety of the networks has eroded, Mike Lydon, of the urban planning firm Street Plans, told CHN.

“Political leaders need really strong messaging about the reality and safety of using public transport,” he said. “A lot of people assume it’s a big risk to take public transport but maybe it’s not as big a risk as they think.”

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The emphasis on cycling facilities serves a vocal constituency that is “middle class, young and mostly white,” Schwanen said. This risks failing to cater for more vulnerable communities.

“We are far from doing really inclusive transport planning. Given the speed at which things are taking place, this is not given the thought and attention needed,” he added.

It is a political issue.

In the US, calls to “defund the police” are gaining ground. A rallying cry at “black lives matter” protests, it reflects the fact that policing has come to dominate city budgets. Proponents argue public safety would be better served by investment in community-based services, which could include urban redevelopment.

In Paris, the transformation of urban mobility has become a key issue in this year’s mayoral election.

Moreno, of the Sorbonne University, has a vision of a capital where people can access all their needs, including schools, workplaces, supermarkets, hospitals, green spaces, culture and sports facilities, within 15 minutes of their home by walking or cycling.

La #VilleDuQuartDHeure, c’est quoi ? C’est la ville des proximités où l’on trouve tout ce dont on a besoin à moins de 15 minutes de chez soi. C’est la condition de la transformation écologique de la ville, tout en améliorant la vie quotidienne des Parisiens. #Hidalgo2020 pic.twitter.com/lcQbPAjdxj

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) January 21, 2020

School playgrounds are open at the weekend as green spaces, every street includes large pavements, cycle lanes and vegetation with reduced space for cars and water fountains are used to cool down the city on increasingly hot days caused by global heating.

Mayor Hidalgo made the ambitious plan the backbone of her re-election campaign, describing it as “the condition for the city’s ecological transition”. The idea has inspired other cities including Melbourne, Vancouver and Milan to develop similar proposals.

“Environmental and health issues need to be addressed at the local level,” Hidalgo said during an online event on the city’s recovery last month. “In this vision for a 15-minute city, I believe there is a solution for tomorrow.”

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As trillions of dollars pour into the global economy to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19, resounding calls have been made to governments and financial institutions to ensure longer term climate action is a condition for relief.

With carbon-intensive sectors lining up for economic support to protect the jobs of millions of people, calls are also intensifying for workers to benefit over corporations.

In a statement, G20 countries said they were injecting more than $5 trillion into the global economy to counteract the social, economic and financial impacts of the pandemic. The virus has killed more than 24,000 people worldwide.

In the US, the Senate unanimously passed a gigantic $2-trillion bill aimed at helping workers and industries impacted by the rapid economic slowdown. This includes a $500 billion fund to help hard-hit industries and more than $60 billion for airlines with some strings attached.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi praised Democrats’ efforts to “flip the bill over” from a “corporate trickle-down Republican version to bubble-up workers first, families first legislation” with conditions that money given to the airlines for example “are given to the workers directly”.

In Canada, academics, labour and environmental organisations have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration that any bailout to the oil and gas sector should benefit the workers, not the corporations, and that the economic stimulus should be green.

In Europe, there are clear calls for any economic stimulus package to be consistent with the continent’s pledge to become climate-neutral by 2050 and pinned to the Green Deal framework.

While many agree the pandemic has opened a window to accelerate the transition to a green economy, the question of timing remains key.

As governments scramble to reinforce health services to save lives and put cash in the hands of hard-hit families and businesses, some analysts warn the immediate crisis will need to pass before investments can be directed to the clean energy transition. When and how this happens could determine climate action for years to come.

Eyes in the sky 

Scientists at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii are monitoring the atmosphere for signs the economic slowdown linked to the coronavirus pandemic could reduce the rise in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

Alister Doyle spoke to Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling, the founder of the Keeling Curve, which has been tracking increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since 1958.

“There has never been an economic shock like this in the whole history of the curve,” he said.

This month, the data hints at a slight slowdown in the rate of CO2 rise. But the scientists will need more time to know whether this possible trend is linked to the pandemic.

‘Baby steps’ 

Russia has published draft plans to slightly toughen its 2030 climate targets that would still allow its emissions to rise in the next decade.

The UN is demanding countries make deep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the scientific findings to achieve the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

But the world’s fifth biggest emitter projected its emissions would rise in coming years to 67% of its 1990 level by 2030 – a slight improvement on its current 75% target. Russia’s emissions plunged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and are still about half the levels they were in 1990.

Environmental NGOs have criticised the plan as inadequate in a time of climate crisis. “It’s only baby steps,” said Vladimir Chuprov, of Greenpeace in Moscow.

Electric drive 

Electric cars are a greener alternative to petrol and diesel vehicles in almost every part of the world.

Researchers have found that plug-in cars emit less greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime than other vehicles, even when including the mining of metals for batteries, the manufacturing process and scraping.

This is true everywhere but in countries where the electricity used to recharge electric vehicles is generated from coal-fired power plants, the study found, noting blackspots in India, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria.

This week’s top stories

• Coronavirus: in Hawaii’s air, scientists seek signs of economic shock on CO2 levels
• Russia’s plans to tighten 2030 climate goal criticised as ‘baby steps’
• Electric cars help limit climate change despite blackspots in India, Poland
• Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

And in climate conversations

• Coronavirus pandemic shows we need new ways to look after the Earth and each other
• From summits to stimulus: Nature-based solutions can help

The post Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Quoting unnamed sources, the Sunday edition of the Bild tabloid said it was “99% sure” Gabriel would get the job. “Save for insurmountable, last-minute differences, he will become the new president,” the source said.

Gabriel, a former leader of the Social Democrats party (SPD) who served as foreign minister, is in competition with another politician from the right-wing Christian Democrats, Hildegard Müller, for the role replacing former Ford CEO, Bernhard Mattes, according to reports. The salary is estimated upwards of €600,000 ($666,000) per year – double Chancellor Angela Merkel’s earn.

The news is the latest twist in the long-running entanglement between Germany’s political class and its influential car manufacturing sector, which accounts for around 830,000 jobs and is worth $444 billions.

Green Climate Fund replenishment fails to fill hole left by Trump’s US

According to AFP, the car industry became disgruntled over Mattes’ lack of political connections and poor defence of the sector following revelations in 2015 that flagship German car-maker Volkswagen had cheated emissions tests, known as the Dieselgate scandal.

Gabriel was a member of Volkswagen’s supervisory board from 1999 to 2003 while he was premier of the northwestern state of Lower Saxony. The state still owns a stake in the company and controls 20% of the voting rights. 

There is a long tradition of top German government officials either coming from the industry or going to work there.

Joachim Koschnicke, a former chief lobbyist for the car maker Opel, led Merkel’s 2017 re-election campaign, while Michael Jansen and Thomas Steg, who served as Merkel’s federal office director and deputy government speaker, worked as a senior Volkswagen lobbyist.

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“For many years, the car industry has used its grip over the German government to bend legislation in its favour,” Pia Eberhardt, a researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, told Climate Home News.

“Gabriel’s knowledge and extensive contacts to the German political elite will be extremely valuable for the industry’s future lobby battles, whether they will be about lowering CO2 emissions to fight climate change or about more stringent testing requirements to prevent the industry from cheating like in the Dieselgate saga,” Eberhardt said.

Contacted by CHN, the SPD declined to comment on Gabriel’s “future career … [given that he] is no longer part of the executive board of the SPD.”

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In a statement, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that France exceeded nitrogen dioxide levels, which are associated with exhaust from diesel engines, in twelve zones.

The country must now comply with EU standards without delay, with failure to do so exposing it to fines by the European Commission.

The ruling by the ECJ, which makes France the third EU state to be condemned by the court for exceeding pollution limits alongside Bulgaria and Poland, is the latest in a spree of judicial actions by the European Commission against member states failing to comply with air quality standards.

Emmanuel Macron’s war on climate activism

Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania and the UK also face legal action for exceeding emission limits on nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. Germany, Italy and Luxembourg are also grappling with cases for allowing car manufacturers to toy with their emissions. The ECJ has yet to give out a verdict on these.

Environmental campaigners welcomed the decision.

“The condemnation is excellent news, which we impatiently awaited,” Olivier Blond. head of Respire, a French association campaigning for clean air, told Climate Home News. “I hope that this will incite the government to finally take the necessary measures. We particularly need to fight against diesel vehicles: these are the biggest nitrogen dioxide emitters.”

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Jens Müller, air quality manager at Transport & Environment, said: “For years the French government has failed to tackle toxic air pollution, and today’s ruling is the strongest possible decision to finally force them to act. Road transport is the main source of pollution in most European cities and the only solution is to ban dirty cars and replace them with fewer and zero-emission vehicles.”

“Europe at its best has won legal action against France at its worst to enforce nitrogen dioxide laws. UK is next in the dock,” Simon Birkett, CEO of Clean Air London, said in a tweet.

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Police are already investigating a group calling itself Rocks in the Gearbox after more than 40 luxury vehicles were vandalised at a car dealership in Kronberg on the outskirts of Frankfurt earlier this week, adding to a string of anti-auto protests.

Ahead of the car show, Germany’s auto industry association the VDA has sought to defuse anti-car sentiment by inviting environmental activists from Greenpeace, Deutsche Umwelthilfe to a panel discussion in Berlin on 5 September along with executives from Daimler and BMW and the VDA, to debate the climate crisis and mobility of the future.

The Frankfurt show, known as the IAA, is due to take place from 12 to 22 September.

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“We are in close contact with the security authorities just as we are at every IAA. Entrance controls will be tightened, given that there may be spontaneous rioting at the show,” VDA spokesman Eckehart Rotter told Reuters.

Environmental groups have appealed to the public to join protests in Frankfurt on 14 September, prompting the VDA to warn car show visitors to expect longer queues at security checkpoints.

Police in Wiesbaden on Thursday said they were investigating Rocks in the Gearbox after the group claimed responsibility for vandalising the Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin vehicles at the car dealership on Monday.

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Windshields and windows, hoods and panels were smashed with metal objects and the two glass doors at the car dealership were broken, a spokesman for the Wiesbaden police told Reuters.

“They used hammers and crowbars and we are investigating a group claiming responsibility,” the spokesman said.

Rocks in the Gearbox released a statement on Monday saying: “In two weeks Frankfurt will once again launch a propaganda show where the outmoded, climate and environment destroying transportation system is hyped.”

“We want to expose this show for what it really is: profits made on the backs of the poorest and at the expense of future generations… We think it is time to throw rocks into the gearbox of capitalist and automotive profit logic.”

The statement called for more scrutiny of working conditions in related industries, including freight, cotton and rubber production as well as for people mining rare earths for electric car batteries and electronics.

Earlier in August, climate activists had occupied railway lines supplying Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg factory, according to police in Wolfsburg-Helmstedt.

“We have opened a probe investigating potentially dangerous disruption of rail and shipping transportation,” a police spokesman told Reuters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finland puts new climate target top of EU leadership agenda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaking only a week after New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced his own framework climate legislation, Garcetti presented plans to revolutionise local car culture and green the city’s buildings, which together account for three-quarters of LA’s emissions.

“Los Angeles needs to lead, but the whole world needs to act. This plan gives us a fighting chance,” Garcetti told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s sort of a ‘greenprint’ for every other city in the country and the world, hopefully.”

The legislation, which builds upon a previous 2015 sustainability plan, calls on the city to hike its percentage of zero emission vehicles from 1.4% in 2018 to 25% by 2025, 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2050. To do this, the City Town Hall intends to raise its number of publicly available electric-vehicle chargers from 2,100 to 28,000.

New York City bans inefficient glass skyscrapers, WA state to end coal

Mass transit expansion will also lower the number of miles spent in cars, 2000 less per year for the average driver by the mid-2030s.

Garcetti proposes to launch a regional advocacy campaign in 2021 to encourage car-sharing and inspire residents to walk as much as possible by making pathways more safe and promoting pedestrian-friendly design. The plan also calls to expand subway and light-rail, a year after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gave the go ahead to a line snaking through the East Valley. By 2028, every resident ought to be able to access “high-quality mobility options within a 10-minute walk from home”. All buses will be electric by 2030, the plan claims.

Garcetti said he was aware that the plan was bound to face opposition, quipping that Angelinos “like the way they suffer in their single-passenger, stuck-in-traffic, gas-guzzling cars.”

The mayor also pledged to equip the entire building stock with zero-emission technologies by 2050, achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.

The package, which Garcetti calls LA’s Green New Deal, also takes aim at social inequality the plan. Committing to create 300,000 green jobs by 2035, and 400,000 green jobs by 2050. The City Town Hall said it would attract $750 million of private investment by 2025, and $2 billion by 2030.

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Popularized by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the term Green New Deal is rapidly catching on in American politics.

But climate activists from the Sunrise Movement Los Angeles said that the “plan for net-zero emissions by 2050” was “not a Green New Deal”.

“By the year 2030, we will reach a “point of no return” -  wherein planetary feedback loops driven by carbon emissions will propel beyond our control,” the group wrote on Medium on Monday. “Our city is on the brink of destruction, and it seems as if no one is listening. Our generation’s future, as well as the future of Los Angeles and of the world, depends on us reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This is not a goal  –  it is a deadline.”

The plan meant that Los Angeles was “on track to be twenty years too late”, the group said.

Instead, the group urged Garcetti to “stay true” to the Green New Deal resolution submitted by councilmember Nury Martinez in April, which urges the city to “create a Green New Deal that mirrors the principles and priorities of the national resolution”.

In contrast, the national resolution sets out to radically decarbonize the US economy through a series of 10-year goals. The nation would among others aim to get 100% of its power through renewable energy by 2030.

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Without drastic action half of the world’s largest automakers will miss Europe’s 2021 standards for CO2 emissions. The penalties for failure could lead to credit downgrades, the ratings agency warned.

By 2021, manufacturers’ average car will need to emit a maximum of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre, versus 118.5g in 2017. Manufacturers have the choice of how to achieve this, with some focusing on hybrids while others are betting heavily on fully-electric vehicles.

