In October, president Moon Jae-in announced that South Korea aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, turning an election promise of a Green New Deal into a policy pledge. 

Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is a tall order for South Korea, which is the world’s fourth-largest importer of coal and the third biggest investor in overseas coal projects. It will require a complete phase out of coal and a rapid acceleration of clean technologies. 

“South Korea is a notable laggard in the green energy transition,” Joojin Kim, managing director of South Korean campaign group Solutions For Our Climate, told Climate Home News.

Renewables make up just 4% of the country’s electricity mix, the lowest share of any developed country member of the International Energy Agency.

In December, South Korea submitted its 2050 carbon neutrality strategy to the UN, outlining its plans to decarbonise the country’s energy, agriculture and transportation sectors. Solar and wind energy as well as hydrogen form are central to the plans.

South Korea’s net zero pledge and those of other major economies, such as Japan and China, are expected to spur investment into renewables and batteries.

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Since Moon’s announcement, South Korea has unveiled plans to build the world’s largest floating wind farm. In December, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power signed a deal with Spanish company OW Offshore to construct a 1.5 GW wind farm off the coast of the southern city Ulsan. The government has said it aims to develop 4.6 GW of offshore wind farms by 2026. 

SK Group, one of South Korea’s top oil producers, announced this month that it will invest $1.5 billion in the US hydrogen fuel cell maker Plug Power. The company makes hydrogen cells for electric vehicles and builds fuelling stations in North America.

The investment, which will make SK Group Plug Power’s largest investor, is another sign that Korean companies are starting to shift away from fossil fuels and accelerate the green energy transition following Moon’s pledge. 

As part of its Green New Deal, South Korea aims to have 1.13 million electric and 200,000 hydrogen vehicles on the roads by 2025. 

Coal, however, remains a big problem for South Korea. In its 2050 strategy, the country says it plans to phase out all coal plants or convert them to run on liquefied natural gas. 

But it has not set a date for ending coal power and currently has 7.2 GW of coal capacity under construction, according to Global Energy Monitor data. According to Climate Analytics, South Korea must phase out coal power by 2029 if it is to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement. 

South Korea’s focus on gas as a “clean transition fuel” conflicts with South Korea’s 2050 carbon neutrality ambition, said Kim. Gas is commonly touted as a cleaner fuel than coal, because it emits around half the carbon dioxide when burned for energy. But methane, which can leak into the atmosphere during gas extraction or transport, contributes significantly to global warming. 

Kim said that the national power plan urgently needs updating as in its current form it states that gas units can continue operating beyond 2060. “It needs to be revised to be consistent with the 2050 carbon neutrality goal.”

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In an op-ed for German business newspaper WirtschaftWoche, Gerd Müller, Germany’s economic cooperation and development minister, and Claudia Kemfert, economist at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), warned that people in Africa and other developing regions are hardest hit by climate change and without the help of rich, developed countries they face an uncertain future.

Energy transformation is key to their development and economic well-being, they added. “The energy transition in Africa requires an investment and innovation offensive: German and European technologies can make it the greenest continent.”

The pair called for the EU’s New Green Deal – a climate plan to make the bloc carbon neutral by 2050 – to include a strong African component and for the bloc to involve Africa in the global transformation of energy systems by investing in solar and wind power and hydrogen.

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Such a move, they said, would not only give people in poorer countries a livelihood and economic development opportunities, it would also help to tackle social injustices, defuse regional and geostrategic conflicts, and protect global resources.

“This major task must become the focus of the new EU-Africa Treaty,” they wrote.

The EU is hoping to agree a new EU-Africa partnership at a high level summit with the African Union planned in October. The two blocs are currently discussing partnerships in ten policy areas, including the energy transition, digital transformation and sustainable growth.

In recent years, the EU has lost ground in Africa to China. Under a new strategy, the EU hopes to cement its position as the continent’s largest investor and intensify political co-operation with African nations.

This story was originally published by Clean Energy Wire. The story has been amended to reflect CHN’s style.  

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Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said the pandemic would transform societies. It would be impossible simply to reactivate the pre-Covid-19 global economy in the way that billion-dollar bailouts helped revive growth after the 2008 financial crisis.

“It’s a kind of a fork in the road for every country,” he told Climate Home News in a video interview from New York, adding that developing nations were especially vulnerable. “You have an opportunity to either invest in returning to yesterday’s economy or to invest into tomorrow’s economy.”

The coronavirus has killed more than 190,000 people worldwide.

Steiner said that the plunge in benchmark US oil prices to lows of around minus $40 a barrel on Monday – meaning producers and traders paying to get rid of it – highlighted a need to break dependence on fossil fuels and move to greener energies such as solar and wind power.

Crude began the year trading above $60.

“The fact that the lifeblood of our economy for much of the last 100 years has been dependent on a substance (whose price) oscillates literally in a few months by 200%, sometimes 300% … is in itself an illustration of how irrational our energy has become,” he said.

New Zealand sticks to 2030 climate target while waiting for 1.5C advice

He said that nuclear power had also failed to live up to promises of being a cheap and safe source of energy. Nuclear power “is a 20th century technology that is on the way out. Fossil fuels are rapidly moving in that direction.”

In government planning “there are thousands of possibilities in our daily economic transactions to insert the DNA of a low-carbon transition and recovery strategy. These are the possibilities we now need to test,” he said.

