GWPF | 3 Sept 2015
UK Announces More Green Cuts; DECC Plays Down Merger Rumour
Denmark’s widening budget deficit is forcing its policy makers to take some hard decisions in the very area where they are considered global role models: the fight against climate change. Denmark’s Liberal government is to reverse ambitious CO2 emission targets introduced by the previous administration. It will also drop plans to phase out coal-fired power plants and become fossil-fuel free by 2050, according to leaked documents first reported by newspaper Information. The news about Denmark’s cost-cutting measures, which also include a reduction in green funding initiatives worth 340 million kroner ($51.5 million) through 2019, came on the same day on which U.S. President Barack Obama issued a global appeal for urgent action in the buildup to a United Nations summit in Paris in December. —Peter Levring, Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
A subsidy for green heating systems worth more than £400m a year is set to be pruned in the autumn spending review as ministers seek to rein back spending at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Officials have also proposed earmarking some of the money Decc gives to the International Climate Fund — amounting to £335m in 2015. Meanwhile, Decc is playing down a rumour that it could be merged into another ministry, the business department, for example, to cut costs. “I’d strongly, strongly steer you away from that,” said one insider. –Jim Pickard and Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 3 September 2015
1) Denmark Readies U-Turn on Ambitious Climate Targets – Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
2) UK Announces More Green Cuts; DECC Plays Down Merger Rumour – Financial Times, 3 September 2015
3) Germany’s Green Energy Revolution Fails Its Climate Goal – Die Welt, 3 September 2015
4) Dutch Government Appeals Against CO2 Emissions Ruling – Politico, 1 September 2015
5) Climate Negotiators ‘Frustrated’ Over Snail’s Pace – AFP, 2 September 2015
6) Eleventh Hour Panic: UN Summons Leaders To Closed-Door Climate Meeting – Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
7) And Finally: Why Are We Waiting? Because Nobody Is Listening To Nick Stern – My Garden Pond blog, 1 September 2015
More than one million solar energy projects and 25,000 wind turbines are obviously not enough: Despite Germany’s green energy revolution, the federal government’s climate targets cannot be achieved. This is the result of the most recent update of the so-called Energiewende-Index by consulting firm McKinsey. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 is “unrealistic”, says the report. Any improvement is not in sight either, the authors conclude: “The prospects for a turnaround by 2020 are permanently bad.” –Daniel Wetzel, Die Welt, 3 September 2015
The Dutch government said Tuesday it plans to appeal against a court decision which ordered it to slash emissions, arguing the verdict could set a precedent for courts to interfere with government policy. In a June 24 ruling, a court in The Hague ordered the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, saying that the more modest 17 percent cuts that it was expected to achieve by that year were not enough to combat global warming. Wilma Mansveld, the Dutch environment minister, sent a letter to the Dutch parliament announcing the cabinet would appeal against the ruling, arguing that the verdict constrains the state’s ability to make decisions by balancing competing interests. –Kalina Oroschakov, Politico, 1 September 2015
Diplomats tasked with forging a climate rescue pact expressed frustration Wednesday over the lagging progress, with only seven negotiating days left until a Paris conference which must seal the deal. “I think we are all equally frustrated at the pace of the negotiations currently,” Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, who speaks for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told AFP. Instead of rolling up sleeves and reworking the text, still over 80 pages long and littered with contradictory proposals, the Bonn session had seen “conceptual discussions, going around in circles,” he said. —AFP, 2 September 2015
Frustrated by slow progress in global climate talks, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to invite around 40 world leaders including President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a closed- door meeting next month. Major players including India, Indonesia and Brazil still haven’t submitted their climate plans, and the draft text for the Paris agreement remains an 88-page grab bag of conflicting options that negotiators still must sort out. At a news conference in Paris last week, Ban urged them to pick up the pace. “We have only less than a hundred days for final negotiations,” Ban said, complaining that diplomats were still working on a “business-as-usual” schedule. “They have been repeating what they have been doing during the last 20 years. We don’t have time to waste.” –Ewa Krukowska and Alex Nussbaum, Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
In Why Are We Waiting? (a follow-up to his well known Review of 2006), Nicholas Stern assembles scientific, moral and economic arguments that rapid and radical reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, and wonders why progress is so slow. Stern’s book is not reliable on either science or policy. In Chapter 4 Stern tells us that current economic models of climate impacts are not alarming enough. But in the end, the book’s main weakness is its failure to answer the question ‘Why Are We Waiting?’ –Ruth Dixon, My Garden Pond blog, 1 September 2015
1) Denmark Readies U-Turn on Ambitious Climate Targets
Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
Denmark’s widening budget deficit is forcing its policy makers to take some hard decisions in the very area where they are considered global role models: the fight against climate change.