But companies are lagging far behind the looming standards. For most automakers, more than half of their new cars breach the 2021 standards. This includes Renault-Nissan, Volvo, Fiat Chrysler, Hyundai, BMW, Daimler AG, Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and Jaguar.

NGO ignored warnings about bullying boss, before and after tragedy

The report’s most optimistic scenario, under which makers push a swift transition, still predicts that half the manufacturers could rack up a cumulative €2.4 billion in penalties for failing to comply. The worst case scenario could see the industry pay up to €11.2 billion in fines.

“The rapid transition scenario should be feasible for most companies,” Moody’s said.

The credit rating agency found a shift away from buying diesel cars had made the transition harder. Diesel cars release less carbon dioxide than petrol vehicles. But Europeans have deserted the fuel following the revelations in 2015 that Volkswagen and other automakers had tampered with its engines to meet emission standards during laboratory testing. Between 2017 and 2018, sales of diesel-powered cars fell from 44% of new registered cars in Europe to 36%, down a peak of 56% in 2011.

Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, Ford and Hyundai-Kia lag most behind their 2021 targets. Accordingly, they are most at risk of large fines, said Moody’s.

“These fines would be credit negative for the companies,” the report concluded.

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A spokesperson for the agency said ratings assessments took into account “how advanced the company is in developing ‘alternative fuel vehicles'”. This can work in a company’s favour too.

“We also referred to CO2 performance in a recent rating action on Peugeot – the company’s plans to comply were seen as a positive if they can be delivered,” the spokesperson said.

Boosted by its development of battery-assisted hybrids, Toyota emerged as the only company on track to meet EU targets.

The market threats do not limit themselves to Europe, the report noted, with the US and Chinese governments also pushing for electrification. In the US, car manufacturers get a $2,500 to $7,500 subsidy in the form of a tax credit for consumers for their first 200,000 electric vehicle sales, while sales of pure-battery, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars skyrocketed by 138% in January in China on the back of generous subsidies. Together with Europe, the US and China account for about three quarters of light vehicle sales.

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A spokesperson for the UK car lobby, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said the “industry is committed to a low carbon future but the anti-diesel agenda and slower than hoped take-up of electric vehicles is now jeopardising industry efforts to meet the most challenging CO2 targets in the world for 2021”.

Cuts to incentives to buying greener cars in the UK, such as plug-in hybrids, did not help the industry cut emissions, the spokesperson said.

“We need policies that encourage rather than confuse, which means a consistent approach to incentives and tax, and greater investment in charging infrastructure. This will be critical to meeting targets and avoiding crippling fines, which will only hinder industry’s ability to invest in future technologies,” said the spokesperson.

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The new rules will define which fuels can be counted toward EU renewable energy targets. Biofuels that indirectly lead to changes in land use and higher greenhouse gas emissions will be excluded by 2023.

EU commissioners will discuss the legally-binding act in a meeting on Wednesday, commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said. It comes a few days after the 1 February due date. If it is adopted, the European Parliament and member countries will have two months to give any objections before it’s finalised.

If the commission chooses tough criteria could significantly limit one of Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s biggest exports – palm oil.

World’s three biggest rainforests face year of precarious politics

The Indonesian and Malaysian governments and industries have long criticised the EU’s push to tighten its biofuels criteria.

“The proposed ban is clearly an act of discrimination,” Malaysian foreign affairs minister Saifuddin Abdullah said in a statement in January. “Malaysia is committed to producing sustainable palm oil … every drop of palm oil produced in Malaysia will be certified sustainable by 2020.”

Jakarta, meanwhile, plans to lodge a complaint with the WTO on the grounds that the EU directive will unfairly target palm oil in favour of European commodities like rapeseed oil, Reuters reported last week. On top of that, the government is reviewing its relations with the EU and urging southeast Asian neighbours to hold off on any plans to upgrade their relationship with the bloc, it said.

Brussels countered that the rules will comply with its WTO obligations. “The commission will make sure that any necessary implementing rules are fair, balanced and based on solid scientific evidence to ensure that the achievement of the EU’s renewable energy goals goes hand in hand with the fair and rules-based international trade regime that we so strongly defend,” Itkonen said.

Germany to quit coal by 2038, under commission proposal

The EU has also stressed that it does not intend phase out palm oil-based biofuels by 2030 entirely. Instead, palm oil and other crops will have to pass new “objective and non-discriminatory” criteria in order to qualify as low-carbon and renewable sources of energy, the EU’s ambassador to Indonesia, Vincent Guérend, wrote in a letter to the Jakarta Post in November.

“The Union remains a large, open market for palm oil,” Guérend wrote. “If it failed to pass these criteria, palm oil imports would still be possible under current condition, except European member states could not count it as ‘renewable energy’ anymore.”

The EU is working with the Indonesian government to see how its palm oil can comply with the coming rules, with about four years to prepare, he added.

The extent to which food-based biofuels should count as renewable energy was one of the most contentious issues in the EU’s negotiation for the 2021-2030 policy.

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Environmentalists argue biodiesel made from palm oil is the worst type of biofuel, followed by soy. According to the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), biodiesel releases three times the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel diesel, once land use is taken into account.

Their concern now is that some palm oil production will count as lower-risk crops that can still be imported for fuel, said Nico Muzi from T&E. “That for us is the loophole, the wide-open door, for green-washed palm oil. All the fight will be around that – how big that loophole will be.”

However, not all palm oil production causes deforestation, and sustainability rules need to recognise the differences from country to country, said Gernot Klepper, a senior researcher at Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy. There is still extensive tree loss and illegal cutting in Indonesia, but much less now in Malaysia. Colombia’s palm oil, instead, is produced in plains rather than forests.

Rules that allow producers to qualify their crops as the lower-risk feedstock can incentivise them to become more sustainable, he said. On the other hand, banning palm oil outright – which the Commission does not intend to do – would hurt more sustainable producers as well.

Norway committed in 2016 to making sure the supply chain in its public procurement is deforestation-free and included the plan in its budget last autumn. Malaysia quickly warned it would affect its trade relations with the European Free Trade Association.

France announced in November that it will stop imports of palm oil, soy, beef and other products linked to deforestation and unsustainable agriculture by 2030. Malaysia again responded, with prime minister Mahathir Mohamad telling president Emmanuel Macron that the government would consider restricting imports of French products, Reuters reported.

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NOTE: This article was amended to indicate that the rules may not be finalised at the meeting this week.

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“To say that electric cars are the end of oil is definitely misleading,” economist Fatih Birol told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“This year we expect global oil demand to increase by 1.3 million barrels per day. The effect of 5 million cars is [to diminish that demand by] 50,000 barrels per day. 50,000 versus 1.3m barrels.”

Last year, the IEA predicted that the number of electric cars globally would grow from 3 million today, to 125 million by 2030. But Birol said the number paled in comparison to the 1 billion cars powered by internal combustion engines.

Davos elite looks to ‘Globalisation 4.0’ to stem climate change

Besides, he said, it was not cars that were driving oil demand – “full stop”.

“Drivers are trucks, the petrochemical industry, planes. Asia is just starting to fly,” he said, referring to the agency’s 2018 energy outlook report that also cites shipping as a major source of oil demand.

Birol also highlighted the problem of powering electric cars when two thirds of global generation comes from fossil fuels.

“Where does the electricity come from, to say that electric cars are a solution to our climate change problem? It is not,” Birol said.

“Even if there were 300 million [electric cars] with the current power generation system, the impact in terms of CO2 emissions is less than 1% – nothing. If you can’t decarbonise [the power sector], C02 emissions will not be going down. It may be helpful for the local pollution, but for global emissions it is not.”

Environmentalists have repeatedly accused the Paris-based IEA of skewing its research in favour of the oil and gas industry, including by underestimating the growth of the renewables sector. Research and advocacy group Oil Change International believes that this is encouraging governments to overshoot their Paris climate pledges.

Greg Archer, UK director of Transport&Environment, a European umbrella group focusing on transport sustainability, said Birol’s comment revealed the IEA’s bias.

“It took over 20 years to sell the first million electric cars globally, and just a year to sell the second million,” Archer wrote to Climate Home News. “Now well over a million are sold every six months and the growth is continuing to accelerate. Just as the IEA continually has to upgrade its annual forecasts for solar and wind power, so it is for electric cars too.”

Arched said that electric vehicles would increasingly drive down demand for fossil fuels, while we could expect trucks, ships and planes to prioritise hydrogen, advanced biofuels and e-fuels.

“Eventually oil will remain in the ground because it is too expensive to pump it out,” he concluded.

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Far from representing a change of heart towards cars from consumers, the ghost-like foreign section of 2019’s Tehran car show indicates the exodus of innovation from the country since Donald Trump’s US reimposed sanctions in November.

“As companies from developed countries leave the market, we are worried about one thing: what will happen to Iran and the region, once the polluting industry has replaced the modern one due to US sanctions?” Ghazi told Climate Home News.

France’s Renault, Japan’s Mazda, and South Korea’s Hyundai are among the car manufacturers to have pulled out of the Iranian market. Gone are the fuel-cell cars promised by Toyota and Hyundai in 2018, or the deals struck between Iranian car-makers Iran Khodro (IKCO) and Saipa with the French PSA Groupe’s Peugeot and Citroen brands.

Instead photos circulated on Twitter show a straggle of Chinese four-by-fours standing alone, while Saipa is showcasing only one new model – a mid-sized sedan named Roham. The event is a flop.

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But the need for new, cleaner technologies is desperate. There are 35,000 deaths from air pollution in Iran every year, according to the government.

“When sanctions are imposed and car manufacturers such as Peugeot and Renault leave, we have to fall back on engines produced locally and of subsequently poorer quality,” Iran’s vice-president Issa Kalantari told AFP in October.

Roughly 127,000 vehicles 35-plus years old are still on the roads, according to roads minister Abbas Akhoundi.

“Dilapidated trucks in Iran are estimated to produce 30 times more harmful emissions than new models,” Rasoul Mohammad-Sadeghi, head of Saipa Diesel Company, the trucks and trailers division of Iran’s second carmaker SAIPA, told the Financial Tribune.

The same goes for fuel. Under pressure from sanctions, the country has had to turn its petrochemical factories into oil refineries to produce its own petrol. Iran cannot import the higher quality additives necessary for cleaner fuel, which forces it to rely on homemade cocktails.

Other sectors key to a green transition have also taken a hit. Faced with such a pollution crisis, Iran has been trying to increase the share of renewably-produced electricity in its energy mix. It hopes to achieve 5 gigawatts by 2022.

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But the sanctions could dent that effort. In August, British renewable energy investor Quercus announced that it was ditching the construction of a €500 million solar power plant. Norway’s Saga Energy has also had to suspend plans to build 2GW of new solar capacity in Iran by the end of 2018, while energy giants like Siemens said that they simply couldn’t consider new deals with Iran.

“The most difficult problem that the market is facing right now is that, yes, there are people willing to invest in the renewable sector, but there are no materials,” said Morteza Sabbaghzadeh, a business consultant at solar firm Arias Solar who has worked in Iran’s renewable sector for ten years.

“Iran already has five companies producing solar modules, but that’s not enough to run a power plant,” he says “You need the investors, you need the technology, you need the installation equipment and cables.”

Left to their own devices, Iranian companies can design and install renewable plants of up to 1MW, said Sabbaghzadeh. In the past, larger power plants larger have been installed by foreign companies from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.

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Sanctions also affect money transfers. “There are Iranian investors who are willing to invest, but they’re not capable to buy the products, or transfer the money. This has been more difficult after Trump announced the last sanctions,” said Sabbaghzadeh.

In June, before the resumption of sanctions, more than 250 companies had signed agreements to install and sell power from about 4GW of new renewables in the country. Only 602MW of this has been set up, according to Reuters.

It is less than four years since the country looked to be opening a new chapter of broader relationships when they agreed with the US, EU and other partners to limit their nuclear research programme. But Shirin Hakim, a PhD student at Imperial College London studying the impact of US sanctions on Iran’s environment, said the environmental sector was now suffering a brain drain.

“It is really such a shame, so many of my friends [working in the environmental sector] had to pull out of the Iranian market,” Hakim said. “They were so hopeful with the nuclear deal and many people were moving back to help facilitate business with the West.”

Sanctions also jeopardise international lending earmarked for environmental projects. A recent report on the impact of Iranian sanctions by the US Congress Research Service noted that “Iran’s efforts to deal with environment hazards and problems might be hindered by denial of World Bank lending for that purpose”.

Over the years, the US has prevented development funds such as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from supporting Iran. The country reportedly opposed more than $7.6 million-worth of environmental projects in 2014, including schemes to boost biodiversity and assist the country to carry out environmental assessment.

Contacted multiple times, the Gef did not respond to a request for comment on whether the resumption of sanctions may have affected current projects. The US state department also did not reply.

Sanctions ultimately will have a heavy impact on Iran’s national climate pledge, known in UN jargon as Nationally Determined Contribution, according to the national government.

In the document submitted to the United Nations in 2015, the government committed itself to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 4% by 2030. That figure jumps to 12% “subject to termination and non-existence of unjust sanctions”.

The Iranian delegation used a recent UN conference in Katowice in December to urge other countries not to follow the “country addicted to withdraw[ing] from international agreements”.

“No political pretext or excuse should be used to block allocation of financial flow, knowhow, technology, [or] support to developing countries as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran” diplomat Naser Moghaddasi told the UN plenary on 12 December.

This outreach has found traction. One of the key architects of the 2015 nuclear deal, the European Union has been among the first to explore mechanisms to bypass sanctions.

Among a number of initiatives, the block is pushing for member-state organisations to partner with Iranian stakeholders in order to “contribute to enhancing Iran’s self-reliance in the areas of addressing water pollution and integrated water resources management, air pollution, waste management and soil degradation.”

The move follows an EU-Iran framework for technical cooperation on the environment signed by Iran’s vice president for environment Masoumeh Ebtekar and EU environment commissioner Karmenu Vella in Brussels in September 2016.

