U.S. cities failing to meet lofty climate goals
In this newsletter:
1) ‘Death sentence on nature’: European Parliament accused of killing Green Deal
The Independent, 22 October 2020
2) Current EU plans for farming subsidies won't achieve any CO2 emission cuts – NGO
Clean Energy Wire, 12 October 2020
3) U.S. cities failing to meet lofty climate goals
Science Magazin, 22 October 2020
4) Farm subsidies are about farmers’ livelihood too, not just the environment
EurActiv, 21 October 2020
5) EU embroiled in €24 billion bogus climate accounting scandal
Daily Express, 15 July 2020
6) Ross Clark: Why is the UK copying the EU’s failed agricultural policy?
The Spectator, 21 October 2020
7) Wisdom of hydrogen called into question
Transport Xtra, 19 October 2020
8) And finally: Following China’s lead, Dubai builds new coal power plant despite 2050 climate promises
Associated Press, 22 October 2020
Full details:
1) ‘Death sentence on nature’: European Parliament accused of killing Green Deal
The Independent, 22 October 2020
Members of the European Parliament have been accused signing “a death sentence” on nature, the climate and small farms after they rejected a series of eco-friendly reforms.
MEPs voted against proposals to cut subsidies for factory farming and to protect grasslands and peatlands – a major storage reservoir of greenhouse gases.
One critic said the vote on the EU agriculture reform package would bring extinction closer for many species after it failed to offer incentives for farmers to reduce their environmental impact.
BirdLife Europe said the politicians voted to make the policy “an extinction machine”, adding: “Nature has lost this battle.”
Now environmentalists are pressuring MEPs before a final vote by the full parliament tomorrow (Friday).
The votes on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), funded by nearly €400bn (£350bn), will shape farming in the block for the next seven years.
A deal by the largest groups in the European Parliament – the European People’s Party (EPP), Socialists & Democrats (S&D) and Renew Europe – involved lowering environmental conditions attached to the policy. And MEPs voted against an emissions-reduction target for agriculture of 30 per cent. […]
Earlier this year, 3,600 scientists called for an overhaul of the CAP, warning that it was a central driver of the biodiversity and climate emergencies as it funded practices that cause significant biodiversity loss, climate change, and soil, land and water degradation.
The new CAP document deletes “the need for farmers to have a tool for more sustainable use of nutrients”, Ms Bradley said, pointing out that agriculture is the biggest source of nitrate pollution in EU waters, responsible for dead zones and toxic algae.
Full story
2) Current EU plans for farming subsidies won't achieve any CO2 emission cuts – NGO
Clean Energy Wire, 12 October 2020
If the European Union doesn't include stricter rules for climate friendly farming in its main subsidy scheme (CAP), the farming sector will not achieve any emission reductions in the next ten years, a new report finds.
Measures under the European Union’s subsidy scheme for farmers (Common Agriculture Policy - CAP) are not contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases, and could even see them increase again, a report by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut) commissioned by NGO Germanwatch has found.
The next CAP funding period will run from 2021 to 2027 and, as part of its Green Deal policy, the EU Commission has pledged that 40 percent of direct payments to farmers under the CAP would be used towards climate action.
However, these 35 billion euros would be paid to farmers without any emissions being alleviated in return, Germanwatch warns. Under the so-called enhanced Conditionality part of the CAP, the paid income support (and other area- and animal-based payments) should be linked to environment- and climate-friendly farming practices and standards.
But according to calculations by the Öko-Institut, adhering to these best practices (Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions – GAECs), including permanent pastures, preservation of carbon rich soils such as peatlands and wetlands, and soil protection and crop rotation, will at best maintain the status quo of emissions from the sector. In this case, while possibly pursuing a more ambitious climate target of a 55 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2030, the EU’s emissions from agriculture would not fall and make up 20 percent of total emissions in ten years' time.
Full post
3) Virtue signalling exposed: U.S. cities failing to meet lofty climate goals
Science Magazin, 22 October 2020
Most major U.S. cities that have signed on to the climate fight with pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are failing to meet their goals or haven't even started to track local progress, according to a survey by the Brookings Institution.
President Donald Trump's rejection of the Paris climate accord after he took office sparked a strong response at the local level. Mayors joined governors, business leaders and academics in taking the "We Are Still In" pledge to help meet targets for cutting emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The pledge now lists 3800 signers.