Denmark’s Liberal government is to reverse ambitious CO2 emission targets introduced by the previous administration. It will also drop plans to phase out coal-fired power plants and become fossil-fuel free by 2050, according to leaked documents first reported by newspaper Information.
The news about Denmark’s cost-cutting measures, which also include a reduction in green funding initiatives worth 340 million kroner ($51.5 million) through 2019, came on the same day on which U.S. President Barack Obama issued a global appeal for urgent action in the buildup to a United Nations summit in Paris in December.
Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said growing pressure on the country’s public finances means the government needs to prioritize.
“There are no areas” of the budget “that won’t be subject to a critical audit,” he told Bloomberg in an interview at his office in Copenhagen.
Energy Targets
Denmark was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the European Union’s 2020 climate and energy targets and is home to the world’s biggest wind turbine maker, Vestas Wind Systems A/S. The EU Environment Agency is based in Copenhagen.
EU member states have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from their 1990 levels by 2020. The previous Danish government had vowed to reduce them by 40 percent over the same period.
Frederiksen said the “microscopic adjustment” now being considered would still make Denmark a champion of environmentalism and dismissed criticisms from Christian Ege Joergensen of Denmark’s Ecological Council, a pressure group, who had told Information he was “horrified” by the change of tack.
2) UK Announces More Green Cuts; DECC Plays Down Merger Rumour
Financial Times, 3 September 2015
Jim Pickard and Pilita Clark
A subsidy for green heating systems worth more than £400m a year is set to be pruned in the autumn spending review as ministers seek to rein back spending at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Decc is playing down a rumour that it could be merged into another ministry.
Energy ministers have drawn up cuts to the Renewable Heat Incentive , a scheme designed to encourage a shift to low-carbon heating systems.
The Decc submission to the Treasury for the autumn spending review will also feature heavy job cuts; the department’s headcount rose by 35 per cent under the coalition even as other ministries saw net staff cuts.
Officials have also proposed earmarking some of the money Decc gives to the International Climate Fund — amounting to £335m in 2015 — and instead taking it from other areas, such as the ringfenced international development department.
Meanwhile, Decc is playing down a rumour that it could be merged into another ministry, the business department, for example, to cut costs. “I’d strongly, strongly steer you away from that,” said one insider.
Big cuts to the RHI would be disastrous for a sector supporting 32,000 jobs and which has installed thousands of green heating systems across the country, said the Renewable Energy Association, a trade group.
“It would be a catastrophe for the industry if the government chooses to cut it,” said Frank Aaskov, a policy analyst at the association, explaining the main point of the scheme was to encourage a stable supply chain and reduce costs so the sector could eventually survive without government aid. […]
A Decc spokesman said the department’s priority was to keep bills as low as possible, while cutting emissions in a cost-effective way.
“Departmental spending will be set out in the spending review this autumn and any estimates before this is published are pure speculation,” he said.
see also Peiser & Mahoney: It’s the right climate to scrap the Department of Energy and Climate Change
3) Germany’s Green Energy Revolution Fails Its Climate Goal
Die Welt, 3 September 2015
Daniel Wetzel
More than one million solar energy projects and 25,000 wind turbines are obviously not enough: Despite Germany’s green energy revolution, the federal government’s climate targets cannot be achieved. This is the result of the most recent update of the so-called Energiewende-Index by consulting firm McKinsey.