An EU proposal for a ‘special purpose vehicle’ to facilitate humanitarian transfers to Iran presents further optimism that the block is willing to trade with the country, said Hakim.

That gives Iranians some hope, said Sabbaghzadeh: “The last sanction came, it was like: boom! A slap in the face. It was so strong. After a while, people were like: this is not new. We’re going to get around, some way or the other.”

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The tax, which was set to raise the price of diesel by 6.5 cents a litre, was originally part of a wider package of financial measures set to come into force on 1 January.

But that has not appeased the movement. One of its spokespeople, Benjamin Cauchy, told AFP: “French people are not after crumbs, they want the whole baguette.”

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Instead, Cauchy called for “a new wealth redistribution in France” and the implementation of “regular referenda on society’s greatest issues”. Representatives of the movement also declined to meet the government on Tuesday morning.

Initially inspired by the hike on diesel tax, the Gilets Jaunes have since grown into an all-out national protest against rising living costs and social inequality. Commentators, who are struggling to make sense of it as it moves fast and outstrips traditional political affiliations, have labelled it France’s worst period of unrest since May 1968.

Beginning on the 17 November, 113,000 people demonstrated across France against the hike on fuel in the first week, 53,000 in the second, and 36,000 in the third. On Saturday 1 December, the protests have left three dead, over 260 injured, and led to 400 arrests.

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The government is treating it as a crisis. Prime minister Edouard Phillipe, who was due to open the annual UN climate summit on Monday, cancelled his visit as he met with the rest of the cabinet for an emergency meeting.

Macron initially framed the tax hike as a ecological initiative against dirty fuel and air pollution. Politicians and commentators have however questioned the motivations of the president.

“The government has explained that they were taxing taxes for ecological reasons,” Ségolène Royal, who served as environment minister under social democrat president François Hollande, told Radio Classique. “This is a lie. This would make sense if people could pollute less by changing their car.” This was not the case, she said, because the government was not simultaneously supporting people to buy electric cars. A €10,000 euro bonus to help motorists buy electric cars has been reduced to €6,000 euros under Macron.

In an attempt to shake off impressions that the Gilets Jaunes are anti-green, the movement has come out with its own ecological demands. Organisers urged the government to “favour ecology while saving households money” by carrying out a national plan to insulate buildings. Among other demands were an end to tax perks on aircraft fuel and the construction of shopping malls in the suburbs to discourage car use.

Five years ago, France’s attempt to impose a green tax on road freight was sunk in the face of country-wide protests. Brittany, in particular, launched the red caps movement, spreading chaos by occupying roads and bridges.

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In a three-page rebuke issued on Tuesday evening, the Spanish Association of Car and Lorry Manufacturers (Anfac) said the law was “excessive and rushed”.

“This means a direct ban on the marketing of diesel, petrol, CNG and LPG vehicles and hybrids of all types,” the statement read. “In practice, this means going against the principle of technological neutrality defended to the maximum by the European Union.”

Can Teresa Ribera transform Spain into a green champion?

Anfac also lamented that the objectives surpassed those of the European Union, which is currently negotiating a 30 to 40% reduction in CO2 emissions from vehicles by 2030.

“The association,” it said, “does not understand why more severe measures are introduced for a country like Spain when the European objectives already set a very ambitious path towards zero and low-emissions mobility.”

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Anfac said the current draft did not include any measures to help the sector go-full electric, such as investments in technology or the industry. Without those, the climate plan risked provoking job losses.

A spokesperson for the Spanish ministry for the ecological transition said the car sector in Spain exported 80% of its production.

“65% of these exports go to countries with equal or greater restrictions than those which Spain is considering,” she said.

The draft climate law is the first version to be presented to the public. The ministry of the ecological transition now intends to negotiate the text with other political parties and civil society before presenting it to parliament under the form of a bill before the end of the year.

Spain, Europe’s second largest carmaker, plans combustion engine ban

Spain is the second largest car manufacturer in the EU after Germany. Along with associations such as Spanish Association of Automotive Suppliers (Sernauto), Anfac has repeatedly attempted to delay the conversion to electric cars production.

In a letter addressed to the then-energy minister Álvaro Nadal in September 2017, several trade unions, Anfac and Sernauto had called for “the transition to electric cars (…) to be gradual and not radical, especially if we bear in mind that Spain is a world power in the production of gasoline and diesel vehicles, along with their parts and components.”

Similarly, Anfac’s vice-president Mario Armero reiterated on Tuesday that the industry was “totally committed to the decarbonization of the auto fleet,” but that the transition towards “a zero and low-emission mobility” ought to be “ordered, just and profitable, from a social and economic perspective”.

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It marks a significant turnaround for one of Europe’s larger coal-mining, gas-importing and auto-manufacturing countries. Fracking would also be banned nationwide.

In a draft of country’s Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition, published on Tuesday, the five-month-old socialist government proposes to reduce Spain’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2030 and 90% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. The 2030 goal would amount to a 37% reduction from current levels, which Madrid called more ambitious than any other EU country.

This is Spain’s first national law on emissions reduction and clean energy goals.

For background, read this: Can Teresa Ribera transform Spain into a green champion?

“Our proposal is to reduce Spain’s current greenhouse gas emissions by a third in just a decade, which we consider an international milestone and a sign of our firm commitment to the fight against climate change,” said Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, who took office in June as a member of prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist and Workers’ Party government.

The draft will now be negotiated with other parliamentary parties. The government aims to present a bill to parliament before the end of the year.

Under the plan, all new fossil fuel subsidies would be frozen and a phase out begun on a timetable yet to be agreed. The same freeze and phase out would occur for fossil fuel investments held by the government.

The proposal would give investors and other economic players the “clear and predictable signals” needed to reduce Spain’s emissions, Ribera added. The transition “will generate progress and stable, quality employment, and presents great economic opportunities that Spain must take advantage of”, she said.

The predictability would be aided by the adoption of a UK-style system, under which incremental targets would be set every five years.

As part of its plan to reduce emissions, the proposed law seeks to re-boot Spain’s renewable energy industry, which was paralysed by sudden cuts to government subsidies about five years ago. It would aim to boost the share of renewables in the total energy mix to 35% by 2030, including a 70% share of electricity generation, and to 100% by mid-century. Renewable energy accounted for just over 17% of total Spanish energy use in 2016, according to EU statistics.

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Critics, however, said this was not enough to meet the Paris climate agreement’s lowest goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Based on the UN’s recent scientific report on how to meet the 1.5C goal, a developed country like Spain needs to reduce its emissions to net-zero and have a fully renewable energy system by 2040, not 2050, said José Luis García Ortega from Greenpeace España. “We just can’t afford to wait.”

“We believe that it is possible to have more ambitious and concrete objectives,” said Juantxo López de Uralde, a green party deputy and spokesperson for Unidos Podemos, a left-wing parliamentary group that includes the far-left party Podemos. “For example, we would like to see specific dates for the shutdown of coal and nuclear power plants,” López de Uralde pledged to work with the government in the next weeks to raise the bill’s ambition and climate targets.

The draft law does not set specific end dates for non-renewable power generation. However it does propose to push Europe’s second-largest car manufacturing industry to abandon diesel and petrol in favour of electricity in the next two decades – joining only a handful of other EU countries.

It aims to eliminate direct CO2 emissions from cars and light-duty trucks by 2050. The registration and sale of vehicles that emit carbon would be banned from 2040, and municipalities of more than 50,000 people would be required to create low-emission zones by 2023.

“With these dates, the government sends clear signals to direct the production of vehicles,” the document said, noting that manufacturers are already shifting to electric transport. Volvo plans to sell only electric cars from 2019, while Toyota will end diesel vehicles in Europe this year.

Spain is home to auto manufacturing plants for companies including Daimler, Ford, Nissan, Peugeot Citroen, Renault and Volkswagen.

López de Uralde welcomed the proposals for transport, noting that the sector accounts for 24% of national emissions.

A few Western European countries have announced similar plans since Volkswagen was caught cheating on its diesel emissions tests in 2015. The UK plans to ban the sale of diesel and petrol cars in 2040 and push them off the road in 2050. France, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands aim to end combustion car sales in 2030, and Norway is considering a ban for 2025. Cities in Germany, the EU’s largest car manufacturer, are also setting out diesel bans.

The EU is now negotiating bloc-wide emissions reduction targets for vehicles by 2030.

Spain’s shift away from fossil fuels has been choppy. The country was an early EU leader in adding wind and solar energy, until the government unexpectedly cut its generous subsidies about five years ago, paralysing the renewables sector. Utilities Iberdrola and Enel plan to close their coal-fired power plants by 2020, and most of the country’s coal mines will be shuttered this year. However, Spain is also the bloc’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas, along with piped supplies from Algeria.

But as one of the European countries most exposed to climate change, Spain also stands to benefit from the shift, Ribera said. “Spain is a country highly vulnerable to climate change and its citizens are fully aware of the magnitude of the problem.”

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Sworn in on 2 June with a razor-thin majority, one of the first actions of prime minister Pedro Sanchez was to create a ministry for the ecological transition.

The purpose of the new office was dual: at a symbolic level, it put climate at the forefront of the national agenda; at a functional one, it called time on years of tensions between the energy and environment ministries that had crippled climate action by bringing them together.

Also, for the first time in history, a woman was appointed to oversee the country’s energy policy. Teresa Ribera, a former Spanish environment secretary of state, is a fixture of the global green scene. She has been involved in global negotiations on climate change for nearly two decades and left her job as head of the Paris-based Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations to take up her new role.

Spain joins call to strengthen EU climate targets

So experienced is she that her name was put forward in 2016 as a possible contender to be executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the UN’s top climate job.

Now she is in charge of her country’s climate agenda. The result, several Spanish environmental NGOs told Climate Home News, is a “180-degree turn” in rhetoric compared with the last eight years under Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government.

Ribera is also beginning to turn words into action. On Tuesday she will outline her proposal for the country’s first climate plan, to be negotiated with other parties and civil society groups. It will aim for carbon-neutrality by 2050 “at the very latest”, she told CHN.

This is all the more pressing in light of Spain’s unique vulnerability. The country is one of the most exposed in Europe, with a 2016 report predicting the south would turn to desert unless global warming was held to 1.5C.

Ahead of the plan’s release, Ribera told CHN, that listed companies and financial institutions will have a duty to report their carbon footprint. The legislation also aims to carry out the energy transition in a way that doesn’t hurt workers and communities reliant on fossil fuels: “So that no one is left behind,” she said.

Ribera has already scored big on that front. In October, the government struck a deal with mining unions to close down most of the country’s coal mines by the end of the year. Overall, €220m will be injected into mining regions over the next decade, boosting retirement schemes and retraining.

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The deal was “applauded by the international community”, Ribera said. Co-leader of the UK Green Party Jonathan Bartley tweeted at the time that the measure showed “we can move away from fossil fuels, protect jobs & restore the natural world”.

Ribera also scrapped the so-called “sun tax” – an unpopular levy on solar power affecting individuals and small businesses – in early October. Ribera slammed the tax as a “great absurdity” and underlined that “a country so rich in sunlight has only 1,000 installations of this kind compared with more than one million in Germany”.

“We’re hopeful,” said Sergio de Otto, president of the Fundación Renovables (Renewables Foundation). He said Ribera was talented, capable and had a strong grasp of policy.

“There is a fundamental change, as the previous energy minister [Álvaro Nadal] obsessively opposed renewables,” he said.

In addition to taxing solar installations, Rajoy and Nadal’s People’s Party government changed the source of renewable subsidies from an electricity tariff to the general budget in 2014. Companies complained that clean energy was being scapegoated for the ballooning Spain public debt. The industry fell off a cliff.

“Once the [policies of the Rajoy government] were implemented, all new renewable projects were virtually dead,” Dirk Hendricks, a senior policy advisor at the European Renewable Energy Federation, said. “Investors avoided Spain completely. Jobs were lost. Everything was put on hold.”

In September, Ribera announced the government would install between 6,000 and 7,000MW of renewable power every year until 2030. This would raise capacity from 99,000 MW to 174,000 MW in 12 years.

“What you see now is people investigating new projects. There is a cautious optimism that there will be a restart of the renewable energy sector in Spain,” de Otto said.

That momentum looks set to extend beyond the country’s borders. “Spain is back and ready to lead climate action in the European Union,” Ribera told CHN. Just four days after she became minister, the country pressed for strong green energy targets at a meeting of energy ministers. Eventually the 2030 renewable goal was raised from 27 to 32% and energy efficiency from 30 to 32.5%. At the same time, she told CHN Spain would join a group of seven EU countries calling for overall emissions targets.

“When it comes to the vote in the European Council, Spain has switched from a member state which normally blocks renewable energy to a promoter of renewable energy,” said Hendricks. “This comes at a very good moment because Germany, which is usually a frontrunner on renewables, is currently terribly unproductive at EU level.”

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“Our willingness to lead in climate action,” said Ribera, “is especially necessary at this critical moment in which it is vital to demand and strengthen multilateralism as the basis for cooperation on fundamental issues such as climate change.”

Under Ribera, Spain will push for the EU to revise its commitment to the Paris climate agreement upwards by 2020. It will also lobby for the bloc’s 2050 strategy, a draft of which is expected in the coming months, to be “ambitious”.

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The pursuit of a transformative green programme may be jeopardised by the socialist government’s tenuous grip on power. Propped up by left wing movement Podemos and nationalist parties, Sanchez’s Socialist and Workers’ Party of Spain (PSOE) holds just a quarter of seats in parliament.

But de Otto is cautiously optimistic. “When it comes to the energy transition, the PSOE will find a greater majority than in other areas,” he said. A recent package of energy measures, which included the cancellation of the sun tax, passed without opposition. The People’s Party, which created the levy, abstained.

Sara Pizzinato, an energy policy expert at Greenpeace Spain, is more critical of the PSOE. Despite a change in discourse, she said, another package to combat energy poverty had “nothing to do with the ecological transaction.”

By removing a 7% tax on production of electricity, the government had favoured “nuclear power on the one hand and fossil fuels on the other”, she said.

