With vast sunbaked, windswept deserts and 2.5 million people, the southern African nation has plenty of renewable resources to go around. 

Meanwhile rich, densely populated Europe, South Korea and Japan are crying out for clean fuel to decarbonise hard-to-electrify sectors like fertilisers, steel and shipping. Their net zero plans depend on it. 

Keen to secure pole position in the global race for green hydrogen, last year the EU began reaching agreements with prospective producers. One of the most trumpeted deals was signed with Namibia on the sidelines of Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. 

“We want to fight climate change. We want to have clean energy. And as I said, you have all the resources in abundance. So let us team up,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in the direction of her Namibian counterpart, hailing the partnership as a “big win-win situation for all of us”. 

Tapping into solar and wind energy for export is central to President Hage Geingob’s economic strategy. Namibia is seeking $20 billion of investment in green hydrogen – more than its entire GDP of $12 billion in 2022. Government authorities are negotiating funding options with the EU. 

As with any heavy industry, though, the hoped-for boom will come at a cost to local communities and ecosystems. The benefits to ordinary Namibians are less certain. 

Namibia is planning a series of projects to catapult the country into becoming a major green hydrogen exporter. (Credit: Fanis Kollias/Spoovio)

In a months-long investigation, Climate Home News and Oxpeckers visited the site of the flagship project, a $10 billion complex near the southern coastal town of Lüderitz, which is being developed by a Namibia-based company called Hyphen Hydrogen Energy.

The reporter on the ground found a community largely in the dark about the development and nervous about the impact on fishing and tourism. Experts shared frustration at the secretive tender process, scepticism about job prospects for Namibians and concerns for the area’s unique wildlife. 

The green hydrogen complex 

Perched between the Namib desert and the Atlantic Ocean, Lüderitz is named after a German colonist. It was the centre of a diamond rush in 20th century and of a colonial history that repressed indigenous Africans. Germany officially apologised in 2021 for colonial-era atrocities, recognising them as “genocide”. 

Today, its Art Nouveau architecture, fresh seafood and wildlife draws a modest number of tourists, who can visit ghost towns abandoned after the diamond rush. The town is surrounded by the Tsau//Khaeb National Park, home to seals, penguins, flamingoes and ostriches. The park and surrounding lands are off-limits to residents to prevent illegal diamond mining. 

Green hydrogen is set to to transform the character of this small enclave once again. 

Hyphen’s plans show an initial 5GW of wind turbines and solar panels to supply power, according to the project’s factsheet published by the Namibian government. In this arid region, a desalination plant is needed to supply fresh water. An electrolysis plant will split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, before the hydrogen gas is converted into liquid ammonia. A new deepwater port will accommodate tankers to ship the end product around the world. The company aims to produce 300,000 tons of ammonia a year, commissioning the first phase by 2026, Hyphen’s website says. 

To build all this, Hyphen expects to bring in 15,000 workers, roughly doubling Lüderitz’s population. Lüderitz Town Council is planning a new town in the desert to house the influx, immediately south of the historic Kolmanskuppe ghost town. 

An opaque tender process 

“We were a little surprised at the government’s choice of a partner,” said Phil Balhao, an opposition party member of the Lüderitz Town Council.  

Other bidders like South Africa’s Sasol and Australian Fortescue Future Industries had an “established track record” that “seemingly just got ignored”, he said. 

The tender process was overseen by the Namibia Investments Development & Promotions Board (NIDPB), which sits in the president’s office. In September 2020, the board appointed James Mnyupe as green hydrogen commissioner. It launched the first call for proposals in early 2021. 

In a televised speech, Mnyupe said the tender was exempt from public procurement rules. Instead, he cited tourism and conservation laws as the basis to hold a closed selection process. 

Graham Hopwood, director of the Institute of Public Policy Research, a public-interest think-tank based in Windhoek, was not impressed.

“With such a major and strategic project, there needs to be transparency and accountability from the outset. The fact that this project is mired in secrecy is raising red flags,” he said.

The Namibian government published a list of six bidders, who submitted nine bids between them. However, the content of the bids was not made public, nor the reasoning for Hyphen’s selection. 

Hyphen said this was standard practice, given the commercially sensitive data contained in the bids. They added the process was “competitive”. 

“It would be irresponsible and to the detriment to the development of the Hyphen project and Namibia’s broader green hydrogen industry for it to publish commercially sensitive agreements in the public domain that competitor projects/countries could use to compete against Namibia,” Hyphen said in a statement. 

The Namibian government said the tender was “conducted with the utmost transparency and fairness”. 

They said that the three-person bid evaluation committee did a “detailed and comprehensive evaluation” of the proposals, supported by independent experts from the US government’s national renewable energy laboratory and the EU’s technical assistance facility on sustainable energy.

Who is Hyphen? 

Hyphen is a joint venture between two companies – Enertrag and Nicholas Holdings Limited. 

Enertrag, owned by a 59-year-old East German nuclear physicist called Jörg Müller has a long track record of building renewables. It is pursuing green hydrogen projects across the world in Uruguay, Vietnam and South Africa. 

Nicholas Holdings Limited is a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, which owns its stake in Hyphen through a special purpose vehicle based in Mauritius. The ultimate owner of the company is a South African investor called Brian Myerson.

The CEO of Hyphen is South African businessman Marco Raffinetti. 

Myerson is a South African who spent decades as an investor in the UK, where he made headlines for battling the business establishment.

In 2010, Myerson was found by a panel of top UK lawyers to have behaved dishonestly in averting a takeover of Principle Capital, the investment firm he co-founded.

The Takeover Appeal Board found that Myerson and co-conspirators made a “deliberate attempt to circumvent” rules around taking over companies and then attempted to cover up their rule-breaking when the authorities began to investigate. He was banned from getting involved in mergers for three years. 

Dishing out the punishment, the panel said it was only the second time it had done so, which it said, “is some indication of the extreme nature of the sanction”. 

A spokesperson for Hyphen, Enertrag and Nicholas Holdings Limited described this incident as a “historic matter” over “an alleged technical infringement” which “remains contested”. It should not be used to draw conclusions about Myerson’s character, they argued. 

They added that the Takeover Appeal Board had no formal regulatory powers and UK financial regulators took no action in respect of the alleged breach of the rules. 

A spokesperson for the Namibian government said it these were “historical legal matters, that to best of our knowledge have since been resolved”. 

Myerson’s previous ventures on the African continent include a failed bid to scale up bioethanol production in Mozambique. Like today’s green hydrogen push, this was driven by EU demand: in 2007, the bloc set a to blend a percentage of biofuels into petrol. Investors piled into Mozambique, touting it as a “biofuels superpower”.

Myerson set up Principle Energy, based on the Isle of Man. It made bold promises to plant sugarcane over 20,000 hectares of land, build one of the top production facilities in the world and employ 1,600 people. Then the global bioethanol market collapsed and by 2013 the company closed, having planted just 136 hectares, according to a report by GRAIN. 

His involvement in Hyphen is likely to be of concern, said IPPR’s Hopwood, adding Hyphen’s leadership was “questionable”.

Use of tax havens

Myerson’s investment in Hyphen is structured through the British Virgin Islands and Mauritius. Both rank poorly in the Tax Justice Network’s financial secrecy and corporate tax haven indexes. 

Raffinetti said that Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands were “tax neutral jurisdictions with efficient financial markets”. A lot of infrastructure investment in Africa goes through Mauritius, he said, and investors are subject to tax in the countries where they are registered. 

Tax Justice Network analyst Bob Michel said that investment into Africa goes through Mauritius because of its tax rules. “Mauritius is a corporate tax haven,” he said.

“(Mauritius’) domestic tax regime combined with its vast tax treaty network allow third country investors to use it to siphon profits from operations in Africa with the least of taxes paid in the countries where the operations take place,” Michel said by email.

A spokesperson for the Namibian government said it was “aware of the jurisdictions through which certain Hyphen shareholders hold their equity in Hyphen”.  

The spokesperson added: “Should [the Namibian government] come across any conduct that is unbecoming of its laws and global best practice, rest assured [we] will take the necessary swift corrective action.”

Great expectations 

Raffinetti, Hyphen’s CEO, previously developed gas power and rooftop solar bids in South Africa. The Richard Bay gas project he co-led is facing legal challenge by environmental activists due to its climate impact.

Wearing glasses and a black turtleneck, Raffinetti joined a video call with Climate Home in late October. He warned interviewers the internet might cut out due to the power cuts his native South Africa is plagued with.

The interview was granted, through a PR agency, on condition Hyphen could vet the quotes used. Some of the more colloquial soundbites reporters transcribed came back replaced with cautious jargon, and an admonition to put everything in its full context. Hyphen separately responded in writing to detailed concerns raised by sources.

“There’s an enormous amount of expectation in Namibia around this project. So there’s a huge amount of media attention,” Raffinetti said in one approved quote. “As the first large-scale project in Namibia’s green industrialisation strategy, we have an enormous obligation to get it right.”

Biodiversity concerns 

Dr Jean-Paul Roux, a retired marine biologist working in the area for decades, pointed to where the Luderitz peninsula ends at Angra Point. It is the northernmost tip of the Karoo ecosystem, he explained, unique to southern Africa.

In the dry summer season, the desert landscape looks drab and lifeless. Winter rains bring a green explosion of rare plants such as the endemic Lithops optica, a tiny succulent that gets as old as 90 years. 

“Here you can find up to 1,000 different plant species in just one square kilometre, some so small no bulldozer operator will even notice them,” he said. He spots signs of hyenas and porcupines. 

This is the area earmarked for the deepwater port, desalination and ammonia plants. 

Roux said the development would have a massive impact on Shearwater Bay and the adjacent Sturmvogelbucht, a lagoon teeming with flamingos and a heavy-sided dolphin population that he has been studying for years and visits every day. 

“This is the only place along the southern African coast where you can watch them from your car,” he said as this smallest of all dolphin species approached to within a few meters of the beach. He fears that once developers start blasting rock for the port construction, dolphins will leave and never return. 

The Tsau//Khaeb National Park is classified by Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism as a biodiversity hotspot. (Credit: Fanis Kollias/Spoovio/Luderitz Marine Research)

Dr Antje Burke, a veteran botanist, is working as a consultant to Hyphen. She said at a conference of the Namibian Scientific Society in July that Hyphen was trying to avoid the most sensitive areas, but “one big problem” is that a species of parsley “overlaps almost completely with the concession area”. 

She added that “even more concerning” was the future development plans. “The Hyphen project is developing the service infrastructure really keeping the future developments in mind… That means the entire area will be developed.”

Burke indicated some adjustments that could mitigate the environmental impact.

“No green energy project can be implemented without some environmental impact and Hyphen’s objective is to minimise environmental impacts to the largest extent possible,” Hyphen CEO Marco Raffinetti said in an interview with Climate Home. 

The company has hired consultancy SLR to prepare an environmental and social impact report and lead a “comprehensive stakeholder engagement process”, Hyphen added in a written statement.

Consultants are currently gathering meteorological data and reporting a baseline of wildlife and plants in the area, SLR reports say. The formal environmental impact study is expected to start next year, the official documents add.

A group of Flamingoes at a lagoon within the Tsau//Khaeb National Park in Namibia, where green hydrogen developments are meant to ship the gas to the EU. (Photo: John Grobler)

Loss of access 

Aside from the northern end of the bay, the peninsula is the only publicly accessible area of the Lüderitz region. The rest is Sperrgebiet or “forbidden area” – a legacy of the diamond rush. 

Some of Hyphen’s infrastructure will reduce public access to the peninsula. Hyphen’s Raffinetti said this was “unavoidable” as it was “the only location feasible for a deepwater port”. 

The other access to the sea is the four-kilometre Agate Beach to the north of the enclave, downwind from the last few local fishing factories and an overflowing municipal sewage plant. 

Residents fear this would impact lobster fishing and rock angling. Crayfish fisheries, one of the area’s tourism attractions and an informal source of income would also be affected, locals said. 

“The people in the township’s poorest areas [have] got nowhere else to go. They are going to strip this bay [Agate beach] clean of everything,” said Gerd Kessler, a fourth-generation Buchter as locals call themselves, referring to a potential concentration of fisheries in the area.  