He noted that the Austrian government, for instance, said this month that state aid for Austrian Airlines should support climate policy targets. Similar opportunities to shape a greener future existed in all stimulus packages.

At the same time, he said that many countries, especially developing nations dependent on oil exports, needed to safeguard jobs and would need time to reform.

“You can’t talk a terrible crisis into a rosy opportunity,” he said. “We need to now have governments and markets design their strategy of exiting from fossil fuels over a period of probably 50 years, but with increasing and accelerating pace.”

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Almost 200 governments committed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of this century. That is seen as essential to limit rising temperatures that scientists link to wildfires, heatwaves, rising seas and more powerful storms.

This week, the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) estimated a deep decarbonisation of the world economy by 2050 requires total energy investment up to $130 trillion.

It would boost cumulative global GDP gains above business-as-usual by $98 trillion between now and 2050 and have benefits such as quadrupling renewable energy jobs to 42 million, Irena said.

Steiner said a green transition would also help reduce climate change and air pollution that kills millions of people a year. There were also risks that fossil fuel reserves would become stranded assets, that were unusable and worthless for investors.

IPCC: UN climate science report to consider lessons from coronavirus

Developing nations were most at risk from coronavirus and restrictions on trade and travel, since they cannot mobilise billions of dollars to shield their citizens.

In the Indian Ocean state of the Maldives, for instance, “no tourism means no economy,” he said.

Steiner was head of the UN Environment Programme at the time of the financial crisis and urged the adoption of a Global Green New Deal in 2009 to shift economies away from fossil fuels, one of the first uses of an idea that has since caught on far more widely.

In 2009, the reaction “was still a very partial and relatively limited green stimulus” even though nations including China, the United States, the European Union and South Korea and others invested billions of dollars into green measures.

And Covid-19 “isn’t a crisis we can solve with bailouts,” he said. “This time we are not going to see a return to a pre-Covid normal. It’s not just about getting back the economy we had before.”

He governments should put more resources into planning for the future.

“This is not a black swan, this is not Rumsfeld’s unknown unknown,” he said of the pandemic, referring to former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who spoke of “unknown unknowns” when discussing uncertainties about Iraq’s weapons arsenal.

“We have just been catapulted into that domain where oil is something that we actually cannot use,” Steiner said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Our societies have shut down, borders are closed, unemployment is on the rise and companies are struggling.

The focus is presently on fighting the pandemic and its immediate consequences.

We should, however,  begin to prepare ourselves to rebuild our economy and to introduce the necessary recovery plans to bring renewed, sustainable progress and prosperity back to Europe and its citizens.

While doing so, we must not lose sight of the persisting climate and ecological crisis. Building momentum to fight this battle has to stay high on the political agenda.

The lesson from the Covid-19 crisis is that early action is essential. Therefore, we need to maintain ambition in order to mitigate the risks and costs of inaction from climate change and biodiversity losses.

We cannot afford setbacks that can have detrimental effects on our climate, biodiversity and environment as well as on human health and our economies.

These crises have reminded us that answers need to be found in a concerted manner through a common European response.

The EU’s capacity to act depends largely on our ability to work together in solidarity to build the bridge between fighting Covid-19, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Chile to peak emissions by 2025, under strengthened climate pledge

We therefore strongly welcome that the Heads of States and Governments on 26 March invited the Commission to start working on a comprehensive EU recovery plan integrating the green transition and digital transformation.

We call on the Commission to use the European Green Deal as a framework for this exercise and thereby to keep momentum by implementing its initiatives.

The Green Deal constitutes a new growth strategy for the EU, which is able to deliver on the twin benefits of stimulating economies and creating jobs while accelerating the green transition in a cost efficient way.

For example, the objective of climate neutrality by 2050 as well as a strong policy framework ensures a stable and forward-looking investment environment for Europe’s businesses, which is an essential precondition for green growth and job creation.

In addition, we encourage the Commission to look into elements of the Green Deal, including the European Green Deal Investment Plan, which can be pushed forward to boost green recovery and a just transition.

We need to scale up investments, notably in the fields of sustainable mobility, renewable energy, building renovations, research and innovation, the recovery of biodiversity and the circular economy.

The Green Deal provides us with a roadmap to make the right choices in responding to the economic crisis while transforming Europe into a sustainable and climate neutral economy.

We should withstand the temptations of short-term solutions in response to the present crisis that risk locking the EU in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come.

Instead, we must remain resolved to increase the EU’s 2030 target before the end of this year adhering to the timetable of the Paris agreement despite the postponement of Cop26, and inspire other global players to raise their ambition as well.

In that light we are pleased that the Commission is on track to present by September 2020 an impact assessed plan to raise the EU’s 2030 ambitions and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50-55% compared to 1990 levels.

Governments still due to submit tougher climate plans in 2020, despite Cop26 delay

Furthermore, we need to maintain and strengthen EU’s effective regulatory tools such as the Emissions Trading Scheme, environment standards and sectoral policies, and make them more effective at reducing emissions in the most cost effective way while providing a path for European businesses into the future green and circular economy.

We need to send a strong political signal to the world and our citizens that the EU will lead by example even in difficult times like the present and blaze the trail to climate neutrality and the fulfilment of the Paris Agreement.

In the same vein, urgent action to protect and conserve biodiversity must be a key part of our response to the global health and environmental crisis and a key aspect to ensure the long-term survival and well-being of our societies.

