Described as “the law of laws,” it is intended to create sweeping changes to climate policy in all of its member nations and be Europe’s contribution to limiting global temperature increases to no more than 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit) to avoid what is increasingly being seen as a catastrophic future for humanity and the planet.
The law requires the EU to establish an independent body of scientific experts to advise on climate policies and to establish greenhouse gas budgets for all member states. This is needed immediately since current EU policies were set to meet the previous 40% emissions reduction target by 2030.
Following up on the June announcement has come new mitigation and adaptation guidelines in the form of technical guidance for climate-proofing infrastructure projects which was published yesterday. The new 100-page guideline covers EU-funded projects planned for the next six years.
Technical guidance is aimed at climate proofing. What is that? In the publication’s executive summary, it states, “Climate proofing is a process that integrates climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into the development of infrastructure projects. It enables European institutional and private investors to make informed decisions on projects that qualify as compatible with the Paris Agreement.”
What kind of infrastructure are we talking about? New builds including buildings, roads, water and wastewater, network infrastructure and more. All projects reviewed and considered for funding will be seen through a climate-resilient development lens. Guidance on infrastructure projects planned to have lifespans beyond 2050 also includes operational, maintenance, and decommissioning to ensure climate neutrality.
What I found interesting is the inclusion of two principles, one of which appears to have been adopted from the recent meeting of Nobel laureates that I virtually attended and wrote about in May. These principles are:
The European Climate Law described at the beginning of this posting is intended to bind all member states to achieve the 55% emission reduction target by 2030. The EU’s lending and funding bodies following the technical guidance include:
In addition, the EU expects the private sector within its jurisdiction to follow the same guidance when making infrastructure investments.
Technical guidance looks at builds from a climate-proofing perspective including project cycle management, environmental impact assessments, and strategic environmental assessments. Two principled pillars are neutrality and resilience. Climate neutrality focuses on projects from a mitigation perspective. Climate resilience looks at projects from an adaptation perspective. The illustration below provides a broad outline of what these two principles entail.
Today much of Europe’s infrastructure was designed and built years ago. Although the guidance isn’t meant to govern this legacy, it nevertheless will influence the operational, maintenance and decommissioning of such assets.
Climate vulnerability and risk will require every infrastructure project to go through a stress test looking at each from the perspective of the goals laid out under the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. And with COP26 in November in Glasgow, Scotland, and a United Nations’ climate change update due before that meeting, technical guidelines may further be enhanced.
]]>Its principles include:
The Alliance’s current membership includes 14 U.S. states, and Puerto Rico, and contains 36% of all Americans, produces $7 trillion in GDP, and has generated 1.3 million in clean energy jobs. Collectively, Alliance members have reduced GHG emissions by 15% between 2005 and 2015. They have achieved this without negatively impacting their economies and have actually outperformed non-members over the ten-year period. And by 2025, based on current policies, they project a combined 24-29% reduction in GHGs which meets the U.S. target commitments made in Paris.
Current membership includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
The Alliance is launching cross-state collaboration to accelerate clean energy deployment and transform the U.S. economy within their jurisdictions to tackle climate change through developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. The group may soon be joined by other states that have expressed support for the Paris Climate Agreement. These include Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, and Ohio.
Best summed up as to why all of these jurisdictions have committed to Paris, I quote from one of the governors, Jay Inslee of Washington:
“Those of us who understand the science and feel the urgency of protecting our children’s air and water are as united as ever in confronting one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime.”
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India is not capping its carbon emissions. Instead it is playing the same game that Australia and Canada have to date, talking about emission intensity reductions per unit of gross domestic production. In India this target is 35% less than 2005 levels by 2030. At the same time India is pledging to meet a 40% renewable energy target by 2030.
India is the last major government to announce targeted reductions prior to the COP2015 meetings being held in Paris in December. But intensity reductions are really meaningless when you take into consideration projections for India’s future economic growth. That’s because India is expected to become the world’s third largest economy and the world’s most populous country by 2030. Currently the country stands eighth.
So if your economy is growing at a 7.2% clip with increasing gross domestic production then all you are doing through intensity reductions is offsetting that growth, or in terms of carbon emissions, staying in exactly the same place.
It should be noted that the plan is short on policy and the setting of target intensity reductions for specific segments of the Indian economy. A senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, Navroz Dubash, describes the carbon intensity goal as short on details and “conservative at best.” Dubash expresses uncertainty about whether India will get locked-in “into a high-carbon growth pathway.”
As a Canadian living under a Conservative government these past few years that also measures carbon intensity rather than overall emission reductions, it is obvious that the Indian plan is flawed. Canada’s net emissions have hardly moved downward since 2005 even though the government in its latest report claims a 29% intensity reduction. At Copenhagen Canada had committed to a 17% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 to 2020. But in fact as recent as two years ago greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in Canada, up 1.5% in 2013 and 4% between 2009 and 2013, or when projected to 2020, 20% above Canada’s Copenhagen commitment.
It sounds like India may commit the same folly as my country by measuring the wrong thing.
The utility, Genesis Energy, made the announcement on August 6th with December 2018 as the end date. Lower-cost renewable power generation from wind and geothermal investments along with energy conservation practices has made this decision possible.
For New Zealand the closure yields overall CO2 emission reductions moving the country closer to a 90% renewable energy generation goal. The two plants contributed 5% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The two plants can also use natural gas and will continue to produce 450 Megawatts of power between the two.
New Zealand announced in July that its post-2020 climate change target is a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. Before 2020 the country had committed to a 5% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020. The 2030 target will be 11% below 1990 levels.
How would a 5% CO2 reduction translate if it were to happen in the United States? In 2013 the U.S. emitted 6.673 billion tons of CO2 from all industry sources. A decrease of 5% would equal 333.6 million tons. That’s equivalent to 65% of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions in the same year.
The New Zealand announcement in the context of overall global carbon reduction is a blip. The one trillion tons limit which I have described in a previous posting as too much will hardly be dented by two coal-fired power plants closing their doors.
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