As owner of Five Roses Aquaculture and three smaller oyster-breeding operations, Kessler employs 100 people. 

Felsenkirche, a Lutheran church built in 1912 in Lüderitz. (Photo: SkyPixels/Wikimedia Commons)

A massive new seawall and harbour at Angra Point could have unpredictable impacts on currents in the bay, he cautioned. When the existing shallow port was expanded in the late 1960s by filling in the channel between the town and Shark Island, the sea quickly stripped away the town’s little beach inside Robert Harbour. 

Kessler’s biggest concern was how Hyphen planned to dispose of the brine from their desalination plant. “You can’t just dump that anywhere, you have to make sure you use the currents to disperse it,” Kessler said. 

Questionable job prospects 

Hyphen expects to create 15,000 jobs in the construction phase and 3,000 to operate the finished complex. It is aiming for 90% of these jobs to go to Namibians, and 30% to youth. 

There is a huge skills gap, Namibian business groups warned. 

“We do not even have a category for petrochemical or petroleum engineers at the moment,” said Sophia Tekie, chairperson of the Engineering Council of Namibia (ECN). “If we have any, they are registered as [one of 40] chemical engineers.” 

“Although the ECN has 2,015 registered engineers in eight disciplines at present, about 30 to 40% of them were already retired and only did part-time consultancy work,” said her predecessor, Markus von Jeney. 

Local construction capacity did not look much better: according to Bärbel Kircher, director of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), their membership had declined from 480 companies in 2015 to 240 member companies, operating at only 50% capacity, she said.  

“Currently, our local contractors are largely displaced by foreign contractors, excluding them from opportunities. This is often due to conditions set by external financiers,” said Kircher.  

In the past, the country has struggled to complete large projects due to corruption charges.  

Since 2013, the Namibian Ports Authority, the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia and the Ministry of Agriculture have borrowed over N$21 billion (about US$400 million each, mostly from the African Development Bank) for infrastructure projects, including the 3MW Neckartal dam.  

The Namibian High Court declared the dam was commissioned in 2008 under corrupted circumstances. The project was eventually completed at three times the original price in 2017. 

Namibian construction companies were not likely to benefit from the green hydrogen projects, the CiF said. “The current procurement methods and trends do not provide a promising outlook for the future,” said Kirchner. 

Hyphen said the company would implement “targeted training interventions at various levels” including “specialized Masters’ programs, internships and apprenticeships”. 

The Karoo ecosystem is unique to Southern Africa. The Tsau//Khaeb National Park is a biodiversity hotspot hosting a part of this ecosystem. (Photo: John Grobler)

European support 

Under the memorandum of understanding signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, the EU will provide technical expertise, trade incentives and, crucially, help to secure infrastructure finance. 

Moments after von der Leyen and Geingob inked their deal, the European Investment Bank promised loans of up to €500 million ($528m) for renewable hydrogen investments in Namibia. “Let’s bring flesh to the bone,” the bank’s chief Werner Hoyer told the audience. 

Shortly after the event, Hyphen announced that it had “signed a €35 million agreement with the European Investment Bank to finance the early development of our project”. This was somewhat premature. The bank had supplied a letter of intent, not a firm commitment of funding. 

Since the initial announcement, European institutions, Namibian government officials and private actors have been working out the details of the partnership. 

Hyphen is looking for €100 million to start work on the project.

“We have been very grateful to the EIB and the European Commission for making available the initial funding to share the early development risk,” said Raffinetti in late September, suggesting a firm commitment from the European backers. 

The Hyphen CEO went on to outline what the deal with the EIB should look like: a €10 million ($10.5 million) grant – “still to be finalised,” he added – and a €25 million ($26.4 million) “soft loan”, meaning it would come with favourable terms for the company.

An EIB spokesperson said no agreement has been signed yet. “We are in the process of completing our due diligence, after which the project will be presented to the EIB’s governing bodies for approval,” they said.

“Potential financial support at this early stage would be for site studies and feasibility studies. Any support for implementation will be conditional to the project complying with the Bank’s environmental and social (E&S), procurement, compliance and other standards,” they added.

Namibia’s president Hage Geingob, EIB president Werner Hoyer, Belgian prime minister Alexander de Croco and EU president Ursula von der Leyen announcing the EU green hydrogen partnership with Namibia at Cop27. (Photo: EIB)

On top of the cash injection, the EU’s international partnership division could provide a first-loss guarantee. If the project does not go to plan and the borrower cannot pay back its debt, the EU will pick up the tab – or at least part of it. 

Without the “bedrock” of public money it would be impossible to lure in commercial lenders and leave a huge funding gap, Raffinetti said. 

A European Commission spokesperson told Climate Home that “at present, there is not yet any financial assistance under the EU budget mobilised in favour of the Hyphen project”.

The Netherlands is also supporting the project. Dutch companies like the Port of Rotterdam and gas pipeline operator Gasunie see a business opportunity to offload the green ammonia from ships and pipe it to industry inland.

In June, green hydrogen commissioner Mnyupe told a national newspaper that the Dutch government had given Namibia a €40m grant to develop green hydrogen. He said the government would use €23m of this to buy a stake in Hyphen.

The Dutch said the money was not Namibia’s to spend. The €40m grant comes from Invest International, a public fund set up in 2019 to advance Dutch interests abroad and promote economic growth in the developing world. 

Invest International’s lead on hydrogen Bart De Smet told Climate Home that the €40m grant will be distributed by a fund manager independent of the Namibian government and won’t necessarily go to Hyphen. 

Who benefits? 

The big question for Namibians is whether the inevitable disturbance of a unique ecosystem and small-town culture will be worth it. 

The Namibian government is taking a 24% stake in Hyphen through its sovereign wealth fund. It is expected to raise further revenues through taxes, royalties, land rental and environmental levies on the project, Hyphen said. 

“The benefit for the country in terms of economic upliftment is enormous. Because Namibia is only 2.5 million people. So if you’re successful, your impact on each human being’s life can be enormous,” Raffinetti said. 

Patrick Neib, an unemployed resident of the Nautilus township behind Luderitz, could certainly use some upliftment. He moved to the area in 2015 in search of a better job that has yet to materialise. 

Like many residents, he found out about Hyphen from social media. Most of Hyphen’s public meetings took place in Keetmanshoop, the regional capital 350 km away. 

The secrecy and technical jargon used by Hyphen and its consultants made it impossible for the ordinary layman to understand or access any opportunities, Neib said.  

“There is just no public discussion about the benefits for ordinary people like me, or what price we are to pay for green hydrogen development,” he said. “My question is, who or what is really behind all of this?” 

This story was reported in collaboration with Oxpeckers Investigative Journalism Centre and was supported by a grant from Journalismfund Europe.

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While three African presidents flew to the Netherlands for the Africa Adaptation Summit on Monday, only Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was there to meet with them.

Rich countries have unmet promises to financially support poorer countries in boosting climate resilience.

Senegal’s president Macky Sall said: “I cannot help but note, with some bitterness, the absence of leaders from the industrial world. I think if we made the effort to leave Africa to come to Rotterdam, it would be easier for the Europeans and others to be here.”

Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo associated himself “wholly with the sentiments of president Macky Sall about the failure of certain vested interests to be present with us at this meeting” and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Felix Tshisekedi said “it is my turn to also deplore the absence of leaders of industrialised nations”.

Ethiopia’s president Sahle-Work Zewde, speaking by video link, echoed their criticisms. She added: “Sometimes, we should not appear to be talking to each other while those who should be with us are not present.”

United Nations deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed said the meeting was “lop-sided” and “a bird only flies on two wings”. She praised African leaders for showing up, adding “it’s not because [they] don’t have anything important do back at home”.

Unmet promises

In 2009, wealthy countries promised to deliver $100 billion a year to developing countries in climate finance by 2020. They fell $17bn short of this target in 2020 and have still yet to meet it, with the US responsible for the vast majority of the shortfall.

The shortfall between a country’s climate finance in 2017-18 and its fair share. (Photo: ODI)

At the meeting in Rotterdam, Macky Sall linked this failure on finance to the viability and fairness of African emissions reduction measures. Senegal is promoting offshore oil and gas exploration while the DRC is auctioning off oil concessions in rainforests and peatlands.

Sall said: “When countries of Africa are asked to renounce polluting developments to deal with the current state of emergency on the planet, it is only fair that, as a counterpart, the cost of adaptation to this should be shared equitably also… notably the financial commitment of $100bn a year.”

African nations eye debt-for-climate swaps as IMF takes an interest

Analysis of six African national plans by PowerShift Africa finds on average they are investing the equivalent of 2.8% of GDP on adapting to climate change. The UN Environment Programme estimates that developing countries will collectively have to spend up to $300bn a year on adapting by 2030.

Rich countries pledged at last year’s Cop26 summit to double their adaptation finance contributions from 2019 levels by 2025. This would increase it from $20bn a year to $40bn. A group of self-proclaimed “adaptation champions”, which does not include the US, has formed to try and meet this goal.

Africa is responsible for just 3% of total historic emissions.

Worries closer to home

In Rotterdam, the European Commission’s climate lead Frans Timmermans said that many European citizens would not be persuaded by the “moral point that those suffering the most consequences are not responsible for creating the crisis”.

He said: “Let’s be frank, many of our citizens in Europe will not buy this argument today because their worries are linked to their own existence in this energy crisis, in this food crisis, in this inflation crisis. This might seem very strange from an African perspective but it is always what is closer to your own worries is always bigger on your agenda than someone else’s worries.”

A more convincing argument for Europeans, Timmermans said, is that “without success in Africa,  there can be no success in Europe – our destinies are so intimately intertwined that if we are not collectively responsible for development in Africa, for Africa being able to use the opportunities it has… we will sink together in an ocean of despair”.

Deadly flash floods in UAE highlight need for resilience investment

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte joined the meeting for the afternoon. He said: “I would have loved to have more of my European colleagues here.”

The Global Center on Adaptation said it had invited the leaders of its traditional funders in France, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Finland.

France’s Emmanuel Macron met instead with French regional leaders in Paris while Canada’s Justin Trudeau stayed home to deal with a mass stabbing in Saskatchewan.

The governments of Finland and Norway did not reply to requests for comment on what their leaders Sanna Marin and Jonas Gahr Store were doing instead.

Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen was occupied with a national military remembrance day but told African leaders by video message: “I know that you want Europe to engage more in your struggles and we should.”

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First, electrification and renewable energy for most consumer needs. Second, a big ramp up of the hydrogen economy to replace fuels used by industry. Third, mechanisms surrounding a high carbon price designed to lessen the economic impacts of the transition for countries and communities that will be most impacted.

None of these pillars are simple to achieve, but the hydrogen segment is the most shaky. The EU has achieved 24% emissions reductions by 2019 compared to 1990 levels, but heavy transport emissions actually increased during that period and industrial decarbonisation efforts have largely plateaued since 2009.

Studies projecting European hydrogen demand vary, but all show massive increases. Even at the low end, there is more than 700% projected growth by 2050. Europe will need as much hydrogen as it can get its hands on. A sizeable amount will be imported as domestic production is unlikely to scale fast enough to meet this rapid increase in demand.

Sources: Guidehouse, European Hydrogen Backbone 2021, DNV Pathway to Net-Zero 2021 and CATF Europe Decarbonisation Pathway Analysis 2022

Europe has only seven and a half years to leap from 24% to 55% emissions reductions, so there is absolutely no time to lose.

Fundamentally, difficult-to-electrify sectors – such as heavy industry and heavy transport – will require a new set of  low-carbon fuels like hydrogen and ammonia to replace the fossil fuels in use today, as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to eliminate leftover emissions. Hydrogen and ammonia are relatively simple to swap into fuel-focused processes. They contain no carbon molecules, so are considered ‘zero-carbon’ at the point of use.

The major climate challenges come with the production of these fuels.

Upstream emissions and the risks of carbon capture

Within the EU, hydrogen produced by electrolysers powered with renewable energy remains the primary focus. This is a laudable strategy that deserves enthusiastic backing, but it isn’t a quick fix.

Europe is in a race to build renewables fast enough to decarbonise the electricity grid, so may not have the additional renewable electricity needed to produce meaningful volumes of ‘green hydrogen’ in the near term. Europe’s largest port estimates it will be importing 20Mt per year in 2050, more than double Europe’s current total consumption.