Since 2012 a group of experts around McKinsey director Thomas Vahlenkamp has been assessing every six months whether the federal government’s goal of its self-imposed targets of its energy and climate policy are achieved. Die Welt has obtained the latest score: the picture brightens only in some secondary objectives.
The decisive climate policy goal of the Energiewende, however, cannot be achieved: the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 is “unrealistic”, says the report. Any improvement is not in sight either, the authors conclude: “The prospects for a turnaround by 2020 are permanently bad.”
Setback for the federal government
For the federal government, the new assessment is embarrassing: Recently the government announced additional measures that would help achieve the 40% target. A “National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency” was one of them. In addition, it announced a shift from around the clock lignite-fired power generation to a coal reserve capacity. None of these measures is likely to achieve its goal.
“Additional savings of 181 megatons of CO2 are still needed,” the McKinsey report concludes: “In order to achieve the 2020 target, the average annual CO2 reduction rate would have to approximately quadrupled from now on compared to the period 2000-2014.”
4) Dutch Government Appeals Against CO2 Emissions Ruling
Politico, 1 September 2015
Kalina Oroschakov
The Dutch government said Tuesday it plans to appeal against a court decision which ordered it to slash emissions, arguing the verdict could set a precedent for courts to interfere with government policy.
In a June 24 ruling, a court in The Hague ordered the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, saying that the more modest 17 percent cuts that it was expected to achieve by that year were not enough to combat global warming.
Wilma Mansveld, the Dutch environment minister, sent a letter to the Dutch parliament announcing the cabinet would appeal against the ruling, arguing that the verdict constrains the state’s ability to make decisions by balancing competing interests.
“For the very first time in Holland, a judge has given a ruling on a policy implemented by the government, passed by a parliamentary majority,” said Annelou van Egmond, spokeswoman for the environment ministry. “What is very important to us, is get the verdict of a higher court of law to see if this was a one-off or if this is going to be the approach.”
The danger for the government is that if the verdict stands then courts could end up tying its hands on a host of other issues.
“There are a great many treaties that countries partake in, that say there’s an ambition to do something,” said van Egmond, pointing to agreements under the Internal Labor Organization or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “If these treaties aren’t just considered a goal but a legal limit that’s quite a change.”
5) Climate Negotiators ‘Frustrated’ Over Snail’s Pace
AFP, 2 September 2015
Diplomats tasked with forging a climate rescue pact expressed frustration Wednesday over the lagging progress, with only seven negotiating days left until a Paris conference which must seal the deal.
Just past the midway mark of a five-day meeting in Bonn to whittle away at the draft text, negotiators gathered to take stock.
“I think we are all equally frustrated at the pace of the negotiations currently,” Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, who speaks for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told AFP.
Instead of rolling up sleeves and reworking the text, still over 80 pages long and littered with contradictory proposals, the Bonn session had seen “conceptual discussions, going around in circles,” he said.
“We need to shift gears a little bit. We are still in the first gear… we may get stuck.” […]
There are only two days of negotiating time left this week, and another five scheduled in Bonn in October, ahead of the highly-anticipated November 30-December 11 conference in Paris.
Delegates warned the joint chairmen of the negotiations on Wednesday that time was fast running out.
“We have no more than seven days to deliver what the whole world expects us to deliver,” noted a delegate from Tanzania.
Many developing countries have insisted that the negotiations shift to focusing on the text itself, so as to produce a clearer and more concise version for the October round of talks.
“We are not making progress and I think we need to emphasise this,” said Samuel Adejuwon of Nigeria, who bemoaned that the talks — so close to the finish line — were still focused on the “conceptual framework”.
6) Eleventh Hour Panic: UN Summons Leaders To Closed-Door Climate Meeting
Bloomberg, 1 September 2015
Ewa Krukowska and Alex Nussbaum
Frustrated by slow progress in global climate talks, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to invite around 40 world leaders including President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a closed- door meeting next month.