Pizzinato said the government must address the energy oligopoly of the “Big Five”: Endesa, Iberdrola, Gas Natural Fenosa, EDP España and Viesgo. Electricity companies have repeatedly been accused of manipulating prices in the country. Ibedrola was fined €25 million in November 2015.

Contacted by CHN, Juantxo López de Uralde, a green party deputy and spokesperson for an eco-parliamentary group that includes Podemos, said Podemos and the government were working to end windfall profits in the energy sector.

Another notable threat to climate action is the country’s car industry. Spain, which is the EU’s second largest car-manufacturer after Germany, has time and again been timid around targets for electric cars. There was little doubt that the influence of the car lobby was a factor in this, de Otto and Pizzinato told CHN.

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To Ecologists in Action, an umbrella group of local Spanish environmental associations, this explains why Teresa Ribera opted to support a 35% reduction of emissions in newly registered vehicles at EU level. Spain’s position was higher than Germany’s, which had called for 30%, but lower than the 40% voted by the European Parliament.

Ribera denies her position amounted to a compromise, or that she was swayed by the car lobby. She said Spain had defended a 35% target, provided there was an intention to move above that mark during the legislative process.

“Spain played a key role in preventing a deadlock in this agreement,” she said, “which would have been harmful, and managed to move the ambition from 30 to 35%.”

On the future of the electric car industry in Spain, she said the government “believe[s] an ambitious goal of reducing CO2 emissions from new vehicles is an opportunity for innovation and competitiveness of the Spanish car industry.”

Ecologists, from the parliamentary benches to green businesses and NGOs, will be watching closely.

“We like what we’re hearing,” López de Uralde said. “However, we now need to make sure that this translates into concrete measures contributing to the energy transition, because this is urgent and needs to go beyond words.”

“The biggest obstacle in relation to this transition is the perception that we’re not in any hurry. We can’t leave the transition to the last decade,” de Otto insists.

“Can one do more in four months?” Ribera asked. “It’s difficult, but I still have many months ahead of me to do more.”

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Europe’s staunchest advocates for tougher climate change measures are concerned about the one-two punch of Brexit and a German government weakened by September’s election.

When the UK leaves on 29 March next year, EU members pushing for strong policies, mostly from northern and western Europe, will lose a reliably ambitious ally. The UK is one of their heaviest hitters in the Council of the EU, where votes are weighted by population size. Germany is the biggest.

“Given we are towards the most ambitious end of the spectrum, it would change the centre of gravity, so you would expect less ambitious outcomes to be reached,” said Peter Betts, who left his position as director of international climate and energy at the UK’s energy department last week.

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“I also think we’re a bit more pragmatic than some of the other ambitious countries – so we’re prepared to talk to Poland about gas, or about [carbon capture and storage technology], or whatever,” he told a conference hosted by the Green Alliance in London on Monday.

But the rot has already set in. During recent negotiations among the EU’s 28 members, the UK’s calls for strong climate action carried far less weight than they used to, according to seven Brussels-based officials on both sides of the EU climate policy debate, to whom Climate Home News spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Unfortunately, Brexit and this German wobbling come at the same time,” a diplomat from the most ambitious group of countries said. “The UK has been by far the most influential member state on climate policy up until the Brexit referendum. With the loss of that influence, the EU could start to go in the other, less ambitious, direction.”

Brexit: EU has ‘strong’ interest in safeguarding energy supply – UK minister

At the same time as Brexit, diplomats in that more ambitious camp worry another powerful partner is breaking ranks: Germany.

September’s federal election weakened chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition between her centre-right bloc and the Social Democrats, amplifying her need for support from industries, including coal and cars.

The EU’s climate-ambitious members such as Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and Finland may now find it harder to fight more resistant members including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria over efforts to boost the emissions reduction target for 2030, the goal for 2050, and other policies.

The shifting balance was noticed during negotiations earlier this month over the council’s position on CO2 limits for cars and vans up to 2030.

Germany: Bavaria vote shakes Berlin coalition, threatens climate limbo

The eventual call for a 35% reduction target for cars, is midway between the European Parliament’s 40% goal and the 30% proposed by the European Commission. But countries on both sides of the spectrum say it was largely cemented when Germany agreed to go up from a call for 30%, while France came down from 40%, according to sources who followed the negotiation. The UK backed the higher target, but was largely ignored.

Germany was always going to oppose the toughest target for an industry so close to its economic heart, said Greg Archer, director of clean vehicles at the NGO Transport & Environment, adding that the 35% target was the most likely to win a majority.

Diplomats, however, saw it as a practical test for a government that speaks in favour of strong climate action internationally, while stressing the need for a gradual transition at home.

“There is a split. On the one hand, they’re talking very ambitiously, on the other, they talk about the needs of their manufacturers,” a diplomat from a country that backed 40% said.

An official from a Central and Eastern European country said German support was crucial in fighting a 40% goal, though their country would have preferred an even lower target. The council and parliament must now the negotiate the final policy.

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“Germany is still very ambitious when it comes to fighting climate change and when it comes to CO2 reductions,” a German diplomatic source said.  “As a member state that has a strong economy and industry, it has to balance both sides and has to see that the transformation of its economy to a CO2-neutral economy has to be done step by step.”

The government has confirmed a climate protection plan that sets out a path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and is working on a law to implement it, a spokesperson for the environment ministry said.

Still, the country’s image as a climate leader was tainted by several developments this year: confirmation that it is falling short of its EU-mandated goal for lowering emissions by 2020; clearing of the Hambach Forest to make way for a lignite mine; and slow progress in the commission tasked with setting a timeline for phasing out coal, which meets again on Wednesday.

Brexit Explained: What it means for UK-EU energy trade

Merkel’s opposition to a suggestion from European climate action and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete this summer – that the EU’s clean energy targets for 2030 allow the bloc to reduce emissions above its existing goal – further rattled the pro-climate action side.

All of this feeds concerns that climate-ambitious EU countries will be outnumbered in negotiations over the bloc’s goals for 2050, likely to begin in the council in March or May. Weaker, more divided policies at home would likely diminish the EU’s influence in international climate negotiations, where it is under pressure to align its policies to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal for limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C, rather than below 2C.

“We’ve seen we can no longer be confident that Germany will continue to be stable in the ambitious group,” the diplomat from that group said. “This is a concern for raising the EU’s level for 2030 and for its long-term vision.”

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

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In a batch of papers released on Thursday, the department for exiting the EU detailed how it is preparing for a possible crash Brexit on 29 March — while stressing that it continues to negotiate for a “good and sustainable future relationship” with the European Union.

The 25 notices set out the government’s plans for a no-deal departure in a wide range of policy areas, including industrial and vehicle emissions, nuclear energy, farming, medicines, product labelling, money and tax, and applications for EU funding. This is the first instalment of notices, and more are expected this month.

They’re meant to quell business and public concerns as Brexit day looms and the potential for a no-deal departure grows more realistic, particularly with little progress in negotiations for the overarching EU-UK relationship.

With just over six months to go, critics argue the government is moving too slowly and has given few details on preparations such as the new environmental watchdog agency.

“Repeated (& welcome) refrain of continued commitment to high standards — but will the statutory instruments be ready in time to bring over all EU law by exit day? Complex process that must be watertight, and we haven’t even seen drafts yet. Tick, tock…” tweeted Amy Mount from the Greener UK coalition of environmental organisations.

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The EU’s biggest tools for cutting greenhouse emissions and boost clean energy are not mentioned.

The government was expected to include a notice on preparations for the emissions trading system, which applies to 11,000 factories and power plants across the EU, plus air travel within the bloc. It is now planned for a later instalment, a government spokesperson said.

There is also no mention of policies setting national emissions reduction goals for sectors such as transport, buildings and agriculture, or of EU renewable energy and energy efficiency targets and the internal energy market.

Cars, coolants and industrial plants

Instead, Thursday’s publication sets out London’s plans for replacing the EU’s CO2 emissions targets for cars and vans registered in the bloc.

In a no-deal Brexit, EU rules would stop applying to new vehicles registered in Britain. The country’s department for transport would therefore take over the European Commission’s role, with the aim of setting rules that are “at least as ambitious as current arrangements,” the notice stated.

The same goes for limits on ozone-depleting and potent greenhouse gas emissions from coolants, according to another notice. EU regulation requires the phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in line with the international Montreal Protocol. As part of it, the European Commission hands out HFC quotas to businesses, gradually reducing them every few years.

If Britain crashes out next year, the majority of the EU’s rules for this group of pollutants will continue to apply, the government said. It would allocate quotas in the same way and on the same schedule, just through a UK agency rather than Brussels.

1/6 There are several environment-related papers amongst today’s #NoDealBrexit preparedness notices, but many of #GreenerUK‘s questions are still unanswered – & some new risks have emerged https://t.co/3oJVqImOTn

— Amy Mount (@ASmallAMount) September 13, 2018

The government will also continue to apply air pollution rules for large combustion power plants, waste incineration plants and other industrial sites under new legislation, it said.

Without a Brexit deal, the UK would leave an EU process for setting environmental permitting standards. However, it plans to pass a law that makes sure the bloc’s existing “best available techniques” apply in the country, and allows the country to adopt new ones.

The government is also introducing the country’s first Environment Bill in 20 years, which will set rules for clean air and other protections in England and set up an independent Environment Agency, it said.

However, the government acknowledged it may not be ready in time. “We are considering what interim measures may be necessary in a no-deal scenario after March 29, 2019 and before the Environment Act is passed and comes into effect.”

Nuclear, oil and gas

London has worked quickly to set up a national inspections regime for nuclear energy sites in the country, to fill in for the EU’s atomic energy community, Euratom, and expects to have it in place by 29 March, according to a notice.

The inspections system — to make sure the country’s nuclear power plants, fuel processing sites, research centres and other facilities are not used to make nuclear weapons — is crucial to keeping Britain’s seven nuclear power stations running after a no-deal Brexit. They generate around a quarter of the country’s electricity, which would likely be replaced with gas or coal-fired power if not available.

But Euratom also oversees nuclear fuel supply around the EU, and some nuclear fuel supply contracts will need to be re-approved once the UK leaves, the government said. It urged companies to talk to Euratom and their contract counterparts about the process.

While the country would also lose Euratom funding for nuclear research — including its participation, with the rest of the EU, in the nuclear fusion pilot project ITER in France — the government stressed that it plans to step up with its own money to keep the programmes going.

One area that will see little change from an immediate departure, instead, is the rules for oil and gas licensing and environmental protection. UK law already addresses environmental requirements for offshore oil and gas drilling and licensing on- and offshore, but the government said it will amend rules to make sure there is “broad continuity”.

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Sergio Marchionne, in his last major presentation before his retirement, told a shareholder conference that the company would make its last diesel car in 2021. The company will continue to make pick-ups and vans with diesel engines.

In 2017, the carmaker was caught up in the diesel emissions rigging scandal that swept through the auto industry. US investigators launched a civil suit against the company for doctoring test results, revelations from which have damaged share prices.

Fiat, Renault, VW scams will hasten rise of electric car

Diesel used to be promoted as a lower-carbon alternative to petrol. But vehicles burning diesel produce higher levels of other pollutants, which have been shown to damage health.

Morten Thaysen, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “Fiat Chrysler is the latest car company to realise consumers don’t want diesel and bite the bullet. It’s time VW, the biggest diesel producer in Europe, woke up to the harm diesel has on our health and the climate and committed to end diesel sales too.”

In the UK last year, diesel sales dropped 20%, while the low-carbon car market grew by 34.8%.

Thaysen said diesel was a “bad bet”. Many car executives agree, with more than half surveyed last year agreed that diesel was “dead” and it was only a matter of time before they all took the decision announced by Marchionne on Friday.

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By 2020 at least seven new gigawatt-size battery factories are scheduled to start operating on the continent, with another three developments rumoured.

Within a decade, these facilities will be churning out 80GWh a year. More than three times the 2017 global production capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

‘Gigafactories’, a term coined in the US by Elon Musk’s Tesla, produce batteries on the scale of more than 1GWh per year. Until this year, Europe had no factories of that size.

But with demand for electric vehicles on the continent predicted to surge (Dutch bank, ING, predicts that all new vehicle sales in Europe will be electric by 2035), a new battery infrastructure is coming for Europe.

Of the five leading global manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, three are planning, or have begun building, gigafactories in Europe: LG, Samsung and the Tesla/Panasonic partnership.

Norway’s electric car demand is outstripping supply – with lessons for the EU

The push from these established US, Japanese and South Korean players has prompted a number of European companies to invest in the construction of their own regionally-based gigafactories.

Car manufacturer Daimler has two planned facilities in its home country of Germany. Daimler is also working on plants in the US, China and Thailand.

A spokesperson for the company, which owns Mercedes-Benz, told Climate Home News the company would be investing more than €1 billion in a global battery production network.

“The local production of batteries is an important success factor for the electric offensive of Mercedes-Benz Cars and decisive for flexibly and efficiently meeting the global demand for electric vehicles. The production network is thus very well positioned for the mobility of the future,” she said.

European start-ups have caught on to the EV business opportunity. Swedish company Northvolt plans to spend $4.7bn on a Nordic plant and Germany’s TerraE has announced two plants at undisclosed locations in Germany.

Browse our interactive map to see how European demand for electric car batteries will be met.

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The study revealed that hundreds of millions of people around the world are already suffering due to climate change. Infectious diseases are spreading faster due to warmer temperatures, hunger and malnourishment is worsening, allergy seasons are getting longer and sometimes it’s simply too hot for farmers to tend to their crops.

But what would happen if we treated climate change as a health problem rather than an environmental one?

As an expert in the political economy of climate change, I contend we can learn useful lessons from some relatively successful public health campaigns. Take smoking, for example.

We have successfully used advertising bans and warnings on cigarette packages to change perceptions about the dangers of burning tobacco, so perhaps a similar strategy will work to focus on the dangers of burning gasoline and diesel.