There are many challenges associated with the alternative option: producing hydrogen from fossil gas with carbon capture and storage, often referred to as ‘blue hydrogen’.

First and foremost, there is the potential for a significant amount of upstream emissions in the form of methane. Scientists estimate that methane can dominate the emissions associated with blue hydrogen, even at high carbon capture rates, as you can see from the chart below.

Impacts on climate change associated with the production of natural gas based hydrogen (Photo: Bauer et al/Sustainable Energy and Fuels)

Methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 and is leaked and vented throughout the fossil gas network, as our colleagues at CATF have shown. Cleaning up methane emissions is perhaps the single most pressing climate action of this decade. Happily, leading research shows that significant reductions are attainable with technologies that are already available, at low or negative costs. This has to happen whether or not fossil gas is being used to produce blue hydrogen.

Second, there are inevitable CO2 emissions involved when extracting hydrogen from fossil gas which must be accounted for. To solve this, blue hydrogen plants need to adopt technology that prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere and then permanently store it in geologic formations.

CCS technology has been working safely and effectively for almost 50 years, and hydrogen production facilities achieving 90% overall carbon capture or more can be built today using commercial technology.

With much lower methane leak rates and advancing carbon capture units with high capture rates, it is possible to produce hydrogen that results in about an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to directly using fossil fuels.

However, such capture rates have yet to be proven on a large scale. As with any other new climate technology, there are risks that the promised emissions reductions will not materialize, and many groups have resisted attempts to bring CCS into the technology mix because of said risks.

This links to a major reason we are yet to see such capture rates at scale: we haven’t really tried it yet.

Just 0.6% of the fossil fuel derived hydrogen produced today is done using carbon capture technology. Without policy pressure to increase the production of low-carbon hydrogen, producers have no reason to cut the emissions for the ‘grey’ hydrogen produced from fossil fuels which we overwhelmingly use today.

Where the European Union needs to take action

Getting to scale is a huge concern when it comes to the low-carbon hydrogen economy.

The EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans recently stated that “Europe is never going to be capable of producing its own hydrogen in sufficient quantities” in a speech aimed at potential low-carbon fuel producers in neighbourhood countries.

A combination of blue and green hydrogen is likely necessary to meet European and global hydrogen demand at least up until mid-century – the IEA’s flagship Net Zero by 2050 report shows a 62/38 percent split between the two even in 2050.

However, hydrogen can only be considered a viable option for Europe with appropriate climate controls such as strong methane management and significant carbon capture and storage.

To an extent, this is already reflected in European policy. The term ‘low-carbon hydrogen’ is included in the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy and the Gas Package, but the details are lacking. It’s crucial that the Gas Package, in particular, lays out the terms to ensure that hydrogen imports will be climate beneficial.

There is currently no certification system in place for low-carbon hydrogen and the Commission is only planning to introduce one in 2024. That’s far too late. Many member states have already secured import deals and are in the process of adopting their own schemes, which will inevitably lead to confusion among producers. Furthermore, these certification schemes fail to take into account adequate life-cycle analyses, ignoring upstream and transport-related emissions which must be addressed. The EU must step in.

The lack of clarity has delayed investment from potential hydrogen producers in the Middle East and North Africa. These are countries that have long been energy partners with Europe and possess knowhow and resources to ramp up much needed hydrogen production, but they are under the impression that only green hydrogen will be accepted by importers in Europe. Producing blue hydrogen means significant infrastructure investments – these will not happen overnight.

The longer Europe takes to lay out its vision for hydrogen imports, the longer it will take for both regions to transition away from the status quo of continued extraction, transport and consumption of unabated fossil fuels.

As the EU builds new energy relationships around the world, it must seek win-win solutions that address the scale and speed needed to hit climate goals, while also addressing energy security challenges.

Olivia Azadegan is Clean Air Task Force’s energy transition director for the MENA region

Magnolia Tovar is Clean Air Task Force’s global zero-carbon fuels policy director

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The IPCC found methane levels in the air are now higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years and are tracking close to the high emission scenarios outlined in its previous assessment in 2013.

Although the gas only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane, which is mainly released from abandoned coal mines, farming and oil and gas operations, has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. It is responsible for almost a quarter of global warming.

“Strong, rapid and sustained reductions” in methane emissions are needed in addition to slashing CO2 in the next two decades, scientists concluded, to keep a 1.5C warming limit within reach – the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.

“The new IPCC report is a call for action on methane,” Daniel Zavala-Araiza, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund, told Climate Home News. “Hopefully Cop26 will show that methane is becoming a key priority at both national and sub-national level,” referring to the climate summit in Glasgow, UK this November.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma has methane on his list of issues to address at the summit. But more recently UK prime minister Boris Johnson boiled down the priorities to “coal, cars, cash and trees,” suggesting it may not be top of the agenda.

Five takeaways from the IPCC’s 2021 climate science report

A lack of effective policy to tackle methane stems from patchy monitoring and reporting. “Measuring methane is still a work in progress and far from global practice,” energy analyst Poppy Kalesi told Climate Home News.

Many governments and companies see methane gas as a “transition fuel” away from coal, as it emits less CO2 when burned for power generation or heating. Yet methane leaks in the process risk undermining that carbon saving.

Recent studies have shown that methane emissions from oil and gas production are often much higher than previously assumed. An investigation by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) earlier this year found that methane leakage from oil and gas infrastructure across Europe was endemic.

Proper maintenance and plumbing of oil and gas pipelines to prevent leaks is needed to curb methane emissions, Sarah Smith, programme director of super pollutants at CATF, told Climate Home News.

“Since methane is the only clear strategy to substantially cut warming over the next 20 years, world leaders must come together and pledge swift and sizeable reductions. This is an opportunity that can’t be missed,” said Smith.

Ukraine aims to grow economy without increasing carbon emissions

A paper in Environmental Research Letters earlier this year found an all-out, rapid effort to slash methane emissions could slow the rate of current warming by 30% and avoid 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. 

The oil and gas industry could achieve a 75% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 using existing technology, according to the International Energy Agency. 

The other major source of methane emissions, responsible for almost 40%, is farming. 

Preventing the burning of crop residues, better livestock manure management and changing the diet of livestock could help curb methane emissions from agriculture, according to Smith.

Cows produce an average of 250-500 litres of methane a day from digesting grass. Research from the University of California, Davis, found that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduced the amount of methane from their burps and farts. A more contentious solution is for meat eaters to adopt plant-based diets.

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According to analysis by CATF, most countries refer to methane in their climate plans, but just 13 countries have included methane reduction targets in their latest pledges to the Paris Agreement.

Nigeria has committed to ending emissions from gas flaring, which outstrip all emissions from transport and electricity, by 2030 in its updated climate plan. 

The European Commission has developed a methane strategy, proposing laws to require companies to monitor methane emissions and report and repair leaks.

In March, the EU and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) to monitor companies’ emissions using company data, satellite technology and scientific studies.

“Oil and gas methane is the cheapest and easiest to abate and European states are major purchasers globally. The EU could set a standard for the rest of the world to follow while cheaply addressing a major source of warming now,” Jill Duggan, executive director of EDF Europe, told Climate Home News.

Kalesi said that meaningful EU action on methane is unlikely to kick in before 2027 due to the legislation timeline and a lack of satellite data. “If legislation is adopted in 2023, it will take a couple of years before member states’ authorities are able to implement and enforce [regulations],” she said.

‘Hottest games ever’: At the Tokyo Olympics, elite sport met the climate crisis

In the US, political swings have delayed progress. Former president Barack Obama introduced methane regulations, only for Donald Trump to roll them back. President Joe Biden has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to reinstate the rules by September. 

Some campaigners and politicians have called for a global agreement on methane, similar to the Montreal Protocol which was drawn up in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting substances.

But Kalesi said that it is more difficult to build support for methane reduction. The ozone issue was “emotional, [but] methane remains a very technical, scientific issue,” she said. “The human dynamic element is completely missing. Science in and of itself hardly ever brings change.”

The post IPCC report prompts calls to tackle methane emissions at Cop26 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Using infrared cameras, Clean Air Task Force (CATF) documented over 120 examples of methane emissions leaking or venting from oil and gas operations in seven European countries.

The US-based think tank described it as a “massive, under-regulated crisis”. It is not a case of a few rogue pipeline operators, said James Turitto, a campaign manager for CATF who gathered evidence in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria: no part of the industry is clean.

“We’ve all been shocked by just how pervasive methane emissions are across Europe,” said  Turitto. “I’ve been able to find multiple leaks in every country I’ve visited. It begs the question – why aren’t the companies and national regulators doing this already?”

Infrared cameras show methane gas leaking from infrastructure in Mallnow, Germany. Photo: Clean Air Task Force

Methane, which is released into the atmosphere from abandoned coal mines, farming and oil and gas operations, has a global warming impact 84 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year period. It accounts for 25% of global warming from human activities, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Despite lockdown restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, methane levels in the air surged last year.

Methane leaks occur when seals and flanges on pipelines and other equipment wear down. Sometimes methane is burned or deliberately released by oil and gas companies that do not consider it profitable to sell or transport the gas. Regular monitoring and inspection of facilities could reduce the frequency of leaks and cut emissions. 

The oil and gas industry could achieve a 75% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 using existing technology, according to the International Energy Agency. 

Climate fund considers India, South Africa to pilot $2bn coal transition scheme

“We’re essentially talking about proper maintenance and plumbing. Oil and gas companies don’t do the basics because, frankly, they don’t have to, so they’d rather spend the money elsewhere,”  said CATF methane director Jonathan Banks.

“The real problem is that there is basically no regulation of methane emissions in Europe, so companies can ‘self-report’ whatever they want with impunity,” Rowan Emslie from CATF told Climate Home News. “Most countries don’t have anybody to inspect facilities in order to check reported emissions.”

A methane plume is detected by infrared cameras in Minerbio, Italy. Photo: Clean Air Task Force

There is no uniform, EU-wide system for reporting methane emissions – each country has its own system, energy analyst Poppy Kalesi told Climate Home News. “We have no way of knowing if EU countries are underreporting their methane emissions.”

The industry commonly pitches gas as a “transition fuel” to a cleaner economy, as it emits roughly half the carbon dioxide as coal when burned. Fugitive methane emissions undermine this case, said Lisa Fischer, an analyst at think tank E3G.

“A methane leakage rate of as little as 2.7% would make gas worse than coal in emissions terms – we have thousands of pipeline kms in Europe but so far no systematic reporting by the industry to demonstrate that they are below this threshold or have credible plans to cut this to near zero.”

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In March, the EU and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) to monitor companies’ emissions using company data, satellite technology and scientific studies.

UNEP’s global methane assessment in May said global methane emissions must fall at least 40% by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5C. According to the EU Commission, European countries cannot meet their climate goals without significantly reducing their methane emissions. 

The Commission will release its final methane strategy later this year, which could pave the way for legislation tackling emissions. It previously said it is considering imposing binding methane emissions standards on oil and gas imports and introducing legislation requiring fossil fuel companies to report and repair methane leaks. 

European lawmaker Martin Hojsík, who serves as shadow rapporteur on the methane strategy, said voluntary commitments “do not reflect the size of the climate crisis and will not lead to the necessary emission cuts”. 

“We have to contribute to emissions reductions by applying standards to imports, by banning routine venting and flaring and by supporting a global methane agreement,” he said.

The post Infrared images show under-regulated ‘methane crisis’ across Europe appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is where the gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be produced. Yamal did not originally belong to Russia. The Russian Empire began the colonisation of Yamal in the 16th century.

The Russian empire was mainly interested in profiteering from the region’s fur, which it sold to Europe. One third of the Russian state’s public treasury derived from the fur trade with the West. Before that could happen, land was seized. The indigenous peoples of Yamal resisted colonisation and, in response, the colonialists brutally killed them.