Leonore Gewessler Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology of Austria

Dan Jørgensen Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities of Denmark

Krista Mikkonen Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Finland

Sergio Costa Minister of Environment, Land and Sea of Italy

Juris Pūce Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia

Carole Dieschbourg Minister for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development of Luxembourg

Eric Wiebes Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands

João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes Minister for Environment and Climate Action of Portugal

Teresa Ribera Rodríguez Fourth Vice-President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge of Spain

Isabella Lövin Minister for Environment and Climate, and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden

Élisabeth Borne Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition of France

Svenja Schulze, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of Germany

Kostas Hatzidakis, Minister of Environment and Energy, Greece

Ján Budaj, Minister of Environment, the Slovak Republic
 
Richard Bruton T.D., Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Ireland
 
Andrej Vizjak, Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning, Slovenia
 
Dr. Aaron Farrugia, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Planning, Malta

Updated on 20/11/20 to add the Slovak Republic, Ireland, Slovenia and Malta as signatories, on 11/04/20 to add Germany and Greece and on 10/04/20 to add France (contact ad@climatehomenews.com)

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The subsistence farmers and their families collect the urine they pass – most even keep a plastic vessel in their bedroom for use at night – and store it in containers where it matures and turns into a fertiliser worth about $0.47 a litre, cheaper than chemical rivals.

The system is a shift from the use of pit latrines where the urine seeps away into the ground.

“This fertiliser is very effective on crops, it works just like most of the chemical fertilisers and it quickly reacts on the crops as opposed to the chemical fertilisers,” said Mark Folopenzi, a 45-year old farmer at Neno who lives with his wife and three children.

Malawi has a largely agricultural economy, with more than 80% of its population in rural areas and earning a living through subsistence, rain-fed crops including maize, sorghum, pulses and millet. The country is the sixth poorest in the world.

Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly

In a bid to improve agricultural productivity among subsistence farmers, the government of Malawi has since 2005 been implementing the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), which has been lauded for increasing maize yields and rural incomes.

The programme, which targets around one million of the country’s 11 million smallholder farmers, has cost 288.9 billion kwacha ($393.6 million). However, despite this expenditure, the programme has not necessarily empowered subsistence farmers, as year in and year out they seek relief from government due to hunger as a result of unpredictable weather patterns.

High population growth, deforestation and erosion make the economy especially vulnerable to worsening climate change. The impact of erratic rains, prolonged dry spells and severe floods has been aggravated by a lack of agricultural resources, including fertilisers.

While farmers face many challenges, the biggest cause of crop failure is low rainfall and low nutrients in the soil. Maize, the country’s staple crop, demands lots of nutrients, and growing the plant without fertilisers is difficult.

A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute found that while subsidising fertiliser prices increases use, yields, and household income, it discourages use of organic-based materials and methods to maintain soil fertility.

With the ever-rising cost of chemical fertilisers, subsistence farmers in Malawi have been finding it hard to afford chemical fertilisers, and they have been trying to find affordable and sustainable alternatives – such as urine.

(Photo: Madalitso Kateta)

Folopenzi said the introduction of Bionitrate fertiliser, which is made by maturing human urine in plastic containers, has helped farmers amid the ever-rising costs.

“We can’t grow crops without applying fertilisers as we used to some fifteen years ago. The soil has over the years lost its fertility and growing crops without fertiliser results in bad harvest and hunger,” said Folopenzi.

“This [Bionitrate] fertiliser is very good and we are excited that we can also save a lot of money if we can produce our own fertiliser from the urine we can collect at home,” he said.

Sabawo Chikuni, another farmer from Neno, was previously worried the Bionitrate fertiliser was unhygienic and could be infected with parasites. But having seen its effects, he now plans to use the fertiliser in the winter cropping season.

“I previously had negative feelings on the use of human urine on crops. I felt like this could not be a better alternative to chemical fertilisers. But looking at how the maize in the gardens of farmers that are using this fertiliser has grown, I believe government could be doing us justice if it promoted this fertiliser,” he said.

Bionitrate fertiliser is being championed by Environmental Industries, a private non-profit company that has been working with different local and international organisations in Malawi to promote the use of biotechnology and produce fertilisers which are economically sustainable, environmentally friendly, and safe to use.

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

Goodfellow Phiri, director at Environmental Industries, said Bionitrate fertilisers are safe to use and do not pose any health hazards, despite health and ethical questions raised by some farmers.

He told Climate Home News that before the urine is turned into fertiliser, it ages and the chemical processes in the urine turn it from an acid to an alkaline, making the product very salty and not habitable for germs.

“In the alkaline state, the PH is beyond seven and the product is salty. In this salty state, all the germs are dead and the fertiliser is odorless and free from germs. However, if mishandled during use, it can be contaminated,” said Phiri.

The fertiliser also helps conserve the soil by raising its PH through its chemical composition, giving it the same effect as agricultural lime on acidic soils.

Phiri’s company collects 40 litres of urine a day and matures 14,600 litres of Bionitrate urine per year. The Bionitrate urine is sold at K350.00 ($0.47) per litre as opposed to the K470.00 ($0.64) per kilo for chemical fertiliser. For an acre of maize, a farmer needs 50 litres of Bionitrate urine.

