GWPF Newsletter: German Climate Law Put Off As Government Splits Deepen

Angela Merkel Points To Russia For Sudden Interest Of European Youth In Climate Issues

In this newsletter:

1) German Climate Law Put Off As Government Splits Deepen
Clean Energy Wire, 19 February 2019
 
2) Merkel Points To Russia For Sudden Interest Of European Youth In Climate Issues
Daily Sabah, 16 February 2019

 
3) Is Russia Behind Climate Change Protests In EU? ‘Definitely Yes’, Says Ukraine
EurActiv, 18 February 2019
 
4) EU Commission Study Reveals International Competitive Disadvantage Of Climate Policies
GWPF Energy, 19 February 2019
 
5) Green Madness: Australian Households’ $2bn Hit For Solar Subsidies
The Australian, 19 February 2019
 
6) More Green Madness: Dutch Govt Admits It Was Wrong On Huge Energy Bill Hikes
Dutch News, 19 February 2019
 
7) Radical Idiots: French Intellectuals Braced For The End Of The World
The Times, 14 February 2019

Full details:

1) German Climate Law Put Off As Government Splits Deepen
Clean Energy Wire, 19 February 2019

A dispute over what is supposed to be its most important climate policy is adding to the woes of Germany’s governing coalition.



Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and their centre-left coalition partner SPD are split over the basic design of the planned Climate Action Law, due this year.

Conservatives are rejecting a price on carbon emissions and accuse the SPD-led environment ministry of overreaching as it proposes to make individual departments responsible for the emission cuts in the respective sectors.

The spat threatens to stall progress on the recommendations from Germany’s coal exit commission and further climate action in the transport and buildings sector. Meanwhile, student school strikes are gaining support, putting public pressure on the government to raise its game in climate policy.

The German government coalition could be headed for a deep row over its Climate Action Law, which is intended to get the country back on track toward meeting its emissions targets, according to several German media reports. Plans by SPD environment minister Svenja Schulze to roll out a framework for the law have been put on hold after protests from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Handelsblatt write.

Schulze wants to hold other ministries financially accountable for failing to abide by EU emissions targets. She also wants her environment ministry to be able to demand improvements in policymaking on transport, heating, agriculture and other areas seen as critical for meeting Germany’s climate targets should the other departments fail to deliver. But Schulze’s plans have been met with staunch resistance from the conservative alliance.

The CDU’s environmental policy spokesperson, Marie-Luise Dött, told newspaper Tagesspiegel that the conservatives would not accept that much power for Schulze’s environment ministry. “Under a regime of shared responsibility, it’s not possible that one ministry fills a dominating position,” Dött said. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, conservative politicians say the planned law “is not dead but put on hold” for now.

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2) Merkel Points To Russia For Sudden Interest Of European Youth In Climate Issues
Daily Sabah, 16 February 2019

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that Europe is falling behind in AI and digitalization and faces difficulties in defending itself against public campaigns promoted with foreign intervention in a veiled criticism targeted at Russia.

"In Germany children are now protesting for climate protection, which is important, but that all children suddenly think of climate change without foreign interference is difficult to imagine," said Merkel during a Q&A session of the Munich Security Conference.

"It's very easy to start such campaigns and there are other campaigns and groups which I don't want to mention. We must defend ourselves against those together, and we can't do that well enough yet," she said.

Merkel said she believes AI and digitalization should not be underestimated even if its results are "not yet seen."

"Europe has enemies and Russia's hybrid digital warfare can be felt daily across European countries," Merkel said.

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3) Is Russia Behind Climate Change Protests In EU? ‘Definitely Yes’, Says Ukraine
EurActiv, 18 February 2019

Ukraine is sure that Russia actively supports the recent protests in EU countries against global warming, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told a group of Brussels journalists on Monday (18 February).

Klimkin, in Brussels as EU foreign ministers meet to discuss several hotbeds of tension, including Ukraine, was asked if he agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who mentioned the protests after talking about hybrid warfare from Russia.

In Paris, it is French students rather than secondary school pupils who are mobilising for the youth climate march, a movement which is slowly gaining momentum in France. EURACTIV France reports.

In recent weeks, secondary school pupils from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK have recently been mobilising, demanding governments to take more serious decisions to stop global warming.

At the Munich Security conference, Merkel expressed doubts that German children, after years, had suddenly hit on the idea without outside influence.

In Belgium, Joke Schauvliege, a climate minister in Flanders, was forced to resign after saying she had information from the intelligence services that the schoolchildren protests were directed by an unnamed foreign power. Her statements caused public outrage. The Belgian state security services denied having reported anything about this to Schauvliege, and she had no other choice than to resign.

Asked about the climate change protests in Europe and the allegations of foreign interference, Klimkin was adamant that Russia was involved, and that Moscow’s attempts at meddling were “mind-boggling”.

“It’s a point of exchange with all our partners. Russia has been supporting stirring up trouble around Europe because Russia’s goal is to weaken up the democratic institutions and to weaken the EU as such. Climate change protests: definitely yes. Different pseudo-environmental organisations: look at Italy, where they are trying to disrupt the future gas pipelines”, he said.