The Soviets separated indigenous peoples from their children and reindeers by force. Indigenous peoples have organised the Mandalada, a movement to safeguard their traditional way of life. After fierce resistance, Mandalada participants were arrested.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits in the Yamal Peninsula, which promised the region prosperity, did not improve, but rather worsened the situation. Gazprom continues to seize the lands of the indigenous peoples of Yamal in an attempt to extract even more gas. As a result, the local population is left without grazing [land] for its reindeer. For the indigenous peoples of Yamal, little has changed since the 16th century: the empire took furs from them and sold them to the West. Now the empire is taking oil and gas from them and selling it to the West. The lion’s share of tax revenue from the sale of fossil fuels does not remain in the Yamal region, but is sent to Moscow.

Russia formally joins Paris Agreement

One of the serious climatic problems in Yamal is gas flaring. It is barbaric and wasteful. Due to procedural imperfections, the gas is simply burned and released into the atmosphere, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank, Russia is the world’s biggest gas flare emitter. In 2018, Russia accounted for nearly 21.3% of global gas flaring.

In the Yamal Peninsula, there are about 1,500 such flares. Gazprom systematically pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In 2015, the local prosecutor’s office in Yamal increased methane emissions six-fold and carbon black emissions 37-fold.

The Russian authorities are not fighting Gazprom’s environmental crimes. The fines and warnings that Yamal prosecutors impose on Gazprom don’t have any impact on the company’s behaviour.

Indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples saw their rights violated during the construction of Nord Stream 2. The gas pipeline destroyed the native Finno-Ugric lands and the Kurgalsky reserve, which is home to rare plants, mosses and bird species.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the project, has hidden the true value of the Kurgalsky reserve. The real consequences of the construction of the gas pipeline on this nature reserve were never mentioned, be it during the public hearings on the project in Russia and other countries, or in the company’s Espoo report.

Greenpeace Austria has obtained secret minutes of meetings between the Russian government, Nord Stream 2 AG and Gazprom, during which they discussed changes to environmental legislation.

Surveys began illegally, without any permits, on the Kurgalsky reserve. As a result of this intrusion into a unique ecosystem, hundreds of rare plants have been destroyed.

The fight for the world’s largest forest

Double standards are rife when it comes to carving out the routes of the gas pipeline in Germany and Russia.  In Germany, where the value of the coastal territory is lower than that of the Kurgalsky reserve, Nord Stream 2 AG considers that it is possible to use a micro-tunneling construction method. In Russia, under similar conditions and with the incomparably higher value of the Kurgalsky Reserve, the “traditional method of construction with a 85m wide open trench” has been adopted. This method has a negative impact on the ecosystem of the Kurgalsky Reserve.

Nord Stream 2 violates Russian rights. The truth is that after selling Russian gas to the West, there are not enough to meet the needs of the Russian people. Gas programmes have been reduced: 30% of Russians live in gas-free houses.

The Russian authorities fix this internal energy supply problem in the most environmentally damaging way possible: they use coal instead of gas. The operation of coal-fired power plants, which are not equipped with modern filters, leads to real environmental catastrophes. For example, in Krasnoyarsk, residents often witness the “black sky” effect caused by finely fragmented coal dust.

Thanks to the Nord Stream 2 project, Europeans will receive less polluting gas. While the Russians will choke on coal dust, the indigenous peoples of Yamal will continue to suffer from gas combustion by Gazprom and will be deprived of the best pastures, and the unique Kurgalsky reserve will suffer severely. With the proceeds from the sale of fossil fuels, Putin’s regime is able to achieve its archaic political ambitions, carry out political repression, seize the territories of neighbouring states, bribe Western politicians and produce propaganda. Obviously, without the demand for Russian gas, Putin’s plan would simply not work.

Are Europeans okay with this reality and with the price of “cheap” Russian gas?

Yevgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist who received the Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2012 for her fight to preserve the Khimki forest from the Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway.

The post What is the real cost of cheap Russian gas? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The old coal-fired Kosovo-A power plant has been dumping vast quantities of ash out in the open for forty years (Photo: Lundrim Aliu / World Bank)

 By Alex Kirby

Coal, the muscle that for two centuries powered Europe’s economic dominance of the world, is steadily losing its grip as cleaner fuels take its place and energy efficiency cuts electricity consumption, according to new analysis.

The European Union’s electricity demand fell by 3.3% from 2008 to 2013 − even though GDP grew by 4.1% − and the analysts say changing market conditions for utilities leaves new coal plants failing to generate positive cash-flows even in the most optimistic scenario.

Not only that, but the proportion of electricity being generated in the EU from coal and other fossil fuels is also falling, says the study, “Coal: Caught in the EU Utility Death Spiral”, by the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative.

“In many respects, the EU’s electricity sector has been the ‘canary in the coal mine’ with regard to understanding how the low-carbon transition will create winners and losers,” says Matthew Gray, adviser to Carbon Tracker and lead author of the report. “What has happened in Europe over the last five years should send a stark warning to investors.”

Inevitable stranding

The authors analysed the Vattenfall energy company’s new Moorburg hard coal plant in Hamburg, Germany, and say that “stranding” is almost inevitable − a stranded asset being one that for some unexpected reason has been written down.

Modelling of the plant’s cash flows found that even if coal prices and carbon prices were low and the load factor high, it struggled to make a profit, making it near-impossible to recover its €3 billion ($3.35bn) cost.

James Leaton, Carbon Tracker’s head of research, says: “New German coal plants are struggling to break even in an optimistic scenario – there is only downside risk for operators. Utilities need to change their business models and move away from coal to avoid being left with stranded assets that don’t provide a return for shareholders.”

The report is published while UN climate talks in Bonn continue, and just after the G7 summit in Bavaria − two critical meetings that will help to shape the text of the UN climate change negotiations in Paris later this year.

It also appears as Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, is set to withdraw billions of dollars from coal investments after a unanimous parliamentary committee recommendation. The committee called for the fund to divest its holdings in companies that generate more than 30% of their output or revenues from coal-related activities.

Collective loss

The Carbon Tracker study shows how Germany’s E.ON and RWE, France’s GDF Suez and Électricité de France (EDF) and Italy’s Enel collectively lost €100bn − 37% of their stock market value − from 2008 to 2013.

The analysis found evidence that heavily coal-reliant utilities fared worse. Enel, performing best of the five, generated the most renewable energy as a percentage of total generation, while RWE, which performed worst, was more focused on coal generation.

All five, which provide nearly 60% of Europe’s electricity and have been subject to downgrades by Moody’s credit ratings agency, significantly under-performed Germany’s stock market, which grew by 18% in the same period.

Despite claims of a coal renaissance in Europe, use of the fuel in the EU as a whole fell by 4.7% in total and 4.2% in electricity generation from 2008 to 2013. By contrast, the five utilities covered in the study together increased their reliance on coal generation by 9% in the period.

Carbon Tracker says the continued growth of renewable energy, increased energy efficiency, and rising carbon prices will further squeeze out uneconomic coal plants, and that some major investors are already taking note.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

The post European coal faces uncertain future as electricity demand falls appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Heather Sunderland/Flickr

By Alex Kirby

Climate change is here, it’s happening now, and for the last few decades it has been demonstrably bad news for many of Europe’s forests.

An international team of researchers say in a report from the European Forest Institute that climate change is altering the environment, and it is long-lived ecosystems like forests that are particularly vulnerable to the comparatively rapid changes occurring in the climate system.

The report, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that damage from wind, bark beetles, and wildfires has increased significantly in Europe’s forests in recent years. Windthrow −  the wind’s effect in damaging or uprooting trees − is an increasing problem.

“Disturbances such as windthrow and forest fires are part of the natural dynamics of forest ecosystems, and are not a catastrophe for the ecosystem,” says the study’s principal researcher, Rupert Seidl, senior scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.

“However, these disturbances have intensified considerably in recent decades, which increasingly challenges the sustainable management of forest ecosystems.”

Increasing challenges

The authors show that damage caused by forest disturbance has increased continuously over the last 40 years in Europe, reaching 56 million cubic metres of timber annually in the years from 2002 to 2010.

Analysis of scenarios for the decades ahead suggest this trend will continue, with the study estimating that forest disturbance will increase damage by another million cubic metres of timber every year over the next 20 years.

The study says this increase is roughly equivalent to 7,000 football fields’ worth of timber. The authors say climate change is the main driver behind the increase. Forest disturbance did not increase much beyond present levels in their simulations while climate conditions remained stable.

They estimate that forest fires will cause increased damage on the Iberian peninsula, with damage by bark beetles increasing most markedly in the Alps. Wind damage, they say, is likely to increase most in central and western Europe.

Feedback effect

What the climate does to the forests is not a one-way street, the study says. There is a strong feedback effect from forest disturbances on the climate system.

Europe’s forests are at present helping to mitigate climate change by absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide. But the carbon lost from the increasing numbers of trees that are damaged or die could reduce this effect and reverse the positive impact of forest management measures aimed at reducing climate change.

So the increase in forest disturbance caused by the climate could simply make climate change worse. Management steps such as increasing biodiversity and thinning the forests to give them better protection can help to reduce these carbon losses and support the forests’ role in mitigating climate change.

But the authors say Europe’s forest managers will need to adapt to changing disturbances in order to keep the forests capable of functioning  to society’s benefit.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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Juncker addressed questions from Green MEPs today (Pic: greensefa/Flickr)

By Sophie Yeo

Future EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said that he is personally against fracking.

Speaking to Green Party MEPs in Brussels today, Juncker expressed concern about potential unforeseen circumstances of using the controversial technology.

“I tend to be cautious even if that’s old-fashioned. I don’t rush into new technologies,” he said.

Fracking is a method of extracting gas and oil from shale rocks by injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into the ground.

The US has tapped into vast supplies of gas and oil using the technique, making it one of the largest fossil fuel producers on the planet.

Some European governments such as the UK and Poland believe it could be the answer to their energy security fears, but environmentalists have raised concerns on a number of grounds.

These include the potential of fracking techniques to pollute water supplies and lock countries into reliance on another source of carbon-emitting fossil fuels, diverting resources away from renewable energy.

France currenty bans the technique, while German lawmakers are reportedly considering blacklisting fracking.

Executive power

Juncker, whom Europe’s heads of states nominated for the EU’s top job, must now be approved by the Parliament before he can take on the role.

Margrete Auken, a Danish Green MEP, said that she felt the Greens should support Juncker following his “acceptable” answers today, although she added it was likely to be a divided debate.

“I think we’re going to look into whether he is so bad that we have to reject him. Personally I don’t think so. I think we can support him,” she told RTCC.

The EU has no control over whether countries choose to exploit their shale gas resources, but can monitor how they undertake the process.

Currently, regulations are determined at the level of member states, with no obligation at an EU level to undertake an environmental impact assessment.

In January, the Commission recommended certain controls on the fracking industry to be implemented by member states. These were a disappointment to anti-fracking campaigners, who had hoped for a stronger set of binding regulations.

But regulations could become a live issue once again under the new Commission, who will have to deal with ramped up concerns over energy security, thanks to a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Report: Juncker: a potential climate champion for Europe?

Juncker will also have a seat at the EU Council, which has to finalise the EU’s 2030 policies on energy efficiency, renewables and greenhouse gas cuts by October this year.

The future Commission’s president views could sway the direction of the discussions, said Luca Bergamaschi, a researcher at environmental think-tank E3G.

“It could definitely influence the debate. I think the process of the next three to four months will basically decide whether shale gas will have a future or not,” he said.

Bas Eickhout, a Green Party MEP, tweeted that it “remains unclear” whether Juncker will push for stronger regulation, in spite of his personal dislike of shale gas.

He told RTCC that while Juncker admitted he is currently unfamiliar with the topic, he believed that “his intentions are good” and that he appeared to be “more on the positive side of the European People’s Party”, the conservative group of which Juncker is a member.

On shale gas Juncker states he’s against fracking personally. But whether he will push for tough regulation remains unclear. #JunckerTest

— Bas Eickhout (@BasEickhout) July 9, 2014

The post Incoming EU President Juncker says he opposes fracking appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: motiqua/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Across the EU voters are starting the process deciding who should represent them in the European Parliament up to 2019.

The result will help determine the region’s climate policies over the next five years – a critical period, as it encompasses UN attempts to sign off an international climate treaty.

The EU has so far played a critical role in these negotiations, but the rise of anti-climate right wing groups means that this agenda could be under threat.