"At their best, the plans have exemplified the hope that 'bottom-up' actions could add up to a powerful approach to climate mitigation, especially given rollbacks in federal policy under the Trump administration including the government's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement," the report said.
But the Brookings analysis found that actions taken by cities aren't matching up with their pledges to address climate change.
Among the 100 largest cities, only 45 set specific targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions during the past decade and inventoried emissions levels within city boundaries as baselines for measuring progress.
Twenty-two more cities have made general pledges to address emissions. But the Brookings analysis found they haven't set emissions targets or inventoried current emissions levels.
"Half the cities aren't doing anything," said David Victor, co-chair of the Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate.
Full story
4) Farm subsidies are about farmers’ livelihood too, not only the environment
EurActiv, 21 October 2020
The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU’s massive farming subsidies programme, must look after the well-being of farmers as well, rather than focus mainly on environmental sustainability, centre-right MEP Herbert Dorfmann told EURACTIV.
The agriculture coordinator of the Parliament’s biggest political group – European People’s Party (EPP) – was commenting on a strong campaign launched by environmental associations to scrap the whole CAP reform proposal under discussion at the European Parliament this week.
“Environmental NGOs want the CAP to be only environmentally friendly, but it is mostly a social-economic EU programme,” he said.
On Monday (19 October), campaigners took part in a photo stunt outside the Parliament in protest against the alliance formed between the three largest political groups in the European Parliament – the Christian-Democrats (EPP), socialists (S&D) and liberals (Renew Europe) – to ensure that a set of compromise amendments would pass.
Despite some last-minute defections, the majority of the agreement held steadfast, as all the compromise amendments proposed by the three biggest political groups were voted through yesterday evening (20 October) in the first voting session.
Dorfmann said this “unexpected majority” was “in favour of what is ultimately a good compromise”, although not perfect.
“The work at the political level has borne fruit as it was very difficult to bring together positions initially at odds,” he added.
The news that all compromise amendments were voted through was met with dismay by NGOs and environmental campaigners, who still hope that MEPs will ultimately scrap the amended text in the final vote on Friday.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg also stepped in complaining that European lawmakers are voting a CAP reform which, is completely ignoring climate and biodiversity.
The work is not over, Dorfmann cautioned, as many crucial amendments still need to be voted on between now and Friday.
He mentioned the amendments that will provide a more ambitious capping for direct payments and the one the controversial issue of external convergence.
Full story
5) EU embroiled in €24 billion bogus climate accounting scandal
Daily Express, 15 July 2020
Brussels has been dragged into a bogus accounting scandal after it was claimed climate change spending had been overblown by at least €24 billion.
The European Court of Auditors has questioned the European Commission’s claims about its climate-change programmes. It was found the European Union’s powerful executive had substantially overestimated the amount it spent on preventing global warming though the use of clever-accounting. Farmers have been handed cash subsidies which have been counted as agriculture-based spending aimed at climate protection by the Commission.
Eurocrats pass off their subsistence payments to farmers as climate spending, as long as the farmers fulfil a certain level of climate standards.
The ECA said in its report the Commission had overstated the current 2014-2020 budget’s contribution to tackling climate change. They warned the same was likely to be true for the next seven-year cycle.
The auditors said: "Our analysis of Member State rural development programmes in the same report showed that the Commission was overestimating their contribution to climate action by more than 40 percent, or almost €24billion.
"This is because the Commission did not adequately distinguish between climate contributions made by different activities.
The Commission justified this approach by the need to strike a balance between minimising the administrative burden and costs and providing a reasonably reliable estimate for climate-related spending within the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.”
ECA auditor Joelle Elvinger called on the Commission to develop more robust methods for tracking its spending.
She said:
"The anticipated contributions to climate-related spending, in particular from some agricultural schemes, are likely to be overstated.
“Without a robust methodology, the estimated climate spending may not be reliable.”
Agriculture spending is expected to make up nearly half of the climate spending from the bloc’s 2021-2027 budget, which has been muted at a total of €1.075trillion.
Full story
6) Ross Clark: Why is the UK copying the EU’s failed agricultural policy?
The Spectator, 21 October 2020
With the UK looking likely to exit transition in December without a trade deal, there has been plenty of coverage of what life outside the bloc will mean for Britain. There has been rather less coverage of what we have avoided by virtue of having left the EU. Yesterday came one of the first big EU agreements to which the UK has not been party: the latest reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In typical fashion, it resulted in a fudge engineered by powerful lobbyists and which will guarantee vast sums of public money going to waste.