He was referring to the protests of local authorities in Puglia against the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), designed to bring gas from Azerbaijan to the peninsula.

In the last five years since the Maidan revolution in the former Soviet republic, Ukraine itself has become the playground of all sorts of hybrid warfare and its leaders have become specialists in the matter, eager to share their experience with EU counterparts.

Italy gave the green light for the construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), one of the core projects of the Southern Gas Corridor. But activists in the Puglia region protested and asked that the pipe be moved further north.

Klimkin explained Russia’s motivation to instigate protests against climate change in the following terms:

“The Russians are simply crazy about selling more gas to Europe. […] To shift, to reshuffle climate change movements is one of the key Russian priorities, to explain that ‘more gas is fine, coal is bad, but Russian gas is good, Russian gas is reliable. Let’s engage in the same political pattern like we had in the 1970’s, a kind of new Ostpolitik.’ And it’s not only in Germany, it’s also in Italy, it’s everywhere,” Klimkin said,

He described Russia’s efforts to interfere on several levels: “It’s about fake NGOs, it’s about trying to buy journalists, it’s about trying to buy media, it’s about meddling in the political class. Not the same scope as in Ukraine, but it’s so visible”.
 
4) EU Commission Study Reveals International Competitive Disadvantage Of Climate Policies
GWPF Energy, 19 February 2019
Dr John Constable, GWPF Energy Editor

EU 28 household electricity prices are now more than double those in the G20, while industrial  electricity prices are now nearly 50% higher.

The third release of the EU Commission’s periodic study of global electricity and gas prices for the first time compares the EU 28 with the whole of the G20 for the period 2008 to 2016. EU 28 household electricity prices are now more than double those in the G20, while industrial  electricity prices are now nearly 50% higher. The only G20 states with higher industrial electricity prices are those with heavy commitments to renewables.

Jim Ratcliffe, the remarkable entrepreneur who has taken neglected elements of Britain’s chemical’s sector, once regarded as a “sunset industry”, and produced Ineos, a vigorous multi-billion pound operation that has made him the UK’s richest man, has just passed authoritative sentence on the European Union’s general economic policy in an open letter of the 11 February to Mr Juncker the Commission President:

“Nobody but nobody in my business seriously invests in Europe. […] Europe is no longer competitive. It has the world’s most expensive energy and labour laws that are uninviting for employers.”

Some might discount this remark given the article a few days later in the Sunday Times (17.02.19), rehashing and warming over old news from August 2018 to the effect that Mr Ratcliffe is, apparently, locating his own tax affairs just outside the EU, in Monaco.

Other readers, with more experience of the tides in the affairs of newspapers, will be inclined to think that if Mr Ratcliffe, a well-known supporter of Brexit, is worth this sort of non-coincidental criticism he might actually be on to something.

Indeed, it is not necessary to look far for evidence that Mr Ratcliffe’s remarks on energy find an echo even within Brussels itself. Indeed, as recently as January this year, the Directorate-General for Energy in the European Commission published a 750 page attempt to assess the impacts of its energy and climate policies: Study on energy prices, costs and subsidies and their impact on industry and households.

This analysis has been under-reported, perhaps because it is the third edition of a work previously released in 2014 and 2016 and so little new was expected in the 2019 update. However, this version significantly extends the range of the study, now comparing the EU 28 to the whole of the G20, adding more detail on matters relating to competitiveness, sections on the consequences of price regulation, and detailed attempts at a “new econometric analysis of the impact of subsidies on energy prices and costs” (p. 15).

There is much to quarrel with here, and some substantive and indeed significant errors (see for example Table 6-15 where the UK’s subsidies to renewables in 2016 are reported as €1.57 billion, whereas the correct figure is closer to €7 billion). But disagreements and mistakes aside, this is not a minor or superficial study and anyone deeply interested in the subject will wish to turn its pages at least once.

A selection from its many charts will show what it has to offer, as well as illustrating the points that Mr Ratcliffe made in his letter and explaining why he has supported Brexit in principle. This pair of charts, from the Executive Summary, presents at one glance the study’s main findings:

Figure 1. EU28 weighted average electricity and natural gas prices compared to G20 weighted (by trade with EU) average prices, 2017 €/MWh. Source: Trinomics for DG Energy, Study on energy prices, costs and subsidies and their impact on industry and households(2019), 17.

The authors believe that by assembling “multiple international, EU, national and commercial sources” they have produced “one of the most comprehensive and comparable sets of international price data current available” (p. 16). These are, then, no mere snapshots, but a far-reaching attempt to get to grips with a very extensive body of information, and the findings are clearly as important they are stark and unambiguous.

While wholesale prices of gas and electricity in the EU28 and the G20 are broadly comparable both in magnitude and in trend (falling in both cases), EU28 retail prices are significantly higher and in the case of electricity are not only much higher but have also exhibited until very recently a clear rising trend.