RTCC has asked current MEPs from across the political spectrum how the outcome of this election will impact Parliament’s climate decision-making, and what they think its future priorities should be?

The answers were varied, ranging from curbing black carbon to opposing fracking, demonstrating the crucial role that this week’s elections will play in determining European – and global – climate policy for years to come.

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
Netherlands

Pic: EU

Despite what many people believe – that the EU is a front runner on climate change in the world, that we have to fear our competitive position vis a vis the rest of the world because of our ambitious climate policies – it’s the other way around.

The US, China and other parts of the world are becoming much more ambitious. China is investing much more in clean technology than we do in Europe, so I fear that if we do not speed up in Europe in the future our industry will have to buy its clean technology in countries like the US and China, which will definitely damage our competitiveness.

The 2030 package was not a legislative resolution, and in the end we have to put things in legislation, so that we can force each other to really do what we promise. That is going to become a very difficult process because it’s much easier to agree on a non-legislative text than on strong legislation, so that is going to be a very difficult battle in the coming years.

We have to get rid, in the EU, of hidden and non-hidden subsidies on fossil fuels, because the fossil fuel industry is always complaining about subsidising clean energy, but the subsidies that are going into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry are much higher, and that is something we have to tackle as well if we want to tackle climate change.

Eiija-Riitta Korhola – European People’s Party
Finland

Pic: EU

I think we should concentrate on reducing black carbon. It should be a priority instead of CO2 because it is the most urgent problem of the moment. It melts away the glaciers and it has fatal consequences on human health. If it were the basis for the next global agreement in Paris, it could be more fruitful because for China it’s necessary to reduce black carbon pollution particles.

Our first priority is to have a global agreement, otherwise our own efforts will be counterproductive. We have increased the share of total emissions in the EU if we take into account imported products, and therefore it is fruitless to continue in this track.

In the 2030 climate package, my political group is going to concentrate on one target. We would like to have one clear emissions reduction target, but we are reluctant to tighten the target to 40% if we don’t get a global agreement, because in that case our efforts are counterproductive.

Jill Evans – Greens/European Free Alliance
UK (Wales)

Pic: EU

The economic crisis pushed climate change right down the EU agenda. Europe has to re-establish itself as a global leader. The political nature of the parliament will be critical in this respect. We need MEPs who will take ambitious action on climate change and building a sustainable economy.

The priorities should be higher and binding targets on emissions and energy efficiency are essential. I will continue to oppose fracking and work for much greater investment in renewables, especially from the Horizon 2020 research programme.

Jo Leinen – Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Germany

Pic: EU

I hope that the next European Parliament will be as ambitious as the previous one. Nevertheless, I have some doubts because we will have political forces in the next Parliament that are not really friendly to climate policy. We have a lot of populists and nationalists that deny the climate problem or don’t encourage a common solution on the European level, so it will be most probably harder to get ambitious climate protection decisions.

We will have the next big global summit in Paris 2015, and I think the world expects Europe to be a leader in climate protection, so we have to decide the next milestone – the targets for 2030 – and they should be in line with our long term 2050 goal to decarbonise our industry and society. The 40% CO2 reduction will only be met if you have other targets like renewables and efficiency.

There are a few other big questions, like the reform of the emissions trading system and refining the goal of biofuels in our strategy, to make biofuels compatible with biodiversity and preserving natural capital. These are the cornerstones of policy in the next few years. I also want to preserve the Ecodesign directive and to continue to have benchmarks for our energy consumption according to technological progress, because there are a lot of populist arguments against this.

Bas Eickhout – Greens/European Free Alliance
Netherlands

Pic: EU

The real problem lies in the centre.

Whenever we have made a progressive environmental policy in the past it was because we could play the two middle parties apart from each other, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, but maybe because of the oncoming election results, we won’t be able to do that because there will not be majority possible with one of the two.

This means you will always get the grand coalition in the centre, with the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats teaming up together on every point, and you get very grey policies, especially on environmental issues. We fear that Europe will not be as outspoken as we have been over the last five years.

Of course the push for more coordination with energy is certainly now on the agenda because of the Russian situation. There the extremes will become stronger. Both right wing and left wing extremes, they are very understanding towards Putin, to say the least, so that doesn’t help, but nevertheless there you see that energy is on the political agenda.

But the big question is if you hear people plea for an energy union, for example Tusk is doing that, the big question is what kind of energy union? If I hear Tusk talking about an energy union, he’s mainly talking about coal and nuclear. Very clearly that is absolutely not the energy union that we are talking about.

Chris Davies – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
UK

Pic: EU

The growth of the fringe groups will mean the only way to secure a qualified vote will be to have support of the European People’s Party and, as things stand at the moment, they are unlikely to support the ambitious steps necessary to introduce measures to respond to climate change.  The EPP, while they may well endorse the principles, they will not want to endorse the practical measures necessary, especially not while many of the European continental economies are in the doldrums and unemployment remains very high.

My solution is we need to stop the top down approach and work with industry. I suspect there are more companies than we realise who are prepared to endorse and who would be enthusiastic in supporting an ambitious environmental agenda which was genuinely committed to building a competitive low carbon economy.

If I’m re-elected, then early next week I start making calls to a whole range of business organisations because I want to see the formation of a cross party group within the Parliament to press for progressive measures that are beneficial to business and can also promote a low carbon agenda. Absolutely top of my list on a whole range of environment issues is Unilever.

Pavel Poc – Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Czech Republic

Pic: EU

Everything depends on voters. Conservatives and Eurosceptics are not much interested in the climate change issue. If the socialists and democrats group is major in the Parliament, there is hope we may go further.

As the worldwide consensus on climate policy is far away, in my opinion we should see adaptation as the priority. Climate change is accelerating and we have to be prepared for the results. Our species has not yet been confronted with the hot state of the Earth and we can only estimate what will come in a few decades. We can easily be called to preserve our civilisation. And if we don’t succeed, discussion about mitigation or even reversing the processes we started is pointless.

Satu Hassi – Greens/European Free Alliance
Finland

Pic: EU

The thing I’m worried is if the right wing parties, EPP, ECR and the national parties, together have a majority in the parliament. In that case, the forecast for climate policies is pretty bad because the right wing national parties have been most strongly against ambitious climate policy.

It could have a real impact globally. It could prevent EU continuing its role as the locomotive of international climate protection. In the international climate negotiations there has never been progress without the EU being the driving force, taking initiatives, formulating proposals and encouraging other countries to join. But if the majority of the European Parliament says no, then the chances for the European Parliament and the Commission continuing the role of EU as driving force of climate policy are greatly reduced.

The recent news that most probably the melting of western Antarctic ice sheet is already irreversible is a very strong alarm bell showing that that it cannot wait. The more and more we delay action in reducing emissions, the more we are taking risks of irreversible, really huge changes on the planet which will have a dramatic impact on human society.

The post How will the European elections affect climate policy? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Source: European Parliament

By Sophie Yeo

World leaders take a “narrow minded” approach on climate change, and are too frequently distracted by the issues that will gain votes in the next election, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Speaking in Brussels today, he said that domestic concerns, along with the crises in Syria and Ukraine, had “distracted” leaders from taking action on climate change.

“When we regret it will be too late. That is my message to world leaders, who are very narrow-mindedly looking only on their national agenda,” said the normally placid Ban Ki-moon.

“Of course they have to be re-elected. When I talk to leaders very passionately, [they say] ‘Secretary General, don’t worry. I’m supporting you and I’ll always do what you say, but if I want to help you I need to be re-elected, so let me be re-elected first then I’ll come back to you.’

“By that time I’ll have to leave my job.”

Great to have a UN @secgen with such a strong and genuine dedication to fight #climatechange. Praise for his constant push for gvts to act

— Connie Hedegaard (@CHedegaardEU) April 3, 2014

Last week, Ban Ki-moon travelled to Greenland to highlight the impact that warming was having on the Arctic ice and raise awareness ahead of a climate change summit he will convene in September at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

His communication advisors questioned the trip, he said, as being out of line with global events at the time. Along with the escalating crisis in Ukraine, other world leaders, including President Obama, were gathering in The Hague that week for a Nuclear Security Summit.

But, he said, “this may be more important”: while climate change may not seem as immediate a problem as the crisis in Ukraine, it requires an urgent response. He added that he saw climate change as a top priority in his mandate as Secretary General.

On the crisis in Syria, he said that it may be very important and tragic, but that addressing climate change was about saving “the whole of humanity”.

“My objective has been pressed on member states who have been focusing more on domestic issues. I have been urging them, ‘Please, leaders, look beyond national boundaries. The whole of planet earth and global earth, they are suffering and they will suffer tomorrow, if not today.’”

European delay

Domestic issues in Europe were responsible for the delay on finalising the European Union’s climate and energy package last month, said Ban.

The package, which sets out a 40% greenhouse gas reduction target by 2030, could have formed the basis of the EU’s pledge at Ban Ki-moon’s summit in September, but a Council meeting in March saw the final decision pushed back till October.

The agenda was instead dominated by the political crisis in Ukraine and Europe’s dependence on oil and gas from Russia, said Ban.

He urged Europe to lead the way ahead of September’s crucial summit by finalising the 2030 package at the forthcoming Council meeting in June.

He said: “While world leaders have been distracted and focused on Ukrainian situations, we should never lose our sight on this very important issue of climate change.”

The post Ban Ki-moon: world leaders ‘narrow minded’ on climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Flooding on the Somerset levels (Pic: Environment Agency/Flickr)

 By Tim Radford

The catastrophic floods that soaked Europe last summer and the United Kingdom this winter are part of the pattern of things to come.

According to a new study of flood risk in Nature Climate Change annual average losses from extreme floods in Europe could increase fivefold by 2050. And the frequency of destructive floods could almost double in that period.

About two thirds of the losses to come could be explained by socio-economic growth, according to a team led by Brenden Jongman of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler of theInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

That is because more development and investment means there is more at risk from any flooding. But the other third of the increase will be delivered by climate change, and a shift in rainfall patterns in Europe.

From 2000 to 2012, floods in European Union countries averaged €4.9 billion (US $6.8 bn) a year in losses.

In the floods of June 2013, losses tipped €12 bn (US $16.6 bn) in nine countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The annual average losses could increase to €23.5 bn (US $32.4 bn) by 2050.

Unprecedented floods like those of 2013 occur on average once every 16 years now. By 2050, the probability will have increased to once every 10 years.

Floods widespread

The team looked at monthly peak river discharges in more than 1,000 river sub-basins to begin making their estimates: they also matched these peak flows with atmospheric circulation patterns. The point of the study was to deliver more accurate information.

“We brought together expertise from the fields of hydrology, economics, mathematics and climate change adaptation, allowing us for the first time to comprehensively assess continental flood risk and compare the different adaptation options,” said Brenden Jongman.

And Dr Hochrainer-Stigler said the new study for the first time accounted for the correlation between floods in different countries. Risk-assessment models tended to consider river basins as independent entities.

“But in actuality, river flows across Europe are closely correlated, rising and falling in response to large-scale atmospheric patterns that bring rains and dry spells to large regions.”

All of this points to greater strains on the pan-European Solidarity Fund that finances recovery from disaster within the European Union.

“If the rivers are flooding in Central Europe, they are also likely to be flooding in eastern European regions,” he said.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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By John McGarrity

China has outspent the US for the first time on installing so-called smart grids, according to a report released today, meaning the world’s largest most populous country could take the lead in managing power demand through technology such as smart meters.

Asia’s largest economy has now installed 250 million smart meters that tell households and businesses how much electricity particular appliances are using, helping customers reduce demand and cut emissions from the country’s carbon-intensive power grid.

“Global investment in the smart grid increased relatively modestly last year after five years of rapid growth,” said Bloomberg New Energy Finance in a press release, pointing to a sharp slowdown in spending in the US .

“But the fundamental drivers of the smart grid – greater grid reliability, further integration of renewable energy, and improved demand-side management – are stronger than ever,” the report added.

Report: US and China accelerate low carbon cooperation

China took the lead through spending $4.3 billion on smart grids in 2013, most of which went on 62 million smart meters last year, while spending in the US slumped by a third to $3.6 billion as spending waned from fiscal stimulus packages, BNEF said.

