Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
member states.
9
A new competitiveness document agreed at the June 2013 Eur-
opean Council was seen as cutting across any ambitious 2050 climate change
agenda and heralding the pre-eminence of a
dynamic.
10
In March 2013 the Commission published a green paper to begin consultations
over a framework for energy and climate policies up to 2030. This hit the head-
lines by intimating that it might be preferable to have a binding target only for
emissions in 2030, not renewables or e
'
re-industrialisation
'
ciency.
11
Environmental organisations
consequently slammed what they saw as a decrease in ambition on the part of the
Commission.
12
The green paper acknowledged that by making its o
er of a 30 per
'
cent emissions target conditional on others
similar moves, the EU had not brought
forward new pledges from around the world, and that a post-2015 international
agreement remained highly uncertain.
13
Crucially, the EU has come to add more
conditions on its commitment to a new post-Kyoto deal.
14
Poland in particular has
blocked ambitious targets for 2050, arguing that these should be made conditional
on other powers
commitments.
Some member states, like the UK, have moved to the higher 30 per cent target,
in binding fashion. They argue that these moves should be Europeanised if the EU
as a whole is to retain credible climate leadership. The UK has been one of the
European states most committed to combating climate change but still needs to
double its rate of emission reductions to meet its long-term targets. Renewables
still make up only around 3 per cent of UK power, well short of the country
'
s
2020 target. Moreover, the UK lags behind other Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) states in low carbon research and develop-
ment which is at too limited a level to make any notable impact.
15
In autumn 2011
the British chancellor, George Osborne, caused waves when he declared that
henceforth the UK would seek to move no faster on green commitments than its
EU partners, in an e
'
ort to conserve jobs.
Respected expert Dieter Helm insists that the EU has only made progress on its
emissions targets by dint of the collapse of Soviet-era industries in Eastern Europe, a
switch from coal to gas and now the economic recession. Moreover, the EU has not
constructed the infrastructure for feeding signi
cant amounts of renewable energy
into the grid. Governments have focused on subsidies for renewables, but the
broader structure of the energy market has not changed, meaning that even current
levels of green electricity sit idle, unable to get into the grid.
16
Europe
'
sgridsimply
cannot absorb su
cient amounts of renewables-generated power to meet
the
EU
s March 2013 green paper recognised that
advances in renewables risk being undermined by the need for
'
s targets. Indeed, the Commission
'
'
massive investment
in transmission and distribution grids.
…
to accommodate renewable energy
'
.
17
ectively under-
cutting any prospect of a single market in green energy. No European government
Member states
'
di
erent forms of support for renewables are e