After all, most of climate change is caused because humans are burning fossil fuels at prodigious rates. This combustion generates carbon dioxide. It’s accumulating rapidly in the atmosphere, warming the planet and making storms, heatwaves and droughts an increasing problem for people in many places.

Climate health warning

Cigarette advertising was actively promoting a hazardous product, and so the public health case was made for restricting advertising of cigarettes. Alarmed by the damage to human health caused by tobacco smoking, public authorities gradually transformed the public image of cigarettes from symbols of sophistication into objects of danger. Social life has now been largely disconnected from smoking.

Many countries require packaging that alerts smokers to the dangers of the “cancer sticks” they are purchasing, and many cartons carry dire health warnings. In some cases, images of the grievous bodily harm caused by prolonged exposure to tobacco smoke must be printed on cigarette cartons. It’s all designed to discourage smoking and make plain the damage it causes.

Cigarette packages in Canada and other countries now feature dire and graphic warnings. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)

Campaigns against smoking have also emphasized the dangers to third parties, and children in particular, when they inhale second-hand smoke.

Now there are health hazards from another form of combustion. The health impacts of climate change are clear. So, perhaps it’s time to adapt the success of the campaign against burning and smoking tobacco to policy actions against burning gasoline and diesel in vehicles.

Like cigarettes used to be, internal combustion-engined vehicles are ubiquitous. According to advertisers, their possession and use apparently infers social status. Equated with freedom, despite the amount of time drivers spend stuck in traffic, gasoline-burning cars are supposedly the ultimate symbol of individualism, autonomy and power.

Here’s an example of a car ad that glamourizes driving:

But cars are hazardous to both the driver and other people as well. Internal combustion engines generate urban pollution. They cause climate change. Everyone is endangered by climate change whether they drive or not. Climate change is the automobile equivalent of second-hand smoke.

Ban car advertising?

So, how about a ban on advertising internal combustion engine-powered vehicles? No longer could they be shown as a symbol of glamour and sophistication to young people. Instead, the consequences of their widespread use could be highlighted.

Cigarette packaging displays health warnings, so why not have gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars decorated with images of disasters, floods, damaged buildings, hurricane devastation and the like?

Consumer choice need not be unduly restricted here. If people really want to buy this increasingly outdated technology, then regulations could easily allow each model of car to be sold with a choice of flood, pestilence, drought or fire damage decor.

The car companies would no doubt protest, as did the tobacco firms before them. But the larger public health concerns are much more important than automobile producers’ business plans.

While these practical measures alone won’t alone solve the climate change problem, they would surely help people focus on the need to move rapidly away from internal combustion engines and towards a safer and more healthy world.

Simon Dalby is CIGI chair in the political economy of climate change at Wilfrid Laurier University

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

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With the world’s second largest flag registry, the Pacific island state is leading a climate push inside the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

As Climate Home News has reported, the Marshall Islands seat at IMO has been controlled by its commercial shipping registry, which operates out of Virginia, US. Such arrangements have slowed down the industry’s action, according to observers.

In discussions about shipping’s climate impact, Hilda Heine said her government had now asserted its authority. “We are actually working very closely with our shipping registry and they are behind us in the position that we are taking in the IMO,” she said. “We are not arguing back and forth on this, we see eye to eye.”

A plan, due to be agreed at an IMO meeting in April, must include measures that kick in straight away as well as a target to reach zero emissions by 2050, Heine said.

“If we are to succeed in limiting global temperature increases to no more than 1.5C, which is our goal, then ambitious climate action must be taken in all sectors,” she said. “The IMO must play its part in that.”

Most climate policy decisions at the UN shipping body are being deferred to 2023, pending an exercise to gather ship-level emissions data. But campaigners say speed restrictions, for example, could deliver carbon savings much sooner.

Following a climate working group meeting at the IMO last month, countries are “still far from consensus,” Heine said.

Last week, the International Chamber of Shipping accused the Marshall Islands of pushing an “inflexible and unrealistic stance”.

Marshallese foreign minister John Silk shot back that “we will not compromise on our survival.” The low-lying island nation is acutely vulnerable to the rising sea levels that come with global warming.

No. The inflexible & unrealistic stance of Marshall Islands – both at IMO and in Bonn – risks impeding consensus to address shipping’s CO2 https://t.co/rjjlTDM1tt

— ICS shipping (@shippingics) November 8, 2017

It is not just the influential ICS lobby pushing back against high ambition proposals.

Nicolas Udrea, a French negotiator at the IMO, told Climate Home News that Brazil, for example, has concerns about the cost of climate policies. Its economy relies heavily on commodity exports.

Emerging economies are also arguing that rich and poor countries have different levels of responsibility. It is a familiar concept at climate talks, but sits uneasily with the IMO principle that no country should get more favourable treatment than another.

Negotiators are trying to convene an extra meeting in Singapore mid-January to find common ground, Udrea said.

Shipping executive: ‘We have deliberately misled public on climate’

John Kornerup Bang, climate lead at Danish shipping giant Maersk, said policy intervention was needed to drive investment in innovation. “We need to fundamentally change the way ships are driven forward and it is a huge task,” he said.

Maersk is aiming to cut the carbon dioxide emitted for each container moved 60% from 2007 levels by 2020 and had achieved a 42% cut by the end of 2016.

“We are confident that we can get to 60%, but that will be a stretch,” he said. “After that we cannot do any more by efficiency. It is about introducing new propulsion technologies. It is more than we can do on our own.”

Climate Home News’ reporting at Cop23 is supported in part by the European Climate Foundation.

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Martin Selmayr, a German lawyer and one of commission president Juncker’s closest advisors, sent out the order last Thursday following a meeting with Matthias Wissman, the head of the powerful German auto-manufacturers lobby, the VDA, two EU sources confirmed.

On top of reducing the electric vehicles mandate – due to be proposed on November 8 – to a voluntary scheme, Selmayr, the powerful official dubbed ‘Rasputin’ and ‘monster’ by UK Brexiteers, also demanded that a 2025 target for vehicle emissions reductions be scrapped.

Selmayr denied he had made the intervention. “This is not true. Obviously invented,” he told Climate Home News.

Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva would neither confirm nor deny that Selmayr had sent out an instruction to commissioners. But she said that Selmayr had referred Wissman on to the climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, after receiving a phone call from him last Thursday. The lobbyist and Cañete then spoke the following day, Andreeva said.

The energy commissioner’s press team said: “During the call, Mr Wissman outlined VDA’s position on the upcoming proposal on CO2 standards for cars and vans. The commissioner explained the rationale behind the preparation of the draft proposal and did not comment on the content of any of the proposals that will be part of the package.”

The day before he spoke to Selmayr, Wissman and Gunther Oettinger, the German vice president of the commission, made a joint plea for there to be no electric car quotas in the EU proposal.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel is currently locked in coalition talks with the Greens, who favour strong CO2 regulation for automobiles and the pro-business Free Democrats, who do not.

The resulting stasis has led the auto industry to use its Brussels contacts to tip the balance of power, according to Greg Archer, T&E’s clean vehicles director.

“Having failed to gain support from the German Government the VDA has run to their German friends in the commission to emasculate the commission’s proposal for future car CO2 regulations,” he said. “This is blindingly shortsighted and unnecessary.”

While no announcement on a final decision is expected before November 8, during the Cop23 climate summit, sources say that the issue is being debated by key commissioners today.

One EU official told Climate Home News that despite Selmayr’s intervention, the inclusion of sanctions with the CO2 in cars proposal was strongly backed by several commissioners. “It is not finished,” he said. “We are still discussing it internally.”

In its present form, the draft blueprint would reportedly use carbon offsetting to reward or punish carmakers’ efforts to meet a 15-20% target for zero-emitting vehicles by 2030, with a possible additional target of 10% for plug in electric hybrids.

Report: EU ‘increasingly likely’ to implement electric car quota, despite denials

An overarching 25-30% emissions reductions goal for cars in 2030 – and 30-40% for vans – has also been pencilled in to deliver a big chunk of the bloc’s 40% emissions cut, pledged under the Paris agreement.

“We’re trying to give a signal that the decarbonisation of transport needs zero-emitting vehicles (ZEVs) and we don’t want them all to be Chinese, American or Asian,” an EU source said. “Europe’s industry can manufacture them too.”

“That’s why we need a signal from a benchmarking system beyond CO2 targets that tells industry how many batteries we need, and local authorities how much infrastructure for charging we need,” said the source.

The draft measure was opposed by the influential European Automobile Manufacturers Association (Acea), which pushed for lower goals and less ambitious conditions on any ZEV mandate.

But the industry bigwigs may have been lobbying for a more regressive position than their own members advocate. A VW lobby presentation seen by Climate Home News shows that the firm could accept a ZEV mandate of 22% in 2025, rising to 34.5% in 2030 under certain conditions.

Archer said: “As the VW leak shows carmakers can accept a ZEV mandate and targets more ambitious than the commission is proposing. But some European carmakers are fixated on preserving the market for dirty diesel in Europe for as long as possible, despite collapsing sales, in a desperate attempt to recoup their past unwise investments.”

If the commission’s proposal is lost as a result of the last minute manouevring, attention will switch to the European parliament, where MEPs could reinject some of its original ambition. 

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In a sweeping set of policy announcements, Sturgeon also said her government would finance a carbon capture and storage project in the North Sea.

The deadline on new petrol and diesel cars puts Scotland eight years ahead of a target set by Westminster in July. France has also set a date of 2040.

“Our aim is for new petrol and diesel cars and vans to be phased out in Scotland by 2032 – the end of the period covered by our new climate change plan and eight years ahead of the target set by the UK government,” Sturgeon said on Tuesday.

“As members will be aware, we don’t currently hold powers over vehicle standards and taxation. However, we can and will take action,” she said.

“We live in a time of unprecedented global challenge and change. We face rapid advances in technology; a moral obligation to tackle climate change… These challenges are considerable, but in each of them we will find opportunity. It is our job to seize it.”

Report: Lobbying data reveals carmakers’ influence in Berlin

The Scottish government’s Twitter account said the announcement confirmed Scotland’s “low carbon ambitions”.

A nation-wide charging network for electric cars would be fast-tracked, the government said in a press release.

The transport sector has long been held as one of the most difficult high-carbon sectors to clean up. But diesel cars have rapidly become maligned in the wake of VW’s dieselgate affair, and other similar scandals to hit Fiat and Renault. Public pressure over air pollution – and the rapid improvement of electric cars – has laid the groundwork for governments to set tougher goals.

In a recent global survey of 1,000 auto executives by KMPG, more than half of those surveyed agreed that diesel was “dead”. At the same time, they named battery electric vehicles as the number one trend in the auto industry.

On Tuesday, Climate Home also reported lobbying data that revealed the extraordinary efforts of the car industry to maintain its influence on the government, meeting officials more than once every two days since 2015.

Bold ambitions. Equipping Scotland for the next decade and beyond. FM @NicolaSturgeon https://t.co/UtDDwTuIRp #scotpfg pic.twitter.com/jjz6gA3sPs

— Scottish Government (@scotgov) September 5, 2017

Also on Tuesday, Sturgeon said her government would provide funding for the feasibility stage of the Acorn carbon capture and storage project in Aberdeenshire.

The UK’s Tory government withdrew funding from a £1 billion ($1.3bn) competition for innovative carbon capture and storage projects in 2015.

“We will continue to champion clean energy,” said Sturgeon. “The North Sea is potentially the largest carbon storage resource anywhere in Europe.

“The UK government’s withdrawal of support for key carbon capture and storage initiatives risks that potential. Westminster holds the key levers, so we will continue to press for the right policy and financial framework to be put in place.”

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The level of access to top officials has raised concerns about the influence of the car lobby in Berlin, just as the 24 September federal election is forcing party leaders to confront diesel pollution.

At a meeting with city leaders in the capital on Monday, chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to double a €500m government-industry fund to help local councils rein back soaring emissions that have sparked European court action and over 50 city lawsuits.

Critics see the proposed car software upgrades and urban transport improvements as a palliative to block calls for comprehensive – and expensive – hardware retrofits. This view may be strengthened by news of the auto industry’s extensive access.

Public unease with Germany’s auto industry has grown, as the revelations that VW stacked its software to cheat emissions tests were followed by allegations that it colluded with Daimler and BMW in cartel-like behaviour.

But Germany’s auto industry directly employs around 775,000 workers, and turns over more than €400bn per year, accounting for roughly a fifth of Germany’s exports in the process. This economic gravity means carmakers maintain a mighty pull on politicians across the country.

Exclusive: EU ‘increasingly likely’ to implement electric car quota

Evincing this, several top advisors and government officials have either come from or gone to work for carmakers.

Merkel’s re-election campaign is being spearheaded by Joachim Koschnicke, a former chief lobbyist for the car maker Opel, while Michael Jansen and Thomas Steg – who served as Merkel’s federal office director, and deputy government speaker – now work as senior VW lobbyists.

Eckart von Klaeden, a state minister for Merkel until 2013 became Daimler’s chief lobbyist, while Matthias Wissmann, a transport minister under the former chancellor Gerhard Schroder, is currently president of the German automobile industry association.

Even Sigmar Gabriel, a respected SPD economic minister, sat on the VW supervisory board for four years while he was premier of the state of Lower Saxony, which holds a 20% stake in VW.

His successor, Stephan Weil, sparked controversy last month, when the German newspaper Bild revealed that he showed a draft parliamentary speech about dieselgate to VW management before delivering it.

Since the VW scandal broke in 2015, government officials have held 387 meetings with auto lobbyists about dieselgate and pollution, compared to 113 meetings with trade unions and just 59 with environmental and consumer groups. The data, seen by Climate Home, was released in response to a parliamentary question.

The German government and car industry both declined to comment on the release.

The content of these meetings is unknown and contact between government would be expected to maintain contact with an important industry. But dieselgate and the continuing non-compliance of the car industry lend credence to NGO claims that access equals inaction. Only around 10% of German cars meeting current ‘Euro 6’ NOx emission limits, according to a new study.

Daniel Freund, a spokesman for Transparency International told Climate Home said that state oversight had “collapsed” under the weight of industry pressure. 