Meanwhile, Europe’s rollout of smart meters is expected to pick up speed towards the end of the decade, perhaps reaching 180 million by 2020 as the Germany, UK, Spain all embark on major programmes to install the technology, the research added.

Smart grids also can cut greenhouse gas emissions compared with business as usual by making power transmission more efficient and harness intermittent renewable energies such solar and wind power more effectively.

The US and China said over the weekend that they hoped to agree later next year how the countries could cooperate on building smart grids, a deal that could be a boon to technology companies.

Analysis: Is China really committed to addressing climate change?

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French farmers are feeling the strain as grapes become sweeter in the warm weather (Source: Flickr/PhillipC)

By Sophie Yeo

Forest fires, heavy flooding and confused Lithuanian birds – these are some of the effects that climate change is already having in Europe, according to a new report.

The study, assembled by the Climate Action Network (CAN) campaign group, examines how climate change is already affecting Europe from the perspectives of ecology, health and food security.

It reveals that countries across Europe are already suffering from the impacts of climate change, which is putting their environments and economies at risk.

“Europe and the rest of the developed world can no longer ignore the impacts of climate change,” writes Wendel Trio, director of CAN Europe, in the report.

“Extreme weather events are no longer restricted to far off, exotic places. They are also happening on the doorsteps of the richest, most powerful countries, here in Europe, in our communities, affecting our daily lives.”

Regional impacts

A region-by-region analysis highlights the impacts on different countries across the continent.

In Lithuania, for instance, birds are dying because the unseasonably mild winters means many decide not to migrate in the winter, leaving them to face the cold when it finally hits.

Low-lying coastal areas across the Nordic region of Europe are already at a high risk of flooding, with sea level rise leading to stronger and more frequent storm surges. North Sea countries such as Denmark are especially vulnerable, with its coastal capital of Copenhagen at particular risk. Surveys reveal that half of Danes are worried about their homes flooding.

France’s €30 million a year tourism industry, central to its economy, will be increasingly depressed as the temperatures warm. In the Alps and the Pyrenees, significant snow loss and a greater chance of avalanches threatens to curtail the ski season and shut some resorts down altogether.

If that weren’t bad enough, French winemakers are already taking a hit, as higher temperatures produce grapes with lower acidity and higher sugar content.

European coastal flooding could rapidly increase in the 21st Century without adaptation (Pic: CAN/IPCC)

While a combination of geographical and economic factors mean that the developing world remains the most vulnerable to climate change, the report hopes to highlight the fact that Europe needs to play a part in the discussion on the impacts of climate change that are already here.

By focusing on the impacts of climate change across Europe, Trio hopes that the EU can be encouraged to adopt ambitious targets for reducing emissions. The bloc is close to meeting its 2020 target of a 20% cut in greenhouse gases, and there is a call for politicians to go beyond this before the end of the decade.

In January, the EU will release its package of climate measures for 2030, which leaked drafts suggest will be a 45% emissions reduction target at most.

“Climate change is causing damage to our societies, our environment and to our current and future prosperity. This damage is only going to get worse, unless we take action at the global level but also at the European level,” says Trio.

“Europe can do much more to take effective action on climate change. Europe can lead by example and adopt more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for 2020.”

The post Europe already feeling climate change impacts – report appeared first on Climate Home News.

Source: Flickr/DoctorWho

By Tim Radford

European governments might have national targets to meet the demands of climate change. Many European cities, however, may not be in the mood.

Diana Reckien of Columbia University in the US and 11 European colleagues report in the journal Climatic Change that one in three cities have no plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and seven out of 10 cities have no formal plans to adapt to climate change.

Cities – think factories, offices, cars, public transport, lighting, central heating, air conditioning, waste disposal and huge and continuous programmes of building, demolition and renewal with steel, concrete, brick and glass – account for between 31% and 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Cities represent huge concentrations of people and economic investment, vulnerable to flood, windstorm, extremes of temperature and other climate-related violence. And cities don’t actually have to involve themselves in the complex international deals that bedevil government climate policies.

Cities are at liberty to decide to reduce emissions, and to adapt to any future hazards that citizens may identify.

The research went beyond questionnaire and interview. The researchers focused on action rather than words. They made a detailed analysis of 200 large and medium-sized urban areas – large means more than 250,000 people; medium is defined as more than 50,000 – in 11 European countries.

Slow to adapt

They looked at strategic policy and planning documents; they scrutinised adaptation plans that might abate or reduce vulnerability to climate change; and they considered mitigation plans that involved improved energy efficiency and renewable energy generation.

Only one city in four had taken steps both to adapt to climate change and to mitigate it by setting measurable targets to reduce emissions. Overall, 130 of the 200 cities had a mitigation plan and 28% had an adaptation plan.

But civic ambitions varied across national boundaries. More than 90% of British cities had a mitigation plan; of cities in France and Belgium only around 42% had confronted the challenge.

Of the 30 cities examined in Britain, 80% had adaptation plans, but in Germany out of 40 cities, only 33% were ready. The Dutch scored highest for ambition, by aiming for 100% reduction in emissions by 2050.

Ambition outstrips action

It is not as if nobody has mentioned global warming to civic authorities across Europe. Legislation in France, for instance, requires all major cities to have both a mitigation plan and an adaptation plan in place by the close of 2012. Right now, the scientists report, 14 French cities out of 35 have neither.

If the cities were representative of Europe, then on this showing the European Union would achieve its declared target of a 20% reduction in emissions. But this would be a long way short of the 80% reduction in emissions now required to keep global average warming to a maximum level of 2°C .

The EU is responsible for an estimated 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the EU has played a significant role in pressing for climate action at a global level. But not all countries within the EU have a uniform approach. And there remains a gap between declared ambition and civic action.

“Not all cities with high ambitions lie in countries with a national target as seen in the Netherlands. Likewise, an ambitious national target is no guarantee of an ambitious urban target. Every country analysed that has a nationally agreed target has cities without a GHG emission reduction target,” the researchers say.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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(Pic: Flickr\Tesla Autobots)

By Nilima Choudhury

Germany has delayed a vote to rubber stamp a deal to limit emissions from new cars by 2020 for a third time.

In a secret session on Friday, the Lithuanian Presidency agreed to postpone legislation agreed in June which sets a new target of 95g CO2/km by 2020.

Germany is reportedly exerting “massive pressure” on member states to slow the new emission limits.

Liberal Democrat MEP and environment spokesman Chris Davies, who is part of the negotiating team on this issue, says this is purely about protecting manufacturers like BMW and Daimler.

“This is legislation that would require cars to do more miles to the gallon and it is good for the environment, good for drivers and good for the UK car industry,” he said.

“A deal was negotiated in good faith between the Parliament and Ministers and now Germany wants to wriggle out of it. Britain should not be going along with that sort of sharp practice.”

Last week RTCC reported Germany was holding up talks, three months after Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron colluded to block the EU’s first attempt to drive the laws through.

The decision has now been passed to European Environment Ministers that meet on 14 October.

They are also expected to approve an emissions deal on vans that was ratified today, and discuss Europe’s position ahead of the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change.

If the European Council agrees to weaken the deal then there will be a second reading when Parliament can reintroduce its proposals for 2025 targets and the strengthened testing of vehicles.

“It’s totally inexcusable and undemocratic that Germany has been able to delay the vote as many times as needed to garner enough support to block the deal,” said Greg Archer from the Brussels NGO Transport & Environment.

“The Council must make a decision and soon. Either it ratifies the deal that has been welcomed by drivers, auto suppliers and the vast majority of EU countries, or it scuppers the plan and reopens negotiations with the Parliament. If a new deal has to be struck, the Parliament should insist on its 2025 target of 68g of carbon dioxide per kilometre.”

Last month, BMW was recognised by market research company Frost & Sullivan as a sustainable and innovative auto manufacturer, with Daimler a very close second.

But a recent report by Brussels-based International Council on Clean Transportation pointed the finger at BMW and Daimler, which appear to be taking advantage of loopholes in EU emissions cap legislation by presenting artificially low carbon emissions to consumers.

The report said: “The improvements reported by BMW, Daimler and General Motors appear to be primarily attributable to the flexibilities in the testing procedure, with real world improvements in fuel economy likely to be far less than those reported on the basis of vehicle tests.”

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(Pic: Adrian Pingstone)

Europe: The European Union’s plan to keep its curbs on pollution from airlines is the main hindrance to an international agreement on a carbon market for the industry, according to a senior Indian official. An accord discussed by the International Civil Aviation Organization would not authorise EU measures to keep its curbs on pollution from airlines prior to the global deal unless other states agree, said Prashant Sukul, India’s representative to the United Nations agency. (Business Week)

Asia: Members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) agreed on Monday to establish joint efforts for the development of renewable energy in the 21 member economies. (Jakarta Post)

UK: Anti-fracking protesters have begun a slow withdrawal from their camp outside an exploratory oil drilling plant in West Sussex. Campaigners have promised to vacate the site, which became the national focus of anti-fracking sentiment, by 8 October, but say they will come back if energy company Cuadrilla returns. (Guardian)

UK: The UK has pledged to provide £3.87 billion to support developing countries tackle low carbon development, protect forests and assist the poorest of nations around the world adapt to the impacts of climate change. (All Africa)

China: The Ministry of Finance announced it will offer tax breaks to manufacturers of solar power products on Sunday, as China moves to support an industry still struggling to deal with massive overcapacity and weak demand. (Reuters)

UK: Conservatives are set to promise companies at the next general election their energy bills will not go up as a result of efforts to tackle climate change. Climate change minister Greg Barker said the Tories would seek to assist firms by making sure international objectives to lower CO2 emissions do not damage their business prospects. (Politics.co.uk)

Poland: Poland could be acting in direct violation of EU regulations if it goes ahead with the construction of two new units at its Opole power plant by failing to assess the units for their ability to incorporate carbon capture and storage technology. (RTCC)

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European Commission. (Pic: Sébastien Bertrand)

By Nilima Choudhury 

The European carbon market (EU ETS) is likely to remain oversupplied with allowances in circulation until 2027, unless tighter controls are placed on businesses, say analysts.

Stig Schjølset, head of carbon analysis at market intelligence company Thomson Reuters Point Carbon told RTCC that it is a lack of political ambition that is holding back the EU from making decisions to increase carbon pricing, thereby reducing emissions.

“If you put in place more ambitious targets for the period between 2020 and 2030, it will drive up the need for further [emissions] reductions and carbon prices.”

Schjølset said the low carbon price that is available today and “potentially for another decade” could encourage the construction of fossil fuel plants.

This, he says, “will mean that the investment decisions that should be put in place to make the European economy greener might be postponed for too many years and that might make it difficult to meet the long term targets that everyone has signed up to.”

The total number of permits issued (either auctioned or allocated) determines the price for carbon. The actual carbon price is determined by the market.

For any allowance price increase towards 2030 to occur and therefore cut emissions, Europe needs a “high carbon” lock-in, which refers to stopping the construction of further fossil fuel plants and instead letting those that remain continue until the end of their lifespan.

But market participants are currently not incentivised enough to invest in emission abatement technologies and to stop financing new fossil fuel facilities due to the oversupply of allowances, which will likely lead to too high a price for allowances and less flexibility in the system over the coming decades.

Legislation

The European Commission is expected to present proposals for a 2030 energy and climate framework by the end of this year.

A key element of this 2030 discussion is whether reforms should be implemented to strengthen the EU ETS, in order to get the EU on track towards its long-term ambition to reduce carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050.

“Our price forecast is based on the assumption that the EU takes on a greenhouse gas reduction target of 40% by 2030, implying that the reduction factor in the EU ETS would increase from 1.74% under the current legislation to 2.5% from 2021,” said Schjølset.

“Even though it is likely that more ambitious policies will be put in place over the coming years, we think carbon prices will essentially remain at single-digit levels, averaging €7.7/t in the period up to 2020.

From the start of phase 4, which is scheduled to run from 2021-28, we expect the market to be short on an annual basis. This will gradually erode the accumulated oversupply and prices will likely increase rapidly as more expensive reductions will be needed to meet the cap.”

The long-term price forecast is based on the assumption that the EU will take on a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, that there will be no access to international offsets in the 2021-30 period and that the share of renewables in the final energy consumption will increase to 30% by the end of the next decade.