Urinals at “urine harvesters” are equipped with a urine trap which collects the urine into a 20-litre container, and the urine is later transferred into a 200-litre maturing tank before being packaged into 20-litre and five-litre containers.

(Photo: Madalitso Kateta)

Phiri said the company was currently training farmers on how to process their own urine rather than buy the liquid.

“Our goal is to train farmers on how to construct urine harvesters which can enable them to collect enough urine which they can turn into Bionitrate fertiliser. This is the only way we can make the farmers self-reliant as the cost of fertiliser keeps rising,” he said.

Apart from harvesting urine for fertiliser production, the farmers can create business opportunities by constructing public urine harvesting toilets, which they could charge to use, he said.

Coronavirus: in Hawaii’s air, scientists seek signs of economic shock on CO2 levels

“We are training farmers on how they can get maximum results from this natural fertiliser. However, the challenge that we are currently facing is low adoption because of mindset change towards fertilisers made from human waste,” he said, before adding that demand for Bionitrate fertiliser was steadily rising among subsistence farmers.

Environmental Industries has been working with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and several non-governmental organisations. It is currently cooperating with the government of Malawi and seed companies to popularise Bionitrate fertiliser across the country.

“This is the right path for Malawi to follow, as the 42 billion Kwacha we spend annually on the Farm Input Subsidy Programme is too much considering that it only benefits one million farmers out of the 11 million active farmers,” said Phiri.

Masauko Dzumani, the Agricultural Extension Development Officer (AEDO) for Neno Extension Planning Area (EPA), said Bionitrate fertilisers were working on crops just as well as chemical fertilisers, and his office has been recommending farmers start using this natural fertiliser.

“We have been doing a trial of the effectiveness of the Bionitrate fertiliser and we have observed that the farmers that have been using it are having the same crops as those that have applied chemical fertilisers like calcium ammonium nitrate and nitrogen phosphorus and potassium,” said Dzumani.

For the farmers using Bionitrate, they have found an effective, cheap, way to sustain their crops.

And it all starts with a plastic pot by the bed.

This article was produced as part of an African reporting programme supported by Future Climate for Africa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coronavirus response to delay EU Green Deal by weeks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

Officially, the show must go on. But in private, officials admit that Brussels is having to review its priorities in order to throw all its weight behind the ongoing fight against the coronavirus crisis.

“At this point in time, we do not have any comment to make on any knock-on effect that this could have on legislative work in general,” said Eric Mamer, chief spokesperson of the European Commission, during a regular press briefing on Tuesday.

However, he also suggested that a reshuffling of priorities was underway at the EU executive, also because of constraints posed by teleworking.

“For legislative activity to work, we need to have the institutions able to operate,” Mamer admitted, saying Commission services and other EU institutions “will definitely have to prioritise their work in order to cater for the current needs.”

As a result, “non-essential” initiatives like the biodiversity strategy and the farm-to-fork strategy are likely to be delayed by a few weeks. According to the Commission’s work programme, those were supposed to be adopted before the end of March. Other Green Deal-related initiatives likely to be delayed include the raw materials strategy.

“If we adopt those strategies in two or three weeks, that won’t make such a big difference,” one official speaking on condition of anonymity. “We have to concentrate on the corona crisis,” the official explained.

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

But that doesn’t mean Europe should “forget about the Green Deal” to focus on the coronavirus, as suggested by Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš on Monday. Nor will the Commission put its carbon trading scheme on hold, like Poland requested through the voice of its deputy minister for state assets, Janusz Kowalski, officials said.

“The long-term work on the Green Deal continues in parallel” to the coronavirus firefighting “and continues to be one of the priorities as well,” said Vivian Loonela, EU Commission spokesperson for the European Green Deal.

“We have preparations ongoing for the next initiatives and this work is continuing,” Loonela said. That work is “underway through our colleagues who are in teleworking,” she said in response to press questions.

To be sure, teleworking hardly speeds up the Commission’s internal processes. On Monday, the executive’s internal servers reportedly broke down as thousands of officials tried connecting simultaneously to the Commission servers, Euractiv has learned.

Commission staff aren’t working at full speed as a consequence. And their leaders aren’t either, due to teleworking constraints or to the coronavirus itself.

Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s executive vice-president in charge of the Green Deal, put himself on self-imposed quarantine until 20 March, after attending a meeting with French secretary of state for ecological transition, Brune Poirson, who tested positive with COVID-19.

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Although Loonela said Timmermans “is in a good state of health” and “does not have any symptoms,” his self-isolation won’t speed up any Green Deal-related initiatives.

More generally, policymakers said the fight against the coronavirus, although the top priority at the moment, should not distract Europe from longer-term goals such as climate change.

Austria’s federal minister for climate action, Leonore Gewessler, rejected calls by Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš who said the EU Green Deal should be scrapped in order to focus on the coronavirus.

“I do not agree with Andrej Babiš,” Gewessler said. Although she insisted that the corona crisis must be overcome “now,” she said politicians had a responsibility to offer a long-term perspective to their citizens.

“Climate change is an existential threat which can be tackled with an economic program, the Green New Deal,” Gewessler said.

“This strategic programme defines how we can invest together with businesses and re-structure, modernise our economies. This will trigger an enormous boost for innovation. As a European, I am convinced that this is the right way forward and that we should pursue it,” she added.

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“We need to start planning already now” for the post-coronavirus economic stimulus, she continued, saying that “the old growth model fuelled by fossil energy is a thing of the past”.

