This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/international/european-union-lowers-ambitions-on-renewable-energy.html

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
European Union Lowers Its Ambitions on Renewable Energy European Union Proposes Easing of Climate Rules
(about 11 hours later)
LONDON — Tempering its environmental ambitions in the face of harsh economic realities, the European Union on Wednesday proposed an end to binding national targets for renewable energy production while aiming for an overall cut of 40 percent in Europe’s carbon emissions by 2030. LONDON — For years, Europe has tried to set the global standard for climate-change regulation, creating tough rules on emissions, mandating more use of renewable energy sources and arguably sacrificing some economic growth in the name of saving the planet.
Under the plans, outlined after tough internal negotiations, country-by country targets for renewable energy would be replaced by an overall objective for Europe, which would aim to increase the proportion of its energy provided by renewables to 27 percent. But now even Europe seems to be hitting its environmentalist limits.
The proposals, launched by the European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation bloc, highlight the extent to which Europe’s deep economic crisis has forced it to scale back its aspirations to lead the fight against global warming. High energy costs, declining industrial competitiveness and a recognition that the economy is unlikely to rebound strongly any time soon are leading policy makers to begin easing up in their drive for more aggressive climate regulation.
The Commission also decided against proposing laws on environmental damage and safety during the extraction of shale gas by a controversial drilling process known as fracking. It opted instead for a series of minimum principles that it said it would monitor. On Wednesday, the European Union proposed an end to binding national targets for renewable energy production after 2020. Instead, it substituted an overall European goal likely to be much harder to enforce.
The European Union last outlined targets in 2007 and, after that initiative, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, described the bloc’s climate change ambitions as a fundamental test of Europe’s “capacity to lead.” It also decided against proposing laws on environmental damage and safety during the extraction of shale gas by a controversial drilling process known as fracking. It opted instead for a series of minimum principles it said it would monitor.
Six years, a financial crisis and several disappointing attempts at international consensus later, the tone in Brussels was more one of relief than euphoria that a proposal had been agreed upon. Europe pressed ahead on other fronts, aiming for a cut of 40 percent in Europe’s carbon emissions by 2030, double the current target of 20 percent by 2020. Officials said the new proposals were not evidence of diminished commitment to environmental discipline but reflected the complicated reality of bringing the 28 countries of the European Union together behind a policy.
Mr. Barroso told a news conference that Europe’s leadership on climate change remained “beyond doubt” but added that the targets were “ambitious and affordable” and stressed that they were “realistic.” The proposals need the agreement of national governments and the European Parliament to become binding. “It will require a lot from Europe,” said Connie Hedegaard, European commissioner for climate action. “If all other big economies followed our example the world would be a better place.”
“In spite of all those arguing that nothing ambitious would come out of the Commission today, we did it,” Connie Hedegaard, the commissioner for climate action, said in a statement. But the proposals were seen as a substantial backtrack by environmental groups, and evidence that economic factors were starting to influence the climate debate in ways they previously had not in Europe.
The trade-off for backing away from binding targets for renewable energy was a relatively ambitious overall objective for carbon emissions reduction that would increase from 20 percent in 2020 to around 40 percent in 2030, relative to 1990 levels. Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, described the proposals as “totally inadequate” and “off the radar of what climate science tells us to do in Europe to avoid climate catastrophe.”
Mr. Barroso said that several nations had been pressing for a lower target and that “no capital was proposing more than 40 percent.” He also added that, even if Europe were to commit itself to zero emissions, that would not solve global problems without more action from other big economies. Wednesday’s proposals came from the European Commission, the Brussels-based executive arm of the 28-nation bloc, and would next require approval by the group’s member states and the European Parliament.
Ms. Hedegaard defended the 40 percent target from criticism from environmental groups that were pressing for a bigger number. “It will require a lot from Europe,” she said. “If all other big economies followed our example the world would be a better place.” The energy and climate debate, which is playing out across Europe, reflects similar trade-offs being made around the world on mending economic problems today or addressing the environmental problems of tomorrow.
Those statements underline the uncomfortable position Europe has been in since it tried to seize the initiative on climate change in 2007 when it outlined its last set of targets, for 2020. “The European Union said it wanted to lead globally but it quickly discovered that other countries were not willing to engage in a race to the top,” said Andrew Jordan, a professor at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, part of the University of East Anglia. The political and policy response to climate change has failed to keep pace with increasingly dire warnings from scientists about the cascading effects of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants in the atmosphere.
“It is now in the awkward position, having stepped forward, of delivering more ambitious targets to demonstrate its determination to keep leading.” What progress has been made has come largely from cost efficiencies adopted by businesses and consumers primarily for financial reasons — the switch from coal to cheaper natural gas for electricity generation in the United States, for example, and the cumulative effect of years of increasing efficiency in buildings, vehicles, appliances and manufacturing around the globe.
To get European governments to sign up to those ambitions, the new strategy is to give national capitals much more freedom over how they fight climate change. In Britain, despite public protests, the government is pressing ahead on proposals for fracking, which has helped the United States drive down its energy costs. Germany’s plans to shift away from nuclear power by 2022 and to encourage development of alternative sources are running into complications including higher energy costs for industry and consumers.
European nations would still agree to formulate national plans for individual targets for CO2 emission cuts, but they would not be required to hit specific objectives for renewable energy production. Instead they would have the flexibility to decide on their own path toward a lower carbon economy. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, defended the new proposals as a hard-fought compromise and proof that it “is possible to make a marriage between industry and climate action.”