The meeting will take place in New York on September 27, a day ahead of the UN general assembly, said three people with knowledge of the matter. Ban also plans to invite French President Francois Hollande, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, as well as Chinese leaders, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorised to speak to the media.
More than 190 nations are working to reach an agreement in Paris this December to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and avert the worst effects of global warming.
While Obama, Modi and other world leaders have declared support for the goal, negotiations are moving slowly and Ban has complained repeatedly about the slow pace of the talks. Deep divides remain about the legal structure of the agreement, how to provide financial help to poorer countries and other issues.
“The idea of the heads-of-state working meeting on climate change at the end of September is to give a political push to the negotiations in order to succeed in Paris,” said Alexis Lamek, deputy permanent representative at the French mission to the UN. “Leaders will exchange ideas on the level of ambition and the means to reach that goal.”
France is helping to organize the closed-door meeting. It’s been in the works for months and comes as time is running short for what participants hope will be an historic deal. Meanwhile, diplomats gathered in Bonn Monday for the penultimate round of talks.
Countries accounting for more than two-thirds of heat- trapping pollution have filed plans with the UN on how they expect to control greenhouse gases. The 28-nation European Union pledged to cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels. The U.S. wants to lower pollution by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 from 2005, and China promised to peak its emissions, the world’s highest, by around 2030.
But major players including India, Indonesia and Brazil still haven’t submitted their climate plans, and the draft text for the Paris agreement remains an 88-page grab bag of conflicting options that negotiators still must sort out. At a news conference in Paris last week, Ban urged them to pick up the pace.
“We have only less than a hundred days for final negotiations,” Ban said, complaining that diplomats were still working on a “business-as-usual” schedule.
“They have been repeating what they have been doing during the last 20 years. We don’t have time to waste.”
Some of the top issues on the agenda of the New York climate meeting will be how to get countries to increase the level of emissions cuts they’re willing to make and how often countries should be required to update their pledges after the agreement takes effect in 2020, according to one of the people familiar with the plans.
Formal invitations still haven’t been sent out, and it’s unclear who will attend, the person said.
7) And Finally: Why Are We Waiting? Because Nobody Is Listening To Nick Stern
My Garden Pond blog, 1 September 2015
Ruth Dixon
Nicholas Stern’s book is not reliable on either science or policy. In the end, the book’s main weakness is its failure to answer the question ‘Why Are We Waiting?’
Earlier this year I was invited to review Nicholas Stern’s new book, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change (MIT Press, 2015), for the Journal of Economic Psychology.
The published version of my book review can be viewed for free until mid-October 2015, and a manuscript version is here.
In Why Are We Waiting? (a follow-up to his well known Review of 2006), Nicholas Stern assembles scientific, moral and economic arguments that rapid and radical reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures, and wonders why progress is so slow.
In my review, as I summarise in this post, I criticise Stern’s book for selective use of evidence, over-optimism regarding the co-benefits of climate policy (for instance for public health), and no discussion of the risks of climate policy (as opposed to the risks of climate change itself).
Stern’s book is not reliable on either science or policy. For example, there is no evidence that methane emissions from permafrost are ‘accelerating’ (p.12), and ‘wet-bulb’ temperature is below ‘dry-bulb’ temperature (and not above, as stated on p.137). And on policy solutions, small-scale solar photovoltaic systems will not readily replace biomass for cooking as Stern implies on p.79. I found many examples of such questionable assertions, some of which I discuss in my review, and which I plan to list in more detail in the future.
I hoped for a clear exposition of the economic costs and benefits of CO2 mitigation, but Stern simply asserts that the costs will be far less than the benefits, telling us: “I have not tried to redo the calculation [in the 2006 Review]… But the arguments given thus far in this book suggest the relative-cost argument would tilt still more strongly in favour of action now than [in 2006]” (pp.39-40). In Chapter 4 Stern tells us that current economic models of climate impacts are not alarming enough.
But in the end, the book’s main weakness is its failure to answer the question ‘Why Are We Waiting?’