Moreover, Schjølset said he expects the annual economic growth in Europe to average 1.6% in 2013-2020 and 1.9% in 2021-30.

In July, the European Parliament passed market reforms to introduce a one-off event known as ‘backloading’ or holding back allowances to limit supply and lift the price toward a level that might stimulate CO2 reductions.

The EU currently accounts for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which rose globally in 2012 by 1.4%, according to the International Energy Agency.

Overall, Schjølset remains optimistic: “We think [all the heads of state] will sign up to the long term targets and put in place some interim targets in order to get there.”

Trading

Separately, London-based NGO Sandbag is warning that the UK government’s ‘bonfire of regulations’ will endanger the integrity of the scheme in the country.

Under reforms to the scheme, penalties for not surrendering emissions permits are set to be “dramatically” lowered. The amendments also set out that non-compliance is to be treated under civil, not criminal law.

Furthermore, the changes give the regulator total power of discretion, allowing them to further reduce or even waive penalties entirely.

Sandbag’s Phil MacDonald says: “These changes appear to contravene the ETS Directive which clearly states that installations not paying for their pollution are penalised to the tune of €100 ($135) per tonne of CO2.

“Allowing the regulator to reduce or even remove a penalty gives industry great incentive to lobby regulators into dropping fines. We’re particularly worried by regulatory capture as a result of these changes. Allowing the regulator the power to choose what the penalty is, or whether there should be a penalty at all, invites corruption.”

To date fines for EU ETS noncompliance have totalled approximately £5 million ($8 million) in the UK, with £2.8 million ($4.5 million) coming from ExxonMobil’s single 2011 fine.

These fines are marginal considering the EU carbon market was worth $148 billion in 2011.

Changing the regulation so dramatically to reduce fines seems to have little to do with lightening the regulatory burden, said Sandbag. It believes that robust penalties and the threat of criminal convictions are important deterrents to stop ETS noncompliance and reflect the serious implications of defrauding both the market and the environment.

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Members of the European Parliament have voted to limit the amount of  biofuels that can be derived from food-based crops to 6%.

The EU wants 10% of transport fuel to be comprised of biofuel by 2020, as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions.

MEPs voted 532-343 in favour of the cap, which applies to that 10% target.

Intense lobbying has surrounded this vote, which affects an industry worth an estimated €13-16 billion. Member states will now decide whether this cap is appropriate.

MEPs also agreed to include indirect land use (ILUC) factors in its biofuels legislation from 2020.

Environmental campaigners have been asking for pollution from clearing areas like rainforests, or ILUC, to become part of the biofuels 2020 legislation when calculating carbon emissions savings offered by biofuels.

MEP Corrine Lepage, who delivered a report outling the positives and negatives of biofuel generation, said lobby groups and members of parliament would have an opportunity to express their views on this issue.

She added the biofuels policy relating to ILUC needed to “balance out” economic concerns as well dealing with the consequences on food prices, land usage and palm oil.

Latest reaction:

#EP‘s vote on #ILUC one step forward in getting it right on #biofuels. Cap is in, subtarget for advanced biofuels and ILUC-factors in

— Connie Hedegaard (@CHedegaardEU) September 11, 2013

ClientEarth’s legal advisor Giuseppe Nastasi:

“MEPs today have chosen to ignore evidence of the adverse impacts of food-based biofuels on food prices and carbon emissions.

“This was a very narrow vote. We welcome the recognition of ILUC factors in 2020 but the delay means the status quo is maintained. Parliament voted for the file to go to a second reading, which means a final decision is not likely before the next European elections.”

Nuria Molina, ActionAid’s director of policy and campaigns:

“They voted for a 6% cap on biofuels which compete with food, which would allow enough food to be burnt in Europe’s cars to feed more than 200 million people every year.

“However some progress was made as at least MEPs voted to acknowledge the role that biofuels have in causing hunger and contributing to climate change.

REA Head of Renewable Transport Clare Wenner:

“Future investments are likely to remain on hold following today’s voting in Strasbourg, which introduces a whole new level of procedural complexity into the ILUC policy situation.

“”The 6% overall cap is too tight and the REA continues to oppose the introduction of ILUC factors until there is convincing scientific evidence that biofuels should be singled out in this way. There are some bright spots, though, such as the separate target for advanced biofuels and the continuation of double counting for biofuels made from used cooking oil.”

The post Biofuels: EU MPs back new 6% cap on food crops appeared first on Climate Home News.

Commission president José Manuel Barroso. (Pic: European Commission)

By Nilima Choudhury

The EU will have a “concrete” proposals for an energy and climate policy framework up to 2030 by the end of the year, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso told MEPs today.

Addressing members of the Commission in his final ‘State of the Union’ speech before he steps down in 2014, he said the EU was committed to playing a leading role in climate policymaking in the lead up to the UN 2015 summit in Paris, where countries are set to agree a global emissions deal.

“We will continue to shape the international agenda by fleshing out a comprehensive, legally binding global climate agreement by 2015, with our partners,” he said.

“Europe alone cannot do all the fight for climate change. Frankly, we need the others also on board. At the same time, we will pursue our work on the impact of energy prices on competitiveness and on social cohesion.”

He added: “whilst fighting climate change, our 20-20-20 goals have set our economy on the path to green growth and resource efficiency, reducing costs and creating jobs.”

Barroso also called on member states to support the work of climate scientists, talking of his faith in the “capacity of the human mind and a creative society to solve its problems”.

In a spiky exchange with UK MEP Nigel Farage after the speech, Barroso chided the climate sceptic politician for his views, saying: “99% of scientists confirm human-made climate change. Others are paid to deny it.”

Reports on the Guardian live blog suggest Farage responded by waving photos of the North Pole that he says show the ice cap has expanded.

Twitter reaction to Barroso speech:

President @BarrosoEU in #SOTEU: #climate policies are a driver for growth http://t.co/fGbXkEWadf 2030 climate framework ready by year-end

— Connie Hedegaard (@CHedegaardEU) September 11, 2013

UKIP’s Farage: “There has been no global warming, sirs, for the last 20 years. Let’s scrap carbon tax” #SOTEU
— Georgi Gotev (@GeorgiGotev) September 11, 2013

Green MEP @RebHarms is very disappointed in EU Commission: “apalling” that under Barroso’s term #climate policy has been abandoned. #SOTEU

— StollmeyerAlice (@StollmeyerEU) September 11, 2013

#StateofUnion #Barroso Global climate change treaty by 2015 with our partners. Europe 2020. — tarjacronberg (@tarjacronberg) September 11, 2013

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National Grid gas successfully completed a test drilling on a North Sea storage site for CO2. (Source: National Grid)

By Nilima Choudhury

Drilling for a carbon dioxide storage site in the North Sea has been completed by British energy company National Grid.

The drilling is a major milestone in its programme, funded by an EU grant, to advance Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Europe. The findings are significant as this type of storage site is common in Europe.

“This is the first time in the UK that we’ve done test drilling specifically for carbon dioxide and it looks as though it’s been successful and we’re going to have what will be a large site in the North Sea for being able to store carbon dioxide,” Isobel Rowley, a National Grid spokesperson, told RTCC.

Early indications are that the undersea site 65 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast is viable for carbon dioxide storage and will be able to hold around 200 million tonnes permanently. This is equivalent to taking ten million cars off the road for 10 years.

Peter Boreham, National Grid’s director of European Business Development said: “Global energy demand is likely to double in the next twenty years and CCS is the only technology that can turn high carbon fuels into genuinely low carbon electricity and keep costs low for consumers”.

Luke Warren, deputy chief executive of trade group the Carbon Capture and Storage Association acknowledged to RTCC the importance of this step for CCS in Europe.

Warren is now calling for reform to the “electricity market so we can encourage greater private sector investment into CCS.

“We’re in a fairly good place here in the UK. The government has £1 billion of funds [for] projects. If we get [the electricity market reform] right, that will put in place the market arrangements that will hopefully enable CCS be deployed at scale, which is what is needed if we’re going to reduce fossil fuels.”

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Melting Arctic ice is opening up new opportunities for shipping companies. (Source: pixabay/David Mark)

By Nilima Choudhury

A new polar code for maritime operations is urgently needed to preserve the environmental integrity of the Arctic Ocean, says the head of the Norwegian Shipowners Association (NSA).

Sturla Henriksen director general of the NSA told RTCC that steadily melting summer ice means increased shipping levels in the region are now inevitable.

On Wednesday the US-based National Snow and Ice Data Center revealed ice melt was accelerating, although it had not yet caught up with last year’s record.

“We need the international society to develop an infrastructure which is adequate that includes navigation, mapping of the area, communication, weather forecasting [and predicting] ice conditions,” said Henriksen. “My concern is that the ice is receding faster than the negotiations are progressing.”

Administrators of the Northern Sea Route which runs along the north coast of Russia have already granted more than 200 ships permission to sail across the route this year.

This is a huge increase on 2012, when 46 ships transporting a total of 1.3 million tons reportedly used the route, which cuts journey times from Russia to China by eight days.

Protests

Groups like Greenpeace have vehemently lobbied for the curbing of trade in the Arctic. Last month, six Greenpeace campaigners were arrested in London after scaling Europe’s tallest building to draw public attention to drilling plans of Shell.

Environmentalists concerned about threats to the Arctic people, the effects of further fossil fuel exploration on climate change and the wider impacts on what was, until recently, a pristine environment, and one that was described in Nature that the Arctic region is “pivotal” to the functioning of Earth systems such as oceans and the climate.

“The Arctic is fast becoming the new battleground where the fight to save the Arctic will be won or lost,” said Ian Duff, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner.

“A major oil spill – one as bad as BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico – is almost inevitable as long as the oil giants are allowed to operate there, posing a huge threat to Indigenous communities and polar bear populations.”

Leadership

The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by the Arctic governments and the indigenous people of the Arctic, convened in May of this year to discuss the economic potential of the region.

The meeting, described by some attendees as lacklustre, did nothing to stifle the grievances of groups like Greenpeace and the NSA by not reaching any successful resolution on oil and gas extraction.

The next meeting of the Arctic Council is in 2015, the same year as the climate change negotiations in Paris where a legally binding treaty must be agreed to keep the world on its path to limiting global warming to 2°C.

Extra costs

A shorter route that avoids the Middle East and other shipping bottlenecks is not guaranteed to be cheaper.

Insurance companies are increasing insurance premiums according to Lloyd’s Market Association due to the severe damage to ships that could be incurred.

The LMA lists a variety of risks that could raise premiums, including oil spillages, damage to hulls from ice, navigational concerns like poor maps and GPS systems and short summer seasons which could alter well-travelled transit routes.

Andrew Bardot, secretary and executive officer from marine insurance provider International Group of P&I Clubs told RTCC that although liability insurance is not a “big issue”, insuring the actual ship could be what leads to increased premiums.

“At the moment what we the clubs are there to do is to provide liability insurance cover so if there was oil pollution we’d respond, if there was wreck that has to be removed, if there was personal loss of life we’d respond,” said Bardot.

According to a report by the University of Saskatchwan in Canada, the prices for shipping vessels in the Arctic could be as high as 150% to 300% more than for traditional sea routes.

“Both the challenges and the opportunities in the Arctic are of global significance,” said Henriksen at a conference on the Arctic.

“Nowhere else on Earth can the effects of climate change be seen more immediately and more clearly. Sustainable utilisation of the region’s resources is therefore more important here than anywhere else.”

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Floating wind farms could be the answer to Europe’s energy concerns. (Source: Untrakdover)

By Nilima Choudhury 

Floating wind farms lining the horizon far out to sea should be a regular sight if European renewable energy targets are to be met, says a new report.

The report from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) claims deep water floating wind turbines in Europe’s Atlantic and Mediterranean seas and the deepest parts of the North Sea could power Europe four times over.

By 2030, the EWEA envisages an installed capacity of 150GW, or enough electricity for 145 million households.

“To allow this sector to realise its potential and deliver major benefits for Europe, a clear and stable legislative framework for after 2020 – based on a binding 2030 renewable energy target – is vital. This must be backed by an industrial strategy for offshore wind including support for R&D”, said Jacopo Moccia, head of policy analysis at EWEA.