In the European Parliament, others were supportive as well.

“Failure to respond to the climate crisis will not help solve the coronavirus so those who use this pretext against the green deal are irresponsible,” said Pascal Canfin, a French lawmaker who chairs the European Parliament’s environment and public health committee.

“After the peak of the crisis, when the economic recovery has to be accelerated, we will be at a crossroads: any investment in infrastructure, in the building sector or in automotive, will have to be consistent with the climate issue,” Canfin said.

“We have the possibility of making this crisis an opportunity for the climate – let us seize it,” said Canfin, who hails from French President’s Emmanuel Macron’s Renew Europe political group in the European Parliament.

This story was originally published by CHN’s media partner Euractiv. 

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Results of the Iowa Democratic presidential caucus on Monday have been delayed by inconsistencies in reporting the data.

The US will formally leave the 2015 Paris Agreement on 4 November 2020 after Trump decided to withdraw. Formally rejoining the climate accord would take a just month.

Policies by leading candidates in Iowa, based on their published plans:

BERNIE SANDERS

Domestic

Sanders aims for “100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonisation of the economy by 2050 at latest”.

His foresees creation of  20 million jobs, including in renewable power, steel, construction, energy efficiency retrofitting, sustainable agriculture. He says he would “directly invest a historic $16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts, in line with the mobilisation of resources made during the New Deal and WWII”.

He would declare climate change a “national emergency”.

Sanders, accusing the fossil fuel industry of “greed”, says he would make it pay for pollution and prosecute it “for the damage it has caused”.

International

Sanders would “commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the US’ leadership in the global fight against climate change”.

Sanders says the policies would help slash emissions both at home and abroad. “We will reduce domestic emissions by at least 71% by 2030,” he says, and help developing nations make deep emissions cuts.

UK’s Boris Johnson urges all countries to set net zero emissions goals in 2020

JOE BIDEN

Domestic

He says he would “ensure the US achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050”.

The “Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face”.

On his first day in office he plans to go beyond the platform he shared, as vice president, with former President Barack Obama by signing executive orders on clean energy and environmental justice. Under the Paris Agreement, Obama pledged cuts in greenhouse gases of 26-28% by 2025, below 2005 levels.

Biden says his climate and environmental justice proposal will make a federal investment of $1.7 trillion over the next ten years, leveraging additional private sector and state and local investments to total to more than $5 trillion.

International 

Biden says he “will go much further” than just recommitting the US to the Paris Agreement. Biden “will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets”.

He will make sure those commitments are “transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example,” his campaign says. Climate change would be integrated into trade, national security and foreign policies.

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PETE BUTTIGIEG

Domestic 

“We aspire to make our society a net-zero emissions one no later than 2050, working aggressively toward immediate targets,” Buttigieg says.

As milestones, he plans to double the clean electricity generated in the US by 2025. By 2035, build a clean electricity system with zero emissions and require zero emissions for all new passenger vehicles.

By 2040, require net-zero emissions for all new heavy-duty vehicles, buses, rail, ships, and aircraft and develop a thriving carbon removal industry. By 2050, achieve net-zero emissions from industry, including steel and concrete, manufacturing, and agriculture sectors.

He would “enact a price on carbon and use the revenue to send rebates to Americans”.

International 

“We will take the steps necessary to rejoin the Paris Agreement on the first day in office and make clear to the world that we are ‘back in, and all in’,” he says.

Buttigieg says he would mobilise support for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing nations, including “doubling” the US pledge to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Trump cut off contributions to the GCF after Obama pledged an initial $3 billion. Part of the plan would be to “redevelop bilateral and multilateral relationships on climate change and clean energy with nations like China and India”.

ELIZABETH WARREN

Domestic 

Warren was an original co-sponsor of a Green New Deal proposed by Senator Ed Markey and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, committing to a 10-year drive to achieve domestic net-zero emissions by 2030.

Her website says “independent economists have estimated that Elizabeth’s plans to address the climate crisis will inject over $10 trillion dollars into our economy and create over 10 million new jobs”.

Among goals, “by 2035, we will achieve 100% clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy in electricity generation. By 2030, we’ll reach 100% zero emissions for all new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and all buses. By 2028, we’ll attain 100% zero-carbon pollution for all new commercial and residential buildings.”

Warren plans to sign an executive order on her first day as president imposing a moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, including for drilling offshore and on public lands.

International 

She says a “Green Marshall Plan” will provide American-made clean energy technology to countries that need it most. “She’ll commit $100 billion over ten years to offer discounts to countries hardest hit by the climate crisis, or as an incentive for regulatory changes that further reduce emissions,” her website says.

Countries will be required to join the Paris Climate Agreement – 187 of 197 nations have so far ratified the deal – and eliminate domestic fuel subsidies as a precondition for entering trade negotiations with the US.

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AMY KLOBUCHAR

Domestic

“In her first 100 days as President, Senator Klobuchar will introduce and work with Congress to pass sweeping legislation that will put our country on a path to achieving 100% net-zero emissions no later than 2050,” her plan says.

She would revive the Obama-era Clean Power Plan for cutting emissions and “will negotiate even stronger emissions standards that account for the progress states have already made”.

Among other measures, she would toughen fuel economy standards, and set “ambitious goals” to reduce the carbon footprint of the federal government. Klobuchar has proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure package that will modernise aging energy infrastructure.