The whole point of the latest round of CAP reform was that it was supposed to shift the emphasis of agricultural subsidies towards looking after the environment. Some 30 per cent of direct payments to farms were supposed to go to environmental schemes. But then the larger agricultural interests seized control and came up with a ‘compromise’ which watered-down the proposals. As a result, in some areas, 40 per cent of all subsidies will go on 'green causes', even if the genuine environmental improvements are minimal. The fudge has now been approved by the EU parliament, thanks to the block vote of the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats and the Renew group — the latter being a kind of pan-European Liberal Democrats whose name belies the reality of EU politics: that nothing ever really changes.
The result? EU taxpayers will be paying €387 billion a year (£352 billion) to subsidise agriculture, yet rather little of this will be going towards improving the environment. It will amount to more vast handouts, which are really nothing more than lightly-disguised protectionism for EU producers.
I wish I could say that newly-independent Britain had chosen a different route. Yet the reality is that the government has decided to reinvent the CAP through the Basic Payment Scheme — which will continue to dole out billions to barley barons, grouse shoot-owners and other large landowners without any guarantee of public good. As with CAP, farmers need only make sure they earn a few brownie points — or rather greenie points — by diversifying crops, planting hedges and so on. The chance to take a more free-market route, where farmers earn money for growing and selling food, rather than being propped with state handouts has, for the moment, been lost.
7) Wisdom of hydrogen called into question
Transport Xtra, 19 October 2020
The government’s enthusiasm for a hydrogen economy, including for fuelling lorries, buses and trains, will either generate huge quantities of carbon dioxide or come at huge expense, a critic has said. 
Writing in The Spectator, Andrew Montford, deputy director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank, said the attractions of hydrogen were “mostly a case of pulling the wool over the eyes of the unwary”. “Hydrogen is a way of moving energy about, it is not a source of energy itself. In other words, to make the stuff you need a real source of energy, which currently means natural gas.”
The production of so-called ‘blue’ hydrogen from natural gas uses a process known as steam methane reforming.
“If you are going to burn gas to make hydrogen you are going to get carbon dioxide given off in vast quantities and so you need operational carbon capture equipment,” said Montford. “Unfortunately, carbon capture and storage has only ever worked for coal-fired power stations and even then it’s commercially unviable. Getting the technology to work on plant-burning natural gas remains a pipe dream.”
So-called ‘green’ hydrogen is produced by electrolysing water using renewable electricity, such as from wind farms.
Montford said producing hydrogen this way was expensive. “Converting electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity is grossly inefficient. Even with rather cheap power input you still will not get cheap electricity out at the end of the process.
“We know for certain that the UK’s offshore wind fleet is not going to deliver cheap power anytime soon. Two separate reviews of the accounts of the UK offshore wind fleet have shown that costs have been rising for the last ten years.
“In other words, we are going to take very expensive electricity from offshore windfarms, use it to make hydrogen, which we will burn to make electricity again.”
Full post
8) And finally: Following China’s lead, Dubai builds new coal power plant despite 2050 climate promises
Associated Press, 22 October 2020
The construction of the $3.4 billion Hassyan plant in Dubai appears puzzling, as the United Arab Emirates hosts the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency.
The 2,400MW Hassyan clean coal power station is an ultra-supercritical (USC) power plant being build by China in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
It’s also building the peninsula’s first nuclear power plant and endlessly promotes its vast solar-power plant named after Dubai’s ruler. Dubai has also set the lofty goal of having the world’s lowest carbon footprint in the world by 2050 — something that would be impacted by burning coal.
The coal plant’s arrival comes as Gulf Arab nations remain among the world’s hungriest for energy and amid political concerns over the use of natural gas imported from abroad, concerns underscored by a yearslong dispute with gas-producer Qatar, which is boycotted by four Arab nations, including the UAE.
“Dubai was really saying we’re far too exposed on gas imports, those could be interrupted by all kinds of things, the cost is very high and so we have to do something else to diversify our fuel supply and bring down the total cost,” said Robin Mills, the CEO of Qamar Energy, a Dubai-based consulting company. “They got a very competitive offer on the coal plant … and so the decision was made.”
The Hassyan power plant is being built in part by China, which describes the plant as a “major engineering project of the Belt and Road Initiative,” a project which seeks to expand its influence in Africa and Asia. China anticipates that the plant, which has General Electric Co. involved in its construction, will meet 20% of Dubai’s electrical demand.
Full story
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.
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