Barriers

Although offshore wind is one of the fastest growing maritime sectors, it is still a young technology facing considerable challenges.

“Offshore wind power installations were significantly higher than in the first six months of last year,” said Justin Wilkes, director of policy at the EWEA.

“But financing of new projects has slowed down with only one project reaching financial close [in the UK] so far this year. It highlights the significant challenges faced by the offshore wind sector.”

At the end of 2012, 5GW had been installed in Europe. The EWEA predicts that by 2020 this could be eight times higher, at 40GW, meeting 4% of European electricity demand.

However, for this to happen, the EWEA calls for a supportive legislative framework and new offshore designs to be developed for deep water in order to tap the large wind potential of the Atlantic, Mediterranean and deep North Sea waters.

“Europe is a world leader [in wind energy] with huge export opportunities. The installation rate shows what the European offshore wind industry is now capable of. But to attract investment to the sector governments need to provide a stable regulatory framework and the EU should set a binding renewable target for 2030”, said Wilkes.

Among the European Union member states, the UK is applauded in the report for strong government support in deep offshore development. The UK’s Energy Technology Institute has earmarked £25 million (US$38 million) is earmarked for a floating offshore wind demonstration project.

Earlier this month, the UK announced plans for the world’s largest offshore wind farm off the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coast. The 288 turbine 1,200MW project costing around £3.6 billion will exceed the country’s 175 turbine array off the Kent coast.

If the requirements are met, the first full-scale deep offshore wind farms could be producing electricty by 2017, up from the two floating turbines currently supplying electricity from European waters.

The competition

Currently all deep offshore grid connected full scale turbines are located in European waters, but the US and Japan are catching up.

“It is essential that these European companies benefit from national and European R&D support to maintain their leadership and take advantage of the significant potential of the domestic market and the export opportunities that derive from being a first mover,” advised the report.

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), part of the Department of the Interior (DoI) director Tommy Beaudreau announced late last week that BOEM will auction nearly 112,800 acres of Virginia for offshore wind energy development.

BOEM claims this will have the potential to support more than 2,000MW of wind generation – enough electricity to power approximately 700,000 homes.

Jessica Kershaw, press secretary for the DoI told RTCC that the Pacific Coast and New York have also been quite successful with wind energy.

“We are seeing increased interest in deep water wind turbine systems offshore Oregon and Hawaii. In Oregon, specifically, we are reviewing a commercial wind lease request from Principle Power, a company that has received funding from the Department of Energy to demonstrate the capabilities of floating wind turbines on the OCS, deploying new technology successfully tested offshore Portugal.

“BOEM is also reviewing a research lease request to test marine hydrokinetic technologies off the coast of Oregon [as well as] working with the State to map out the next steps moving forward,” said Kershaw.

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A new lobby group has called for regional, national and European-wide legislators to achieve a 100% renewable energy target within the next four decades.

The Global Alliance for 100% Renewable Energy, founded by World Future Council (WFC) and research institute Fraunhofer ISE among others, has criticised European governments of being the main hurdle in successfully combating climate change.

Six years ago the EU agreed to cut its emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 and raise its renewable energy levels by the same amount. France and Germany have signalled they are willing to look at new clean energy targets for 2030, but the UK has argued it is up to individual countries to decide.

The Alliance stated at its inauguration today that renewable energy is the key to Europe’s future economic and industrial development.

Speaking to RTCC, Anna Leidreiter, Policy Officer of Climate and Energy at WFC said: “The challenge has never been technical but actually the political will to implement enabling policy frameworks.

“Britain is a good (even though in a negative way) example how crucial political will is. The government’s current position on shale gas and nuclear power is another diversion from what should be a complete decarbonisation and sustainability commitment,” said Leidreiter.

The British government is spending too much time on shale gas and nuclear power rather than committing to sustainability. (Source: UK Parliament)

She notes that European countries already rely heavily on renewables proving that this ambitious goal is already becoming a reality. WFC states the success story of those regions results from high citizen participation.

“Two countries that are already powered by 100% renewable energy are Norway and Iceland,” said Leidreiter.

“Other European countries also rely heavily on renewables. Denmark uses renewable sources for 45% of its energy: wind (30%) and biomass (15%). Besides that Denmark is the only European country with a 100% RE target for electricity, heating/cooling sector and transportation by 2050.

“Scotland has a 100% RE target in power sector by 2020 and Upper Austria in power and heat sectors by 2030. Spain already provided its 47 million people with 31% renewable electricity in 2011. Italy, with 60 million inhabitants, now sources 17% of its electricity renewably. Germany is on 19% and in the electricity sector even at 25%.”

EU renewables reign

A report from energy consultancy firm PA concurs with the WFC.

European countries may have been the safest havens for renewable investments in the past but PA says they are now: “losing momentum as a result of policy responses to the financial and debt crisis. Policymakers have significantly scaled back on expensive feed-in-tariff programmes in many countries, notably Spain, Germany and Austria.”

According to PA, China is the leader of the pack when it comes to getting a good internal rate of return for renewable energy investments thanks to government support.

The report does recognise clear positives about Europe’s approach to renewables: “Sweden, Denmark and the UK have achieved a high position in our ranking through a combination of good-quality renewable resources plus the effective use of market mechanisms in the form of renewable energy credits.”

“Global investors and international funds are showing significant interest in UK energy infrastructure assets, largely due to the planned closure of existing thermal and nuclear generation and the policy support for new low-carbon plants offered by the Energy Bill,” said PA energy expert Mark Livingstone.

For Europe to compete against high-rollers like China, Leidreiter states European governments need to encourage certainty in the market by creating a level playing field for renewable energy and conventional energy to attract investment.

“Governments throughout Europe act in the interest of the conventional energy sector. A strong political commitment is necessary and setting a 100% renewable energy target is the first step,” said Leidreiter.

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The French town of Tramayes has won the 2012 ‘Champions League for Renewable Energies’, beating off competition from over 4,000 competing local authorities across Europe.

The Renewable Energy Sources Champions League is now in its third season, and is contested by towns and cities from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland.

The ranking is based on installed power (or area) per inhabitant. The calculation of points is made with an inhabitants’ number equal to 100 minimum, even if a village has less than 100 inhabitants.

The league is slightly skewed as it does not take into account  wind, hydro and marine energy. Only solar PV, solar thermal and wood energy installations are accepted.

According to RES data, the participating municipalities built 5,000 megawatt solar photovoltaic, 2,500,000 square metre solar thermal and 1,500 megawatt biomass plants.

Germany appears to be the leading European state when it comes to solar and wood burning energy production – achieving a top three finish in the four contested categories.

Next year the competition will be open in five additional countries, namely Austria, Belgium, Romania, Scotland and Slovenia.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Does a renewable energy competition make sense if it excludes wind, marine and hydropower?

RTCC VIDEO: ICLEI President David Cadman tells us why the future fight against climate change and development of renewable technologies will start in the cities.

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Dramatic sea-ice melt in the Arctic caused by climate change could be hitting closer to home than thought for millions living in the US and Northern Europe.

New research, published in the journal Oceanography, found that the melting of Arctic sea ice in the summer could be causing a domino effect, increasing the chances of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere’s middle latitudes.

This could mean more frequent cold snaps gripping much of the US and Central and Eastern Europe.

Cities in the US like New York could see themselves hit by severe winter weather (© Beyond My Ken/Creative Commons)

The report uses the examples of the “Snowmageddon” storm which hit Washington DC in February 2010, or the cold snap which covered much of Central and Eastern Europe in mid-January this winter with some temperatures hitting -30°C.

A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during the summer, which exposes the darker ocean water. Darker oceans absorb more solar radiation, increasing the summertime heating of the ocean – further accelerating ice melt.

This causes excess heat to be released into the atmosphere, especially during autumn, decreasing the temperature and atmospheric pressure gradient between the Arctic and middle latitudes – weakening the winds associated with the polar vortex and jet stream.

As the polar vortex normally retains cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic Circle, its weakening allows cold air to invade lower latitudes.

With the paper published just after the Eastern US had experienced one of its warmest winters on record the report’s authors say the study shows the complexity of climate systems and their impacts on regional weather.

This winter, La Nina in the Pacific meant that while many parts of the Northern Hemisphere were hit by severe winter weather patterns, much of the Eastern United States basked in warm tropical air.

“A lot of times people say, ‘Wait a second, which is it going to be – more snow or more warming?’ Well, it depends on a lot of factors, and I guess that was a really good winter demonstrating that,” said report co-author Charles Greene. “What we can expect, however, is the Arctic wildcard stacking the deck in favour of more severe winter outbreaks in the future.”

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The EU will not abandon biofuels a spokesperson has said. (Source: Wikimedia/Alaz)

The EU will stand by its commitment to biofuels despite criticism from an NGO that that growing crops for fuel raises food prices and displaces local communities.

A report by ActionAid released on Wednesday (25 April) claimed that Europe should drop its target of sourcing 10% of its transport fuels from renewable sources by 2020.

“If it continues to ignore the impacts of its biofuels policy on people living in some of the poorest parts of the planet, the EU will effectively be sponsoring hunger and human rights abuses on a massive scale,” said Laura Sullivan, ActionAid’s Head of European Advocacy.

“Instead of pumping money into this fool’s gold, the EU needs to drop its targets and subsidies, and invest the money in truly sustainable alternatives, that support local farmers to produce food not fuel,” she added.

But in a statement sent to RTCC, an EU Commission spokesperson said they remained committed to the energy source.

“The EU Commission will not abandon the EU renewables policy and continues to believe that biofuels can make a positive contribution toward the EU’s climate and energy objectives if all issues, including indirect land use change impacts, are properly addressed,” said the spokesperson.

There is currently an evaluation underway at the Commission on the effects of changing land use on the carbon emissions associated with biofuels.

“The Commission is currently finalising its impact assessment [on land use] and will, if appropriate, present legislative proposals for amending the existing EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD).”

The spokesperson also reiterated that neither of these EU targets were specifically for biofuel.

The FQD is targeting a 6% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from road transport fuels.

The RED goal is to source 10% of EU transport energy demand from renewable sources. Although this does not exclusively mean biofuels, ActionAid claims that 88% of this renewable transport energy will be from manufactured biofuels.

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Nitrogen dioxide levels over Europe decreased by between 20% to 30% on average across Europe between 2005 and 2010, and air quality over the continent improved, say researchers.

Satellite observed trend in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over Europe and the industrial production index reported by the statistical office of the European Union (EUROSTAT) (source: Patricia Castellanos)

The new research, published in the Scientific Reports, suggests these decreases come from a mix of the impact of both national and EU wide environmental policy and the global recession.

The study found that in 2009, NO2 concentrations were at least 10% lower than 2005 values and as high as 20-40% lower in industrialised regions in Germany, Italy’s Po Valley, north-east Spain and large cities.

This coincides with the change in anthropogenic activity in Europe from sharp downturns in GDP, industrial production and consumption experienced during the economic downturn of 2008-2009, according to researchers.

The study also found that reductions in NO2 generally slowed towards the end of 2010, possibly indicating the beginning of economic recovery.

The researchers found gradual reduction of nitrogen emissions being reported over the period to 2004 and 2008 despite economic growth, indicating the success of environmental policy.

The non-linear concentrations seen in 2008-2009, however, suggest that some of the air quality improvements by the end of 2010 were independent of EU environmental policy.

Some of the highest reductions were seen in areas with large power stations, including in south-western Germany, eastern Germany along the Polish border and north-western Spain, suggesting the installation of NOx emissions controls or more efficient combustion techniques.

There were also increases in NO2 seen around the largest cities in the UK, Ukraine and Turkey – corresponding to new or upgraded power stations.

In the UK, increases in the London region could represent rises in vehicle activity around the city from motorway improvements and the congestion charge, according to the study.

In 2009, the report found sharp declines in NO2 between the UK and continental Europe, as well as along the coastlines of Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Europe, which they believe is due to sharp declines in shipping activity from the recession.

Overall in many large European cities, emissions reductions in one year of the economic downturn outweighed roughly four years of policy improvements, says the study.

The researchers aimed to highlight the non-linear nature of emissions reductions, both reflecting policy measures and economic activity across the continent.

Contact the author on ts@rtcc.org or @rtcc_tierney.

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