International 

She would work to get back into the Paris Agreement “on day one” as part of a goal to “reestablish US international leadership on climate”.

Klobuchar “will work with international leaders to build consensus around stronger goals to limit global warming to no more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit” (1.5 degrees Celsius)”.

She would also seek to “establish meaningful enforcement of international climate goals.”

That would mean “making accountability for climate commitments a central part of our international agenda, taking on China’s efforts to promote dirty energy sources in other countries, and considering climate goals in all types of international assistance”.

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“This is Europe’s man on the moon moment,” she said in a video statement. “Our goal is to reconcile the economy with our planet” and “to make it work for our people,” she added, describing climate policy as Europe’s new growth strategy.

Europe wants to be a front-runner in climate friendly industries and clean technologies, the former German defence minister explained, adding: “I am convinced that the old growth model based on fossil fuels and pollution is out of date and out of touch with our planet”.

Here are the 10 main points in the commission plan:

1. ‘Climate neutral’ Europe. This is the overarching objective of the European Green Deal. The EU will aim to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a goal that will be enshrined in a ‘climate law’ to be presented in March 2020.

That means updating the EU’s climate ambition for 2030, with a 50-55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions to replace the current 40% objective. The 55% figure will be subject to a cost-benefit analysis.

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The commission wants to leave no stone unturned and plans to review every EU law and regulation in order to align them with the new climate goals. This will start with the Renewable Energy Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive, but also the Emissions Trading Directive and the Effort Sharing Regulation, as well as the infamous LULUCF directive dealing with land use change. Proposals there will be submitted as part of a package in March 2021.

A plan for “smart sector integration”, bringing together the electricity, gas and heating sectors closer together “in one system”, will be presented in 2020. This will come with a new initiative to harness “the enormous potential” of offshore wind, officials said.

2. Circular economy. A new circular economy action plan will be tabled in March 2020, as part of a broader EU industrial strategy. It will include a sustainable product policy with “prescriptions on how we make things” in order to use less materials, and ensure products can be reused and recycled.

Carbon-intensive industries like steel, cement and textiles, will also focus the attention under the new circular economy plan. One key objective is to prepare for “clean steelmaking” using hydrogen by 2030, an EU official said. “Why 2030? Because if you want clean industry in 2050, 2030 is the last investment cycle,” he said.

New legislation will also be presented in 2020 to make batteries reusable and recyclable.

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3. Building renovation. This is meant to be one of the flagship programmes of the Green Deal. The key objective there is to “at least double or even triple” the renovation rate of buildings, which currently stands at around 1%.

4. Zero-pollution. Whether in air, soil or water, the objective is to reach a “pollution-free environment” by 2050. New initiatives there include a chemical strategy for a “toxic-free environment”.

5. Ecosystems & biodiversity. A new biodiversity strategy will be presented in March 2020, in the run-up to a UN biodiversity summit taking place in China in October. “Europe wants to lead by example” with new measures to address the main drivers of biodiversity loss, an EU official said. That includes measures to tackle soil and water pollution as well as a new forest strategy. “We need more trees in Europe,” the official said, both in cities and in the countryside. New labelling rules will be tabled to promote deforestation-free agricultural products.

6. Farm to fork strategy. To be tabled in Spring 2020, the new strategy will aim for a “green and healthier agriculture” system. This includes plans to “significantly reduce the use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics,” an EU official said. New national strategic plans due to be submitted next year by member states under the Common Agricultural Policy will be scrutinised to see whether they are aligned with the objectives of the Green Deal.

7. Transport. One year after the EU agreed new CO2 emission standards for cars, the automotive sector is once again in the commission’s firing line. The current objective is to reach 95gCO2/km by 2021. Now, “we need to work towards zero,” sometime in the 2030s an EU official said.

Electric vehicles will be further encouraged with an objective of deploying 1 million public charging points across Europe by 2025. “Every family in Europe needs to be able to drive their electric car without having to worry about the next charging station,” the official explained.

“Sustainable alternative fuels” – biofuels and hydrogen – will be promoted in aviation, shipping and heavy duty road transport where electrification is currently not possible.

8. Money. To “leave no-one behind,” the commission proposes a ‘Just Transition Mechanism’ to help regions most heavily dependent on fossil fuels. “We have the ambition to mobilise €100 billion precisely targeted to the most vulnerable regions and sectors,” said von der Leyen as she presented the Green Deal on Wednesday.

The proposed €100bn instrument has three legs:

• A just transition fund that will mobilise resources from the EU’s regional policy budget;
• The “InvestEU” programme, with money coming from the European Investment Bank;
• EIB funding coming from the EU bank’s own capital.

Every euro spent from the fund could be complemented by 2 or 3 euros coming from the region. EU’s state aid guidelines will be reviewed in that context so that national governments are able to directly support investments in clean energy, with blessing from the commission’s powerful competition directorate.

Regions will also be offered technical assistance in order to help them “absorb” the funds while respecting the EU’s strict spending rules.

However, any state aid would have to be vetted by the commission as part of new regional transition plans submitted beforehand to Brussels.

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9. R&D and innovation. With a proposed budget of €100bn over the next seven years (2021-2027), the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme will also contribute to the Green Deal. 35% of the EU’s research funding will be set aside for climate-friendly technologies under an agreement struck earlier this year. And a series of EU research “moonshots” will focus chiefly on environmental objectives.