“I think we are no longer exaggerating if we say that the German government and regulatory agencies supposed to control and oversee the car industry have been captured,” he said.

Timo Lang, a spokesman for the NGO Lobbycontrol said the data evinced a “striking imbalance that clearly illustrates the close ties between Germany’s government and the automotive industry.”

He added: “Those close ties were a part of the problem leading up to the dieselgate scandal.”

Analysis: Fiat, Renault, VW scams will hasten rise of electric car

Official figures for 2017 show that Merkel’s CDU party received €100,000 from Daimler, €100,002 from Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, the owners of BMW, and €110,000 from the metal and electrical industry association in northern Westphalia, which partly represents the car industry.

The hard right FDP also banked €195,502 from auto lobby groups, and Martin Schulz’s SPD took €100,000 from Daimler.

However these figures may underestimate the car manufacturers’ largesse as they only cover direct donations – rather than sponsorships, which the auto industry increasingly prefers. In Brussels, VW alone spent €3.3m in lobby activities in 2014, according to Lobbyfacts.

Freund said such quids carried an expectation of pro quo’s – perhaps in the form of an open door policy for meetings with officials. “If they didn’t expect that, it would almost be a market failure,” he said.

“The companies are constantly optimising shareholder value and ensuring that they make money for their investors. If they went around giving money to parties for nothing in return, I think someone might question that.”

On Sunday night, dieselgate was again at the centre of the election campaign, with the SPD leader Martin Schulz calling for industry CEO’s to pay the price of the test-rigging scandal in a TV debate with Merkel.

Schulz has tried to make hay with the issue on the campaign trail, assailing Merkel for blocking collective lawsuits against VW and calling for an an EU-wide quota on electric cars.

However, after Merkel responded in mid-August by agreeing that diesel’s days were numbered, Schulz toned down his rhetoric, saying that diesel would be around for “much longer” than people expected.

Climate Weekly: Sign up for your essential climate news update

The German SPD MEP and former environment committee chair Jo Leinen told Climate Home that Schulz’s “backtracking” had made him look “weak”.

“I think the trade unions got in contact with him to say: ‘hello, not so fast. We will have that transformation but it will take a long time,’” said Leinen. “Diesel is a bit of an ambiguous issue for the SPD. The Green party will always be more radical so we cannot win with the electorate on that front.”

The European commission is currently assessing whether a deal between the German government and carmakers to provide software updates for 5.3 million German motorists addresses the air quality and legal ramifications of dieselgate.

The agreement would reduce NOx emissions by up to 30%, but environmentalists in Germany are holding out for a more comprehensive – and expensive – hardware retrofit option.

Dorothee Saar, a spokeswoman for environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), which is pursuing 16 legal cases against the German government for breaching air quality limits, said judicial rulings supporting diesel bans in Stuttgart, Munich and Dusseldorf were forcing the government’s hand.

She told Climate Home: “Merkel’s announcement that she’d join a second diesel summit in October and her invitation to city leaders and federal ministers to come to Berlin on Monday shows that she sees an urgent need for action – and that the court decisions are not going in her favour.”

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That’s what a source told Climate Home’s Brussels correspondent Arthur Neslen this week. Cabinet members in the climate, industry, energy union and transport directorates have reached consensus, he wrote.

“They have made it very clear that it is their intention to go to a zero-emissions mandate and the car industry has been told to stop complaining about it, and start being constructive,” the source said.

The news came as the automotive industry emerged as a big issue in the German election campaign, with even auto-stalwart Angela Merkel highlighting the need for a redoubled effort to meet 2020 electric vehicle targets this week and backing an (open-ended) phase out of diesel cars.

“The European car industry’s dream that they’d sell diesel to China and the US is dead and the European commission knows it,” Greg Archer from Transport & Environment told Arthur.

The ripples of dieselgate continue to spread.

On the move

Megan Darby’s extraordinary feature on climate migration in Bangladesh was the most read piece on Climate Home all week.

She traced the steps of a nation already on the move as a combination of poverty and increasing environmental upheaval sends more and more rural Bangladeshi’s into city slums and seeking to cross into other countries.

Megan’s piece deepens our understanding of the complexity of climate migrants and refugees. How can they be recognised? Where will they come from? Where will they go? These are questions the global community has simply not addressed.

Put your brandy where your mouth is

ECIU director and former BBC environment hack Richard Black has bet the entire internet a bottle of brandy that Donald Trump won’t actually leave the Paris accord.

But at last report, no-one had taken him up on it. Which is strange given there has been so much reporting that takes the US exit for granted. Any takers on Richard’s bet? Let me know on km@climatehome.org or @karlmathiesen.

Climate Conversations

• Karl Mathiesen: Trump lays groundwork for staying in Paris Agreement
• Andrew King: Sweltering European summer has human fingerprints

Al Gore: ‘Fixing the climate is about fixing democracy’

Climate scientist Mark Maslin interviewed the former US vice president for The Conversation. Gore said he felt that the Republican party anti-climate action consensus was beginning to crack.

Also this week…

• Humans massively increased odds of three consecutive hottest years
• Countries urged to start bargaining over negative emissions
• Australian government ‘can’t be trusted to protect Great Barrier Reef’

The post Climate Weekly: EU heading for electric car quota appeared first on Climate Home News.

With France, the Netherlands and Britain planning diesel bans by 2040, commission officials are said to view a new mandate as a natural step. The issue is fraught though, particularly in Germany where the car industry remains a powerful political force and elections are looming.

One source with knowledge of internal EU discussions told Climate Home that cabinet members in the bloc’s climate, industry, energy union and transport directorates had reached a consensus on the need for tough enforceable targets.

“They have made it very clear that it is their intention to go to a zero-emissions mandate and the car industry has been told to stop complaining about it, and start being constructive,” the source said.

A California-style mandate, obliging car-makers to meet a minimum fleet quota for electric vehicles is one option on the table.

“It is looking increasingly likely that they will come forward with a proposal of that sort for 2025 and 2030, probably including plug-in hybrids,” said the source.

There has been confusion about the EU’s intentions since last Monday, when commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told journalists that “no quotas for electric cars are being considered”. Nor could they be, she added, as the bloc was committed to technological neutrality.

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Contacted by Climate Home, Andreeva accepted that a binding target for ultra-low emitting vehicles was one of the options put forward for consideration by a commission paper last year. But this was different from a technology-specific quota, she argued.

“You have wording on targets for ultra-low emitting vehicles in the communication, so prima facie it’s out there,” she said. “But the distinction between targets and quotas is important as targets are much softer than quotas, which are legally enforceable.”

Despite this, Germany’s environment ministry reportedly expects a proposal that includes a quota on electric cars, as do commission cabinet members. EU diplomats in Brussels confirmed to Climate Home that they did too.

“It is under consideration,” one diplomat said, on condition of anonymity. “It is part of [the commission’s] brainstorming process.”

Targets for vehicle emissions in the EU have previously been legally enforceable, although that does not necessarily mean they will be under future legislation.

Commissioners are expected to discuss the proposal in a meeting next month, ahead of its release, which is due in November.

Report: German vice chancellor attacks China’s electric car targets

Next month, the European parliament will also vote on a proposal for a 25% minimum fleet quota for electric cars by 2025 and ban on diesel and petrol engines by 2035. MEPs have already backed tougher CO2 benchmarks for 2025 for 2030 and more cheat-proof testing.

If the new measures pass parliament, they will only be a signal of battles to come. The EU parliament can block, tweak or amend regulations in three-way negotiations with EU states, and with the commission. But the commission alone has the power to propose laws.

Moves to restrict pollution from the car industry within the EU commission and parliament have emerged as a hot button issue in next month’s German election. Earlier this week, chancellor Angela Merkel reversed a position that quotas were “not thought-through” under opposition fire, and backed an eventual diesel phase out, without committing to a date.

Merkel has previously warned about the dangers of “demolishing” the diesel industry. But there will have been relief in Germany’s car industry – a major historic contributor to her party – that she also pledged to maintain diesel’s current tax incentives.

The automobile sector is crucial to Germany’s economy and Merkel has not hesitated to use her clout in Brussels to protect its interests, as the industry sees them. 

During negotiations for the last CO2 auto standards in 2013, diplomats accused Merkel of going “rogue” behind the scenes, by threatening car plant closures unless an agreed EU plan was stalled.

Any similar manoeuvres after the Volkswagen ‘dieselgate’ scandal might further damage consumer confidence and the industry’s long term future, according to some green analysts.

Greg Archer, the director of clean vehicles at Transport & Environment, told Climate Home that without zero-emissions sales targets for 2025 and 2030, “European car companies will suffer the same catastrophic collapse Nokia experienced for failing to embrace new technologies”.

Car-makers in Europe say that emissions standards are a regulatory burden that place them at a competitive disadvantage. Critics argue the industry is highly profitable and will need to invest heavily in electric vehicles to remain in business.

Last month, European car manufacturers pleaded with China to weaken its ambitious roadmap for introducing electric vehicles, after an apparently unsuccessful bid by Merkel to slow green growth in the east Asian giant.

“The European car industry’s dream that they’d sell diesel to China and the US is dead [after dieselgate] and the European commission knows it,” said Archer. “They’re worried that they will finish up with an industry locked into old technologies that isn’t going to invest in the new solutions needed to maintain exports around the world.”

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A retired economist and head of the Mumbai Environmental Social Network, which advocates public transport, Datar wanted to practice what he preached.

“On the whole, it was a good experience,” he says. “I must have done about 40,000 kilometres. I changed the lithium batteries, which cost $3,000, twice, which is steep. With the falling prices of solar power, it should be possible to charge these vehicles more cheaply.”

Datar is upbeat about India’s ambitious plan to sell only electric vehicles from 2030, a whole decade before the UK and France. He enthuses about the potential for power-assisted bicycles and auto rickshaws, which are more widely affordable than cars.

But there is a long way to go. Only 1% of all passenger vehicles are electric in a country which is the fifth largest market for such vehicles in the world. That amounts to 400,000 two-wheelers and a few thousand cars, according to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) in Delhi.

High prices and a lack of public charging infrastructure are major barriers to a wider rollout. Limited and sporadic government subsidies go only part way to addressing those obstacles.

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Lithium batteries, which account for 60% of the cost of a two-wheeler, need replacing every few years and are imported from China, Alok Ray of SMEV tells Climate Home.

Indian state-backed researchers and private companies are starting to invest in domestic innovation and manufacturing. Mahindra Electric, a branch of India’s major automobile manufacturer that bought the Reva from its pioneering founder in 2010, has funded a start-up called Lithium Urban Technologies in Bengaluru. But it is early days yet for producers of electric batteries.

Government backing has come in fits and starts, making investment risky. “The government isn’t clear about its policy to support electric vehicles,” says Ray. “The ministry of new and renewable energy withdrew a R5,500 subsidy [$86] for a two-wheeler in 2012. While there was a market for 100,000 two-wheelers at this reduced price, the next year we only sold 16,000.”

This ministry provided the subsidy through a $15 million Alternate Fuels for Surface Transportation Programme, of which the EV industry was a beneficiary. After its withdrawal, the market crashed and around 1,000 dealers and eight manufacturers shut down their EV businesses.

Scooters like Hero Electric’s Optima, with a top speed of 25 km/h, do not require a driving licence, registration or number plate (Pic: Viswaprabha via Wikimedia Commons)

In its 2015-16 budget, the government introduced a new subsidy under FAME – Faster Adoption and Manufacture of Electric (and Hybrid) Vehicles in India, under which manufacturers are reimbursed 15% of the cost of the vehicle.

Small petrol or diesel-fuelled models remain cheaper than the Reva, however. Mahindra Electric produces only 200 electric cars a month.

From 1 July, a 12% goods and services tax will apply to EVs, further hampering the industry’s growth.

It stands in contrast with China, where government subsidies nearly halve the cost of EVs, while there are disincentives for conventional vehicles. It is different, too, to the consumer-driven US market, where Tesla’s cheapest model retails at $35,000 – far beyond the budget of Indian buyers.

And a shortage of charging stations, even in cities, limits the range that EVs can ply. While the exact number is hard to pin down, PlugIn India lists just 222 community charging stations across the entire country. Electricity distribution is largely under public control and Indian laws make it difficult for the private sector to get involved.

Analysis: Volvo electric vehicle push reflects China’s leadership ambition

The government ministers responsible for road transport, electricity and oil – Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan respectively – have floated ideas to boost the emerging industry.

These include stimulating demand by ordering 270,000 EVs, including 20,000 buses, and making charging stations free for three years, funded by a cess on oil. It remains to be seen whether these plans will materialise.

In May, a report by state-backed think-tank NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute in the US called for a 15-year plan to limit registration of conventional vehicles by lottery.

With better urban design, the report says, much of mobility demand can be met by non-motorised transit and public transit, while access to vehicle-charging infrastructure enables higher penetration of electric vehicles.

To address the lack of charging infrastructure, it recommends providing standardised, swappable batteries for two- and three-wheelers (auto rickshaws) on a pay-per-use business model.

Report: Solar has not beaten coal in the race to electrify India

The solutions will depend on private sector innovation as well as government interventions.

This may be taxi or bus companies using their bulk buying power to bring down prices. In Nagpur, Ola – India’s answer to Uber – has launched a fleet of 200 EVs, from e-rickshaws to electric buses, supported by 50 charging points across the city. Maharashtra state is waiving VAT, road tax and registration on EVs to encourage take-up.

Hero MotoCorp, the world’s largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, is investing in start-up Ather Energy, which plans to roll out its first indigenous electric scooter in December, as well as developing EVs internally through its Hero Electric business.

Ather founder Tarun Mehta tells Climate Home the company is in talks with owners of malls, offices, restaurants and grocery stories to install charging stations, and creating a prototype for residential buildings. Initially, Ather proposes to pay the building for the electricity and pass it on to customers for free, to kick-start the model.