Specifically, since 2008, EU28 household electricity prices have been well over and are now more than double those in the G20. This has obvious and very serious consequences for the cost of labour. No wonder the EU needs remedial social policies.

Industrial electricity prices in the EU28 are now nearly 50% higher than those in the G20, and, bizarrely, are actually higher than domestic retail electricity prices in the G20. No factory closure in the EU, Honda in Swindon say, no manufacturing migration, Dyson to Singapore for example, should surprise anyone.

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5) Green Madness: Australian Households’ $2bn Hit For Solar Subsidies
The Australian, 19 February 2019

Households will pay nearly $2 billion for rooftop solar installation subsidies this year, costing every home nearly $200 and threatening to derail Scott Morrison’s pledge to cut power bills.



The cost of the federal Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) and state-based rebates combined is forecast to rise by 45 per cent from $1.2bn last year to $1.74bn this year.

Consumers are flocking to solar power, enticed by cheaper costs and rebates either under way or pledged in Victoria, South Australia and NSW.

Analysis by renewables trader Demand Manager reveals the annual impost for every household for the subsidy is forecast to soar from $134 last year to $195 this year. The cost of the subsidy is added to all electricity bills.

The subsidy hike — on top of already high electricity prices — will intensify pressure on the government to scrap the scheme as it battles to deliver on tariff cuts for consumers ahead of a federal election due in May. The subsidy program is currently scheduled to be phased out by 2030.

Demand Manager owner Jeffery Bye said: “If left unchecked, electricity consumers will be hit with an increase of between $360 million and $540m in the cost of the SRES starting January 1, 2019. Far from subsidies for renewable energy decreasing and Mr (Angus) Taylor being the ‘minister for getting electricity prices down’, it would appear the solar subsidy cost item on electricity bills will be increasing markedly in 2019.”

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6) More Green Madness: Dutch Govt Admits It Was Wrong On Huge Energy Bill Hikes
Dutch News, 19 February 2019

Holland’s national statistics agency said the average household energy bill would go up by €334 this year, more than double the earlier government estimate.

The cabinet has admitted it used old figures when calculating the impact of energy tax hikes and underestimated the impact on families.

On Monday, the national statistics agency CBS said the average household energy bill would go up by some €334 this year, more than double the earlier government estimate of €150.

However, economic affairs ministry officials now say they used statistics on energy consumption from 2017, which underestimated the amount of gas and electricity households actually use, much to the fury of MPs.

‘This is undermining trust in the government,’ Labour MP William Moorlag said. ‘It would appear that spending power estimates are based on mathematical models designed by magician Hans Klok.’

The ministry spokesman told the AD that Dutch environmental assessment agency staff were too busy working on plans to tackle climate change to come up with specific estimates last year. In addition, the agency and the CBS use different definitions of what constitutes the average household, the spokesman said.

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7) Radical Idiots: French Intellectuals Braced For The End Of The World
The Times, 14 February 2019

Decades after French philosophers stopped fretting over existence, the thinking classes have embraced a new fad: the end of the world.

Cited by converts from President Macron to pop singers and yellow-vest protesters, the doctrine of imminent apocalypse goes under the unlikely franglais name la collapsologie.

State officials have attended a new university master’s course in the Paris outskirts on the “risk of collapse and adapting to it”, while Facebook is awash with groups, including a popular one called: “Adoptez un collapso: let’s meet before the end of the world.”

La collapsologie, which Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, calls a personal obsession, is based on the assumption that climate change, declining resources and the extinction of species is driving the world to its destruction far more quickly than we imagine.

Pablo Servigne, an agronomist who coined the term collapsologie in his 2015 bestseller Comment tout peut s’effondrer, or How Everything Can Collapse, believes it will happen as early as 2030. His account of fatally converging forces — environmental damage, global capitalism and political upheaval — appealed to France’s love of universal theories, preferably inspired by the left.

The book, which has spawned a clutch of copycat collapse books, was itself inspired by the American author and academic Jared Diamond’s 2005 US bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which is often quoted by the French prime minister as the government battles the yellow-vest insurrection over green taxes.

“If you don’t take the right decisions, there comes a moment when society collapses literally. It disappears,” Mr Philippe, 48, who is married with three children, said. “It’s an obsessive question. It gnaws at me more than people imagine.”

Nicolas Hulot, who was the environment minister and most popular member of the government, resigned in August accusing Mr Macron of failing to do enough to halt the collapse. The president, who sees climate disaster as his biggest challenge, stirred yellow-vest anger in November when he lectured them that “the end of the world” was just as important as “the end of the month”, which they worry about.

Stéphane Linou, the collapsologist who created the pioneering course at Cergy-Pontoise University, said that the present revolt by the rural working poor was a “first alert” of the upheaval to come.

“We don’t know if the trigger will be a large-scale social crisis or the end of oil . . . but, with the domino effect, the world as we know it will collapse,” he said in Le Parisien yesterday.

Les collapsologistes are strongly concentrated among left-leaning urban dwellers with at least one university degree, a survey showed.

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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.