10. External relations. Finally, EU diplomatic efforts will be mobilised in support of the Green Deal. One measure likely to attract attention – and controversy – is a proposal for a carbon border tax. As Europe increases its climate ambitions, “we expect the rest of the world to play its role too,” an EU official explained. But if not, Europe is “not going to be naïve,” and will protect its industry against unfair competition, he added.

To lead by example, the EU commission itself will aim for climate neutrality by 2030. “That’s a bold objective, but after all we don’t make steel so we might have an easier job,” the official said.

This piece was originally published on EURACTIV

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To do that and achieve climate-neutrality by 2050, nominee executive vice president Frans Timmermans told lawmakers, all European policy must take into account their climate impacts.

A social democrat and former Dutch minister, Timmermans has been tasked by EU Commission president-elect Ursula Von der Leyen to develop a “European green deal” over the next five years, in a major elevation of the climate portfolio to one of the three executive vice presidents.

From emissions reductions to air and water quality, pesticides and micro-plastics, food production, and biodiversity, energy efficiency and transport  – Timmermans set-out the scope of the deal, which he said will “improves lives” while putting the bloc on track to decarbonisation.

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“The green deal will only be successful if all Europeans are part of it,” he said, adding that “fairness” needed to be put at the heart of all policies.

Opening the hearing in Strasbourg, the chair of the European parliament’s environment committee, French centrist MEP Pascal Canfin, said Timmermans would be responsible for two thirds of the EU budget.

During the three-hour session, Timmermans spoke with confidence about the issues but gave few examples of concrete measures that could be proposed or how money would be spent.

If confirmed when the parliament votes on the package of nominee commissioners on 23 October, Timmermans promised to root out inconsistencies preventing ambitious climate action.

“We need to make sure that everything we do is compatible with our goal to be climate neutral by 2050,” he told MEPs, adding that would be his “toughest task internally”.

Timmermans gave one of the strongest indications yet the EU will deepen its 2030 climate target to 55% of emissions reductions from 1990s levels. He said the EU Commission was “in the middle of getting the information we need” to increase the 2030 climate target.

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“I will be extremely surprised if that information does not lead to conclusions that we need to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030,” he told lawmakers. “Just getting a target for 2030 won’t get us there, we need to know how we get there.”

“If we really want to make our impressions and lead the world we really need to have our facts together before next year’s [UN climate talks] in Glasgow,” Timmermans said. “That is my ambition and I hope we can get there”.

The EU’s current 2030 target is to reduce emissions by 40%  but the bloc is on track to overshoot its goal, according to the Commission. Under the Paris Agreement, governments, including the EU, are due to update their 2030 climate plans before the end of next year.

Von der Leyen proposed a two-step approach to increase the EU’s 2030 target to 50% and possibly hike it to 55% in 2021, contingent on action from other major emitters.

Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout insisted time for a two-step approach was running out, and pressed Timmermans to increase the target directly to 55%. Timmermans said it was “a really good question” and that he agreed. “But going from 50% to 55% we will be asking for some really tough extra measures to be taken. You can’t fault the commission for wanting to analyse that and the feasibility of that”.

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Campaigners from the NGO Climate Action Network Europe expressed concern that announcing a new target just before next year’s climate talks “might not allow for member states’ approval well in time” and “thereby depriving the EU of its global leadership role”.

Among other proposals, Timmermans said he was ready to extend the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to other sectors, including shipping, proposed “a massive reforestation project across Europe”, promised to be “extremely well prepared” for next year’s biodiversity conference and to strengthen climate diplomacy.

Timmermans’ presentation pleased progressive lawmakers. The Socialists and Democrats group said in a statement he was “the right person to ensure the EU lives up to the Green New Deal citizens expect”.

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The Greens welcomed Timmermans’ commitment to climate action but warned the green deal risked remaining “a set of non-binding strategies” and called for more clarity on phasing out fossil fuels and agriculture.

Germany’s Peter Liese from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) said the group was “not entirely satisfied”, citing “weak points” on agriculture and aviation.

The hearing also exposed the lack of consensus for a green deal among some right-wing lawmakers. Conservatives and Reformists Czech MEP Alexandr Vondra argued “the green deal will cost us more than our societies are able to sustain”, adding the cost burden would affect lower and middle-income families worst.

Italian MEP Silvia Sardone, from the right-wing League, described proposals for a green deal as “untenable and ideological”, accusing the EU Commission of trying to “reinvent the wheel”.

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The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which was founded in 1964 to help developing countries to access equitable international trade, called on governments to overhaul the rules of the international trade and monetary systems so that all countries – in particular developing ones – could carry out the necessary mass investments to decarbonize their economies.

Unctad secretary general Mukhisa Kituyi said meeting the UN sustainable development goals, which include reining in the heating of the planet, “requires rebuilding multilateralism around the idea of a global Green New Deal, and pursuing a financial future very different from the recent past”.

“The global economy does not serve all people equally,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, director of Unctad’s division on globalization and development strategies, who oversaw the report. “Under the current configuration of policies, rules, market dynamics and corporate power, economic gaps are likely to increase and environmental degradation intensify.”

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Instead of hoping to fix the crisis in developing countries through a blend of public and private sector initiatives, which an Unctad press release branded as “taken from the playbook of banking conglomerates”, the development agency urged governments to take the lead.