The pioneer of India’s EV industry is Chetan Maini, who made the Reva. Maini’s Virya Mobility 5.0 is now joining hands with SUN New Energy Systems to form SUN Mobility to accelerate the mass use of EVs. It plans to deploy a smart network of quick interchange battery stations. “These stations, predominantly powered by renewable energy, will refuel electric vehicles at a cost lower and speed faster than conventional petrol pumps,” say the promoters.

Report: India diverts $25 billion away from clean energy fund

“We have to address the cost of energy, which includes the battery and electricity,” Maini tells Climate Home. “The Indian market is price-sensitive, so we have to create solutions that enable such transformations. The space taken for charging two- and three-wheelers (auto rickshaws) is less than that required for cars, which present a greater challenge.”

It the obstacles can be overcome, EVs – combined with communications technology to make efficient use of them – have enormous potential to save energy and prevent air pollution. The NITI Aayog report claims e-mobility will reduce oil demand in 2030 by 156 million tonnes compared to relying on conventional vehicles, worth around $60 billion at today’s prices.

If India can get ahead of the game, it also represents a substantial export opportunity.

EV pioneer Maini says: “The 15 years of experience taught us that it is very important to go global. We had to deal with different consumers and markets – the global market was in fact bigger than the domestic one.

“We learned product development needs: in 2002, hardly anyone exported anything from India, let alone cars. Our biggest market was the UK, where the government waived the London congestion tax and reduced parking charges.

“In hindsight, it was a mistake to rely on the government’s support. This was a business that should stand on its own feet, with support from the ground.”

New Delhi has been through a fuel transition before, in 2001, when it became the first city in the world to require public vehicles to run on compressed natural gas. The move, intended to reduce air pollution, did not go smoothly, but it happened. When gas was introduced, Maini recalls, it required huge tanks at petrol stations and there were endless queues for taxis and rickshaws to fill their vehicles, as there still are. “With electricity, it is only wires, so it’s easier to manage. It marks a fundamental shift: it will call for business sense as well as environmental sense.”

The post India’s electric vehicle revolution faces major hurdles appeared first on Climate Home News.

But while the Chinese-owned company’s commitment to stop producing new vehicles powered solely by internal combustion engines by 2019 is bold, it makes a lot of sense given global trends in the automotive sector, and China’s own ambitions to become a world leader in electric vehicles (EVs).​

To shift away from combustion engines, Volvo will introduce a portfolio of EVs across its range that includes fully electric cars, and hybrid cars, which use both battery power and a conventional engine.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car,” said Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars president and chief executive. “Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of one million electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it.”

Julia Hildermeier clean vehicles and e-mobility officer at Brussels-based campaign group Transport and Environment, said: “Volvo’s announcement is quite eye-catching. But when we look in detail it’s not such a surprise. It’s an early announcement of what most car makers will be doing in the next ten years.”

Regulations on fuel-efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions in the US and Europe are pushing automakers to put more efficient cars on the road, and most are moving in this direction, she said. Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW have all announced targets for EVs to make up 20-25% of their fleets by 2025, she noted.

Hildermeier said the shift to electrification is also being driven by an 80% drop in the cost of batteries for EVs in the past ten years and a similar sized improvement in performance. EVs are predicted to be price-competitive with conventional cars by the early 2020s, in terms of the total cost of ownership over four years. “We think we’re now at the beginning of an exponential development of the EV market. By 2050, you can see an almost total electrification of the fleet,” she added.

A bold move

Volvo has been lauded by commenters for taking a bolder position than other brands, which are still manufacturing conventional cars in parallel with electric vehicles and hybrids.

Hildermeier said: “It is a bold statement compared with other car companies. The main reason for this is that Volvo is owned by a Chinese company so they have a very clear technology choice to make.”

Volvo parent company Geely Auto announced in November 2015 that it would shift from internal combustion engine vehicles towards new energy vehicles. By 2020, Geely Auto targeting 90% of its vehicle sales to be EVs, plug-in electric hybrids and hybrid electric vehicles.

Christian Hochfeld, chief executive of Agora Verkehrswende, a German initiative to decarbonise the transport sector, said that Volvo’s statement goes further than other car companies because it is the first to state that it will not invest any further in the optimisation of the internal combustion engine.

“This means that they don’t see a bright future for combustion propulsion in the medium to long term, which is a very important sign,” he said.

David Tyfield, a reader at the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University and director of the Joint Institute for the Environment, Guangzhou, does not believe that Volvo’s announcement on its own is enough to swing the market towards announcing similar phase-outs of internal combustion engines, calling it “another drip in a growing stream of transformations in the car industry”.

“It shows some kind of growth in momentum, but I don’t think it signals a tipping point. I don’t think it is likely to precipitate a stampede of other car companies following suit. Volvo is a reputable company but it’s not a rainmaker in the industry [in terms of sales size].”

The reason Volvo was bought by Chinese company Geely in 2010 was that it was not profitable for GM, Tyfield points out. “You could say that Volvo positioning itself as a leader in electric vehicles comes from a position of weakness rather than strength,” he said.​

China’s electric ambition

Chinese ownership of the brand has catalysed its decision to phase out production of cars powered only by fossil fuels, Hochfeld maintained. China has ambitions to be a world leader in EVs, with the government’s latest five-year plan setting a target for cumulative sales of electric vehicles to reach more than five million by 2020.

Last year, China overtook the US as the world’s largest market for EVs, with around a third of the global total sales and more than double the amount sold in the US, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.

Global electric car stock, 2005-2016. Source: IEA

Though it still ranks far below Norway (29%), the Netherlands (6.4%), and Sweden (3.4%) for the total number of electric vehicles in its fleet, the Chinese government is implementing comprehensive policies to boost growth further, including zero emission vehicle mandates (ZEV). Pioneered in California, these require car makers to sell a set portion of ultra-low or zero-emission vehicles. China is aiming for 8% of new car sales to be electric by 2018, rising to 12% by 2020. Rules in place since 2011 place a cap on the registration of new fossil-fuel powered cars.

China has also installed charging infrastructure to address “range anxiety” by potential purchasers of electric cars. The State Grid Corporation of China and China Southern Power Grid together have opened more than 27,000 charging stations. Although critics say this is insufficient, it is still ahead of charging infrastructure in the EU, where member state governments have been slow to deploy charging points, according to Hildermeier.

China is also co-leading the Electric Vehicles Initiative, a multi-government policy forum established in 2009 under the Clean Energy Ministerial, which aims to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles worldwide.

Domestic pressure to act on air pollution and a clear industrial policy to support electric vehicles have contributed to China becoming a world leader in the technology, Hochfeld said. It has also been a matter of international competition. “The Chinese government and Chinese companies understood that they were lagging behind in the quality of the product in terms of cars with internal combustion engines and they didn’t really catch up with the international benchmark.”

Five or ten years ago there were not many international companies working on e-mobility so they decided to leapfrog traditional technologies and focus on this, he said.

Whether China can maintain this momentum depends on what investments are made in other countries, Hildermeier said. “China has a very comprehensive set of policies to encourage companies and private owners to buy electric vehicles.”​

Wider impacts of EV growth

A growth in electric cars must be accompanied by a growth in renewable energy, Hochfeld pointed out. Without this, the benefit of electric vehicles would be limited to their greater efficiency, but they would still be powered by fossil fuels.

There are also implications for electricity grids, which will have to cope with increased demand. Yoann Le Petit, clean vehicles and e-mobility officer at Transport and Environment pointed out that as the share of renewable energy increases, electric vehicles can provide flexibility to grids helping to manage fluctuating supply from renewable electricity sources. EV batteries can be used to send electricity back to the grid when demand is greater than supply.

Ultimately, it will be up to car companies and governments to ensure that policies and business plans on electric vehicles complement each other. “More and more we see the shift to e-mobility as not just an environmental issue but it’s also an industrial decision – the question is can you combine both of these in a way that meets climate goals and that we save the future for jobs and growth, both in Europe and China,” Hildermeier said.​

This article was produced by China Dialogue and republished under a Creative Commons licence

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Last week the EU parliament voted in favour of a ban on “vegetable oils that drive deforestation, including palm oil, as a component of biofuels, preferably by 2020”. The European Commission will now consider whether to implement such a trade barrier.

In a statement released on Saturday, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said: “This discriminative act is contrary to the European Union’s position as the champion of open, rules-based, free, and fair trade…

“Palm oil is part of the solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provides a positive contribution to increasing global demand for biofuels to replace fossil fuels,” said the statement.

EU palm oil restrictions risk sparking trade spat

Palm oil plantations have been implicated in widespread forest clearance and forest fires, particularly in Indonesia.

The EU has committed to 10% of its transport fuels being renewable by 2020. That order has been linked to a surge in the use of palm oil for biodiesel, raising concerns of a secondary deforestation effect.

The Indonesian foreign ministry questioned the motivation for a ban, saying it would benefit growers in Europe, where most forests were removed centuries ago.

“The recommendation to phase out the use of palm oil within the resolution is protectionist in nature. It is odd that the resolution recommends the promotion of rapeseed and sunflower oils, which according to data, are actually inferior to palm oil,” the ministry said.

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Before the EU vote, Climate Home reported seven producing countries, including Indonesia, wrote to the EU warning such a ban could spark a trade war.

Last week, an editorial in the Jakarta Post also said the campaign against palm oil amounted to protectionism in disguise.

“[The resolution] only validates our suspicion that the seemingly endless attacks on palm oil by green NGOs and consumer organisations since the late 1990s have partly been prompted by strong lobbying by the EU vegetable oil industry to weaken the competitiveness of Indonesian palm oil,” it read.

The post Indonesia calls EU palm oil fuel ban ‘discriminatory’, ‘protectionist’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

If translated into law, such a move could trigger a trade conflict, seven palm oil producing countries have warned.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Colombia are among those to have protested to the European president Antonio Tajani that the motion up for debate contains “trade discriminatory language”.

“The imposition of both tariff and other non-tariff trade barriers, or for an outright EU ban on imports of biodiesel derived from palm oil, could provide advantages to the use of other raw materials, entailing direct discrimination against palm oil,” they say in a letter seen by Climate Home.

Direct discrimination would be a violation of World Trade Organisation rules. Lorena Jaramillo, an officer for the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, said that a suit was possible.

“If [the ban] becomes a regulation, then they could start a trade dispute if they come to the WTO and present a motion that this is detrimental treatment for the exporting countries,” she said.

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The motion has already been approved in a near-unanimous vote by the European Parliament’s environment committee and is “very likely” to be endorsed by MEPs at a plenary in Strasbourg next Tuesday, according to Kateřina Konečná, the report’s rapporteur.

She told Climate Home: “We believe it is absolute nonsense that a forest in Indonesia should burn in order for us to travel ‘ecologically’. It will never be effective and shouldn’t be an option. The feeling starting to build in parliament is that no-one is happy with deforestation for biofuels.”

As well as banning biofuels sourced from any vegetable oils by 2020, the report calls for a new palm oil regulation, minimum sustainability criteria, customs duty reforms and anti-deforestation articles in all future EU trade agreements.

The palm oil report is not legally binding, but its passage would presage a bid to reform EU laws. “We are already planning to table some amendments to the winter energy package in this regard,” Konečná said.

These would have force of law, if agreed in the three-way negotiations between the European Parliament, Commission and Council which followed.

Report: “Beef caucus” takes over indigenous policies in Brazil

While a separate Commission study on palm oil due this month has been delayed, another EU report on deforestation later this year could also incorporate some of Konečná’s recommendations.

UNCTAD’s Jaramillo expressed concern about the effect of a ban on countries taking tentative conservationist steps. “If you cut market access for countries which are making environmentally-friendly investments and efforts, it would take away their incentive to act in a sustainable manner,” she said.

Illegal forest clearances driven by overseas demand for palm oil, soy, beef, wood and other agricultural products account for 65% of the planet’s tropical deforestation.

The process produces 1.47 gigatonnes of CO2 a year – equivalent to a quarter of the EU’s yearly fossil fuel emissions – and its human cost is no less staggering.

More than 100,000 people are thought to have died in southeast Asia in 2015 due to haze caused by forest fires. Slash-and-burn land clearance is the main culprit, much of it to make way for palm oil plantations.

Under the 2030 agenda on sustainable development, the EU is committed to halting deforestation, restoring degraded forests and promoting sustainable public procurement practices by 2020.

Yet a target to source 10% of Europe’s transport fuels from renewable sources is driving demand. Between 2010 and 2014, use of palm oil for biofuels surged to account for 45% of the commodity’s imports to Europe.

Almost three quarters of the renewable fuel mandate is expected to be met by first generation biofuels: those produced directly from food crops. While the EU has proposed halving its share by 2030, the question remains of what will fill the gap.

Jori Sihvonen, the biofuels officer for Transport and Environment told Climate Home that a range of options would be needed. “You can electrify cars or use hydrogen or advanced biofuels,” he said. “You can also produce diesel out of CO2 captured from the air with electricity and hydrogen.

“With lorries, you can have catenary lines over motorways which work to the same concept as tram lines. When the truck was not on a highway, it could run on a combustion engine fuelled by diesel, advanced biofuels or diesel power-to-liquid.”

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The occasion? Mozambique’s capital can now accommodate the largest ocean-going vessels, after a programme of dredging. Previously, such ships would chug on past to South African ports.

“Markets change, economies adjust, new opportunities arise, but if there is something that can always be a source of wealth, it is our privileged access to the sea,” says transport minister Carlos Mesquita.

Today, the hot commodity, stockpiled on a concrete slab here and traded upriver at Matola terminal, is coal – destined to be burned in an Indian power station. Mozambique plans a massive expansion of this export market, despite warnings from government disaster agencies the port may be fuelling its own destruction.

A coal stockpile, perhaps destined for India (Photo: Oupa Nkosi)

Other speeches hammer home the scale of the transformation. Maputo’s main port, which could only handle 3 million tonnes of cargo a year in 2003, is well on its way to handling 40Mt/yr by 2020. That is after a US$700 million investment in its facilities.

The coal port, a bit further up the Maputo River, has also grown and aims to export 20Mt of coal a year by the same date. A second coal terminal is proposed, with a consortium of Swazi and South African junior miners looking to export 6Mt a year. Citing the “huge untapped market from India,” the miners say they have the rights to ultimately dig up 800Mt of coal.