The target for the European Union as a whole for renewable energy would increase from 20 percent by 2020 to 27 percent by 2030. How the bloc’s nations would agree on burden-sharing remains unclear, though some form of internal bargaining seems likely. He said the measures showed that Europe was still playing a global leadership role in reducing carbon emissions.
“The details of the framework will now have to be agreed, but the direction for Europe has been set,” Ms. Hedegaard said. “If all other regions were equally ambitious about tackling climate change, the world would be in significantly better shape.” That drew a tart response from Friends of the Earth, which accused the commission of putting the immediate interests of industry ahead of Europe’s broader welfare.
The move to scrap mandatory national targets for renewable energy was welcomed by Britain, which was one of the nations that argued that the current system prevented the country reducing carbon emissions as cheaply as possible. “Barroso and his commissioners seem to have fallen for the old-think industry spin that there must be a trade-off between climate action and economic recovery,” Brook Riley, the group’s climate and energy campaigner, said in a statement. “This position completely ignores the huge financial cost of dealing with the impacts of climate change and the 500 billion euros the E.U. is spending every year on oil and gas imports.”
“It makes no sense to impose artificial constraints on how individual countries meet emissions targets. We are determined to keep people’s energy bills as low as possible and that means having the flexibility to cut emissions in the most cost-effective way,” said a spokesman for the British Department of Energy and Climate Change who asked not to be named, in line with government policy. The British government, a frequent critic of what it sees as moves by the European Union that inhibit economic performance, welcomed the proposals. It singled out for praise the scrapping of national targets for renewable energy in favor of an overall goal of producing 27 percent of Europe’s energy from renewables by 2030, an approach that will leave countries battling among themselves over who should do more.
But the European Wind Energy Association, which promotes wind power, attacked the proposals. “The previously farsighted and ambitious European Commission is a shadow of its former self, hiding behind the U.K. and other backward-looking member states and lobbies,” its chief executive, Thomas Becker, said in a statement. “If you set rigid, inflexible targets, that is likely to result in greater costs,” said Edward Davey, Britain’s secretary of state for energy and climate change. “We believe our existing approach will enable us to meet these objectives without having to take more action, but we believe other countries will have to take more action.”
Energy policy has long been a cause of tension between the European Union’s biggest states, and Wednesday’s announcement comes against the backdrop of a shale gas revolution in the United States and fierce debates in Europe over the place of nuclear power, renewables and the Continent’s reserves of shale. Before Wednesday’s announcement, business groups lobbied hard against more stringent targets that they worried could endanger Europe’s still very feeble economic recovery and slow the job creation needed to bring down an overall unemployment rate of nearly 11 percent.
Officials and academics argue that a shift in thinking reflects the extent to which the economic and political environment has changed since 2007, when the bloc signed up to its last set of targets. Besides the 20 percent targets for cutting emissions and increasing consumption from renewables by 2020, they included a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency — all from 1990 levels. Europe has achieved most of the emissions goal, with estimates that it has reduced emissions over all by about 18 percent. In a letter sent to the European Commission this month, 14 executives at large companies called for “one single, realistic target” and warned that “the high-cost of noncompetitive technologies to decarbonise the power sector” will strain businesses already hit by Europe’s high energy prices, particularly for electricity, which costs twice what it does in the United States.
However, hopes that an integrated European energy market could be forged quickly have been dashed. Subsidies for renewable energy differ among European nations and a carbon emissions trading system has failed to have the impact that its architects had hoped for. Ms. Hedegaard on Wednesday acknowledged that Europe needed to bring down its energy prices but said that the shift to renewable sources played a “negligible” part in the problem. But she also took a swipe at what she suggested were unrealistic demands by environmental activists, noting that “we are trying to do something that is achievable, that is doable and practical for 28 governments to back.”
“The world has changed significantly since the climate and energy package went through in 2007-8,” said Andrew Jordan, a professor at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, part of the University of East Anglia. Greenpeace has called for a 55 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030, and activists argue that Europe could and should have gone further than the 40 percent carbon emissions proposal because the bloc is already well on track to meet existing objectives.
Environmental concerns have slipped down the agenda as the Continent’s economies struggle to create jobs and growth amid Europe’s worst economic crisis in decades. Simultaneously the scientific consensus that once prevailed over made-man climate change has faced greater challenge in Europe. In 2007 the European Union said it wanted to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent in 2020 and was even prepared to reduce them by 30 percent by the same date if other big economies also took significant action. It also set national targets for adopting renewable energy.
In addition, nations within the bloc have very different perspectives on energy. France sees nuclear power as an important source of energy while Germany aims to phase it out by 2022. Poland, meanwhile, is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. For several East European nations, independence from Russian gas supplies is of primary importance, while this factor is less pronounced in more western countries. According to the commission, total greenhouse gas emissions from the 28 members had by 2011 fallen to 16.9 percent below the 1990 level, and to 18 percent lower by 2012. That suggests that the 40 percent reduction target by 2030 should be attainable.
Still, the European Union wants to adopt a new strategy for the years after 2020 to help power generators plan investment in a sector where policy shifts take years. But the 2011 and 2012 reductions partly reflect the drop in industrial output in Europe after the financial crisis, which plunged almost all of the bloc’s nations into recession — something policy makers are desperate to reverse.
Despite several setbacks, the international climate change process is maintaining pressure on Europeans to produce a coherent strategy. Next year, international negotiators are due to meet in Paris to make another attempt to strike a global deal, and the European Union wants to start the debate now in time to have a common stance by next year. Europeans have also been disappointed that other big polluters have failed to follow the lead they set in 2007.
“The European Union said it wanted to lead globally, but it quickly discovered that other countries were not willing to engage in a race to the top,” said Andrew Jordan, a professor at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, part of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.