Among a battery of global reforms, Unctad recommended granting debt relief and revising the way that debt was structured in order to allow developing countries to pay for green policies.

“We need a set of rules in place that can handle sovereign debt problems when they emerge in much fairer, efficient and transparent way than is the case today,” Kozul-Wright said.

The agency also called on the creation of a global environmental protection fund that would provide predictable and stable emergency funding. This could be financed by tapping into special drawing rights, an international monetary reserve currency originally set up by the International Monetary Fund to act as a supplement to national currencies.

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The report found that global trade, be it under the form of regional or bilateral agreements, should not have the authority to shape questions such as the cross-border flow of capital, debt or equity. Instead, the international community should privilege capital controls and put an international system into place to oversee capital flow between countries, including developing ones.

Echoing recent calls to create a European Climate Bank, authors also suggested shifting the role of central banks from taming inflation to aggressively championing climate finance. To checkmate tax evasion, it further called on the establishment of a global minimum corporate tax rate on multinationals between 20 and 25% combined with capital controls.

“This is a big public investment push,” Kozul-Wright told Climate Home News. “It’s not going to be done by the private sector. You need public banks to finance this, because we don’t think that the current financial system as it is currently constructed will ever deliver finance to public goods of this kind on the scale that we’re talking about.”

In the absence of such constraints, green finance could increase to around $1.7tn every year, according to Unctad estimates, generating at least 170 million jobs in the world and allowing a clean industrialisation in the global south.

Originally conceived in 2008 in London by a group of economists and environments, the Green New Deal draws inspiration from the New Deal, US president Franklin Roosevelt’s all-encompassing stimulus package to counter the effects of the Great Depression and reform the financial market. The Green New Deal envisages mobilising the state to tackle social inequality and carbon emissions as one.

It was first popularised in the US by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and has since become a plank policy for US democratic candidates and embraced by EU politicians.

British economist Ann Pettifor, part of the original London Green New Dealers group, called the report “enormously significant, because while the UN and its scientists have taken the lead on a scientific side on this crisis, we need to understand that the climate and the economy are deeply integrated”.

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“This is a crisis that doesn’t belong in one place. It’s neither a north nor a south crisis and it requires global collaboration,” Pettifor said. “It’s echoing the revolutionary monetary theory that underpinned the New Deal.”

Pettifor likened the reorientation of the monetary system recommended by Unctad to Roosevelt’s decision to ditch the gold standard.

“Under the Gold standard, Wall Street and the City of London called the shots and really influenced important domestic policies, like the exchange rate, the ability of money to flow across borders and the ability of the government to spend,” Pettifor said.

“The very first thing that Rooselvelt did on the night of his inauguration was to begin to dismantle this system and demand that the banks hand over all of their gold so that in future it would be the government and not Wall Street that would be in the driving seat of the economy.”

“We’ve got to learn from Roosevelt if we are to tackle the climate crisis right now and that is what Unctad is trying to do,” Pettifor said.

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While launching a new campaign for a pan-European commitment to tackle the climate and ecological crisis while addressing the continent’s social problems, proponents said it was the first step towards international cooperation.

Launched on Friday ahead of elections for the European parliament, the new campaign proposes a framework to “end austerity, avert climate catastrophe and secure prosperity for future generations” without increasing taxes on workers but through financing from Europe’s public investment banks.

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The pledge has so far been endorsed by the UK Labour MP Clive Lewis and MEP candidate Laura Parker as well as the 18 candidates of the transnational list European Spring, which includes former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Supported by Varoufakis’ Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), it asks politicians commit to invest 5% of Europe’s GDP in green infrastructure, industry and agriculture and redressing the resource extraction inequality between Europe and the global south.

If successful at the European level, campaign coordinator Pawel Wargan said the plan could inspire the formulation of a global Green New Deal manifesto.

“The EU is the best model in history for transnational cooperation. If we can show that we can harness this potential for cooperation that transcends the national level in Europe, we can show how we can implement it in the rest of the world,” he said.

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Lewis told Climate Home News there was no better time to map out what a Green New Deal for Europe would look like, adding that supporters of the proposal have already begun talks for a US-EU decarbonisation plan.

To tackle the big challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, Lewis said humanity is going to have to “develop new cooperation mechanisms on a scale never seen before” with “economic, social and environmental justice at the core”.

In February, Lewis and other leftwing UK politicians met with an advisor to progressive US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Supporters of the campaign would not be drawn on whether there had been further engagement.

Using the European elections as a campaigning platform, Wargan hopes the plan can be transformed into concrete policy proposals and supported by the future European Commission president.

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Varoufakis has previously called for an international Green New Deal which would mobilise 5% of global GDP to confront the climate crisis. A new global institution would form the basis for countries to join their production and innovation capacities to tackle climate change and redistribute resources globally.

The concept of a Green New Deal has gathered momentum in western Europe after being championed by Ocasio-Cortez in the US and backed by Democratic candidates for the presidency. In Spain, the newly elected Socialist Party ran on a campaign for “a just and sustainable economy” and in the UK, Lewis and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas presented a “radical” bill for a “decarbonisation and economic strategy”.

The idea has also resonated among some EU officials. Michel Barnier, a former vice president of the European Commission and the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has called for the EU to set requirements on states for “concerted action on climate, trade, tax, agriculture and innovation”.

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