The goal is simple, according to Mesquita: “To make the Port of Maputo the choice for the export of cargo volumes from Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Botswana.”

TERI: India may never need another coal plant

A changing climate may crimp that ambition, country’s National Institute for Disaster Management warns.

Under the direst projections, melting ice caps and warming oceans cause sea level rise of 3m this century, overwhelming the port and low-lying business district. “The port and rail facilities will need to be gradually relocated as the water rises,” says an official assessment.

With little space for development on the high ground, a forest of cranes building headquarters for South African financial institutions, Brazilian resource companies and Chinese construction companies works on the low strip of land running next to the water.

“We don’t worry about the water now. The river takes any energy out of storms,” the port’s safety officer tells Climate Home. At high tide, the water is a metre below the top of the quay.

A cement flood barrier, dating back to before independence from Portugal in 1975, lines the river before curving around the coast. On the ocean side of Maputo, fingers of rock and cement jut into the ocean. These provide sanctuary for lovers basking in the cool evenings, and a few times a year they break the force of waves that would otherwise swamp the flood defences.

But even in a low sea level rise scenario, the area will become more exposed to coastal storm surges. Tropical cyclones, which regularly batter Mozambique’s 2,500km coastline, are set to intensify in a warming climate. Storms like Eline, which in 2001 destroyed the homes of 20,000 people in Maputo and killed nearly a thousand people and 40,000 cattle across the country, could come around more often.

Climate change is set to bring more storm surges, putting Maputo’s sea wall to the test (Photo: Oupa Nkosi)

While climate change threatens Mozambique’s development gains, there is little awareness of the role of fossil fuels in causing the threat. “Authorities and churches avoid creating consciousness that climate change is human-induced and hence may be effectively countered by mitigation measures,” says Luis Artur, from Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University.

This means a development path which focuses on extractive industries – and exporting coal – can be followed with little opposition. It is a path that favours the needs of elites, with short-term economic development coming at the long-term costs which come with the changing climate, he adds.

Africa files: Drought sours future of Swaziland’s sugar growers

Maputo port is one hub of a road and rail network spanning southern Africa. Some trains travel the 1,300km from northern Botswana, changing engines at the Zimbabwe and Mozambique borders, to offload coal at the port. Most come across the South African border, 120km to the west.

On the morning of the port’s launch ceremony, a dozen trains sit at a siding. A pink waybill slip shows they are bringing ferrochrome from Mpumalanga in South Africa. A crane, clattering along on its caterpillar tracks, uses its shovel to nudge them into place before unloading the silver-grey commodity onto trucks. These unload on cement slabs, each the size of a football field and named after Mozambican liberation heroes. Queues of trucks with South African licence plates create a disorganised traffic jam near the rail sidings, jostling to offload first.

“They [countries in the region] say one thing while exploiting their fossil fuel reserves,” says Bobby Peek, of NGO groundWork. His organisation works with communities affected by coal mines and power stations in the region, particularly in Mpumalanga. “It’s madness and short-term thinking at its best. Especially when communities along the entire [Maputo] corridor will be so heavily affected by climate change.”

Maputo port, for its part, in the long term has a goal to move away from exporting fossil fuels as the markets change. India is aiming to end dependence on coal imports in the next few years, while China has halted construction on over a hundred coal-fired power stations as it moves towards renewable energy.

Unlike neighbouring South Africa, Mozambique’s development plan sees more future in valuable minerals like rubies than in coal. But Maputo will still have to prepare for the consequences of a climate shaped by burning the black stuff.

This story was produced with the Mail & Guardian, using funding from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN)

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That was revealed by the Energy Information Administration on Thursday.

Source: US EIA, Monthly Energy Review

A shift away from burning coal to cleaner natural gas and renewable sources has seen power sector emissions trend downwards since 2007.

Yet while cars have got more efficient over the same period, the impact has – so far – been marginal. In 2012 the Barack Obama administration introduced emission standards mandating the doubling of vehicle fuel efficiency by 2025.

Source: US EIA, Monthly Energy Review

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If the accusations are true, car companies have yet again shown utter disregard for human health. But their crimes could be future generations’ gain. The fallout from VW’s “dieselgate” more than a year ago shows that calamity for diesel can only speed the charge of electric cars.

“There has been a real sea change in attitude by the car industry, in favour of electric vehicles and recognising that this is the beginning of the end of diesel in passenger cars,” said Greg Archer, director of clean vehicles at Transport & Environment, on Friday.

The emissions rigging scandal has been calamitous for VW. This week news broke that six of its executive face criminal charges in the US and the company has agreed to pay a US$4.3bn fine. That brings its total costs to $20bn since the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first charged VW with fitting its cars with a defeat device to beat emissions tests in September 2015.

On Thursday, the EPA announced that Fiat Chrysler faced a similar probe and markets immediately wiped US$2.3bn from the company’s value.

“That Fiat issue in the US will not be limited to the US – those vehicles and that engine are being used in Europe as well,” said Archer.

Similar damage to Renault’s stock occurred on Friday when French investigators announced they would be looking into suspect emissions levels in its cars.

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The effect of the VW scandal has not apparently hit sales for diesel cars. But the political developments have been significant, with the EU pushing through new testing regulations that will make it more expensive to buy a diesel car. Due to a long-running subsidy scheme, the EU has a far higher proportion of diesel cars than anywhere else.

Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City have all announced they will ban diesel cars from 2025. In France, drivers who scrap a diesel car and buy an electric one are given €10,000. London mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a scheme that will charge drivers of older diesel cars £10 for entering the city centre.

This type of political signal emerged from the public outrage at VW’s duplicity and it devalues diesel cars in the eyes of the consumer.

“Everyone sees which way it is going,” said Archer. “Eighteen months ago, the industry was really big on diesel. A load of UK companies were advertising ‘clean diesel’ on telly. I don’t think you’ll see that sort of campaign again. There’s been a shift in priorities of perception that the dieselgate scandal has brought about.”

Source: KPMG

In an attempt to rebuild its post-scandal image, VW decided that only electric cars could wash it clean. The company announced in November that it planned to be a world leader in the market, building one million electric vehicles every year by 2025.

Regulatory moves, coupled with increasing competitiveness of hybrid and electric vehicles has created a “perfect storm” that will see diesel cars’ market share fall off a cliff this decade, investment bank UBS predicted in December.

“In the aftermath of the Volkswagen diesel issue, politicians and regulators have become highly sensitive and increasingly populist about diesel emissions,” said the UBS report. “Even if some plans appear overly ambitious, the direction of travel is obvious and likely irreversible.”

The report said the global share of diesel cars would fall from 13.5% to just 4% by 2025. In Europe, the heartland of diesel, the decline would be even steeper – from 50% to 10%.

In a recent global survey of 1,000 auto executives by KMPG, more than half of those surveyed agreed that diesel was “dead”. At the same time, they named battery electric vehicles as the number one trend in the auto industry.

The VW scandal coincided with big falls in the price of battery technology, from $1,000 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to $350 in 2015. This year, said Archer, the price had dropped further to a point where electric vehicles were competitive with conventional engines.

Meanwhile batteries are being introduced that can cope with long range trips. Fast charging networks are planned along highways to allow electric vehicle drivers to make really long journeys.

This has big consequences for one of the toughest climate policy areas – reducing oil use in transport. International climate targets mean that the petrol cars should cease to be built by 2035, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts electric vehicles could account for 35% of car sales, cutting oil use by 13 million barrels by 2040.

European carmakers, so long in thrall to diesel subsidies, are scrambling to adjust.

In November, German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel attacked China’s electric vehicle targets for being too ambitious, revealing his auto industry could not keep up with demand in the Chinese market.

None of this is to say that diesel’s loss is all electricity’s gain. Traditional petrol powerchains still lead the market. Petrol cars and hybrids still have higher consumer ratings than fully electric vehicles and KPMG found that automakers planned to invest heavily in all forms of engine technology in the coming years.

The question also remains whether people who give up their diesel will actually buy a new car. Driverless and car-sharing schemes have already begun to redefine transport in cities.

Finally, as John Vidal has noted in the Observer, the collapse of diesel in the west poses serious problems in Africa, which is already a dumping ground for the rich world’s unwanted polluting clunkers. Millions of diesel cars flowing into the already blighted intersections of Nairobi and Lagos presents an enormous public health risk.

No-one has credibly assessed the number of people who lost their lives or suffered exacerbated illness as a result of VW’s scam. But the prospect of diesel’s carbon emissions being eradicated along with its nitrous oxides is a positive turn from a grievous corporate crime.

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This policy mix is key to the public’s growing acceptance of EVs. However, the adoption of EVs is still being held back by the limited number of charging points and the strain on electricity grids from the additional loads from cars.

License to buy 

Like Zhang, fellow Beijinger Li Fang was persuaded to buy an EV by the near impossible odds in the public lottery for license plates for petrol vehicles. At least 2.72 million people are registered in the lottery competing for just 90,000 licenses. Li had taken part since the lottery’s 2011 launch, but with no luck. “So I had no choice but to look at an EV,” she told a low carbon seminar in August.

By contrast, EV licenses are not awarded by lottery but through queuing. However, as the EV market becomes more established, it too is facing license plate scarcity. An annual quota of 51,000 private car licenses (excluding taxis, trucks and government cars, etc.) was exhausted in August, leaving 4,644 applicants having to wait until 2017.

Beijing’s 2016 quota for EVs was 40% of its total new car license plate quota. This is likely to increase, with further cuts due in the quota for traditional-fuel vehicles, and EV buyers anxious to purchase before expected reductions in subsidies happen for domestically produced EVs.

Annual license quota for all traditional and electric vehicles (conventional cars in blue; EVs in red)

National and local subsidies soothe worries over the higher cost of EVs: Zhang was pleased to get a 30,000 yuan (US$4,366) car for only 20,000 yuan (US$2,910). Other benefits include exemption from anti-congestion rules, which prevent drivers using their petrol and diesel vehicles one day each week.

Beijing’s approach has shown that when purchase options are constrained, consumers care first about owning a vehicle and less about how it is powered. However, Beijing’s approach is not reproduced nationally, where EVs are still less than 1.5% of all new car sales.

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A major issue that risks damaging public acceptance of EVs and limiting adoption is a lack of charging points.

Even in Beijing, which has 14% of China’s charging stations, recharging can be difficult. This means EVs still remain impractical for long journeys across the country.

Although automakers are busy developing vehicles with longer ranges, for the time being at least, drivers are legitimately concerned about getting stranded because a charging station cannot be found. Li says she struggled to get home once on a 200 kilometre-round trip to Tianjin, Beijing’s neighbouring city, because she couldn’t recharge her car.

Beijing had 6,789 public charging stations at the end of 2015, second only to Guangdong. Most cities have far fewer, according to the 2016 China New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Report.

Beijing added 1,000 public charging stations in the first half of 2016, and total private charging stations reached 8,000.

But Beijing has issued licences for 51,000 EVs this year, and the National Development and Reform Commission’s target of one charging station per EV by 2020 remains far off.

Power problems

EVs can still require lengthy charging sessions at one of two kinds of charging station. Most private charging stations use alternating current (AC). These are slower but place less load on the grid. Direct current (DC) stations are faster but place greater stress on local grids.

“500,000 EVs recharging on direct current would cause Beijing’s electricity grid to collapse,” says Liu Chun, deputy head of the New Energy Centre at China Electric Power Research Institute.

Property managers sometimes ban private charging points to protect safety and power supply. But if space is available, a private charging station is good value for drivers. Li estimates her EV’s running costs are just one third of an equivalent petrol car.

Zhang’s electricity supplier installed his charging point for free, and he profits from renting it out to other EV owners at one yuan per kilowatt hour (US$0.14), roughly double what he pays.

Drivers can face queues at public charging stations; recharging takes time, and EV rental firms hog some venues. Public charging stations are often costly, too, though prices diverge wildly in an immature market that proper pricing regulations. Zhang calculates that recharging her car a public charge point costs 50 yuan (US$7.2) per 100 kilometres, which offers no real saving compared to the cost of refueling a petrol car.

Higher-end EV brands, such as Tesla, offer free, unlimited fast recharges at the company’s 11 Beijing stations but such perks are rare.

New infrastructure

To make Beijing more EV-friendly, the city plans to install 435,000 charging stations between 2016 and 2020, more than twice as many as Shanghai. But more than a million EVs will be sold over the same period, according to the 2016 China New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Report.

Also, as EV ownership increases so too does demand for electricity. Two solutions are being considered: more power sources and better management of existing ones.

The Beijing Development and Reform Commission is leading a project to bring all EVs and charging points onto a single charging platform, said Niu Jinming, director of the Beijing New Energy Vehicle Development Centre. This will make it easier for vehicle owners to connect and pay for electricity at charging stations. The platform, which is operated by a private company, can also be used to charge vehicles in line with user preferences. In future, such platforms could reduce peak demand on the electricity grid.

A solar solution

A team at Tsinghua University has proposed installing small-scale solar farms on city rooftops to power charging points, along expressways and at tourist spots surrounding Beijing, though trials have yet to take place. A similar model may be pursued by Tesla, which merged with rooftop solar power firm Solarcity in November; a step towards linking EVs with locally-produced solar power.

The government’s effort to encourage EVs in Beijing is in the hope of cutting emissions and meeting air quality targets. China’s coal consumption has been declining since 2014, and an anticipated restructuring of the economy towards high value-added manufacturing and services means that future emissions growth may come from the buildings and transportation sectors. Beijing’s 13th Five-Year Plan for Transportation Development and Construction estimated that by 2020, 57 million journeys will be made daily within the city’s sixth ring road – up 21% on 2015.

Although concentrated in a few cities, total EV sales in China rose dramatically from 74,000 in 2014 to 330,000 in 2015, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

For Beijing, which already has a high rate of car ownership and major congestion problems, the next question on the minds of policymakers may be just how much scope there is for greater car use.

This article and the embedded video were produced by chinadialogue

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