Europe’s missing climate marches – replaced by tractor convoys?

Climate alarmists complain their manufactured hysteria pot is cooling down, as protest focus has switched to other issues and/or boredom set in as the novelty wore off. Instead the victims of dogmatic net zero diktats, such as farmers, drive onto the streets of EU capitals to air their grievances. Is a return to political reality anywhere in sight?
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Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, Europe was rocked by massive climate marches, says Euractiv.

But as the 2024 elections approach, the streets remain silent.

As a series of climate marches swept across Europe in spring 2019, Brussels was no exception. At the movement’s peak, 70,000 people massed in the EU quarter to loudly demand greater climate action.

Blow for climate worriers as banks consider renewable energy to be a riskier investment than fossil fuels

The article here takes the climate alarm view, as usual with this source, and concludes that ‘risk assessments used by lenders are a boon for the oil and gas industry’. Oh dear! Maybe the fact that oil and gas are still in huge demand and tend to generate large profits, while renewables are expensive and require large subsidies, has something to do with it?
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The financial sector is among the world’s most heavily regulated industries – and for good reason, says The Conversation.

Financial rules, which force banks to hold capital in reserve when making riskier investments, are designed to prevent financial crises. Other financial regulations, such as accounting rules, aim to provide investors with a credible valuation of their financial assets.

However, new research I conducted with my colleagues shows that some of these rules may have unintended consequences for the low-carbon transition.

Battle of the skies as airlines fight over impact of contrails on the climate

This report summary says ‘Vapour trails conundrum resurfaces’. Cloud formation plays an uncertain part in the debate, for example. An experiment using AI found that real time route selection could play a part in reducing the supposed ’emissions’ problem. Proposed financial penalties for airlines are inevitably resisted, but they’re up against net zero climate obsession.
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Airlines are usually rather good at presenting a united face to the world, particularly when it comes to lobbying global policymakers, says The Telegraph.

But a recent move by the EU to clampdown on so-called contrails, the vapour that spews from an aircraft’s jet engines in a thin cloud-like formation, has set carriers at each other’s throats.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which counts most of the world’s flag-carriers among its members, has lobbied Brussels to limit the mandatory monitoring of contrails to only flights within the bloc, in an effort to ease the burden of data collection.

But it has stoked the ire of low-cost operators including EasyJet and Ryanair.

Europe is revolting against the tyranny of electric cars

As Scotland makes an embarrassing climbdown on its much touted ‘net zero’ targets, widespread problems with the big EV push due to public resistance are highlighted. Bad news for climate worriers and the EV industry, a glimmer of hope for nearly everyone else.
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The rest of Europe, Remainers like to tell us, is forging ahead into a glorious green future while Brexit Britain is stalling, the government backsliding one by one on its net zero commitments, says Ross Clark @ The Telegraph.

It is hard to square that narrative with what’s really going on across the channel. In March, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, registrations of new electric vehicles plummeted by 11.3 per cent.

In Germany – the grown-up country that’s supposed to show childish Britain how it’s done – the drop was even more precipitous at 28.9 per cent.

How China captured the sun – and cast a shadow over Europe

UK plans mean ‘we will be covering an area of countryside the size of Middlesex with Chinese solar panels’ by 2035, while China’s market share in the EU has reached 97%. Can energy/climate policymakers explain what is supposed to happen to all these millions of panels at replacement time?
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Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices, says The Telegraph (via Yahoo News).

Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed.

The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve.

France’s Economy Minister slams EU’s ‘no longer wanted’ renewable targets

So-called climate targets are once more proving to be a recipe for trouble wherever they appear. With a large nuclear fleet for its electricity generation, France is calling EU demands “the Europe we no longer want” and ignoring its directives, incurring the wagging finger of warning from Brussels.
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The EU’s renewable energy targets adopted in March last year are too restrictive and unsatisfactory as climate goals, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who took over the Energy portfolio in a recent government reshuffle, said on Monday (4 March).

Despite repeated requests from the European Commission, France remains opposed to the calculation method used by Brussels to set targets for the use of renewable energy, says Euractiv.

“The targets can no longer be to have so many windmills here, so many photovoltaic panels here,” Le Maire said on Monday, criticising “the Europe we no longer want”.

The farmers’ net zero revolt has come to Britain

About time, says The Telegraph. Similar farming rules are expected to follow for England. Pursuit of impossible climate dogmas is running into the ever-pressing need to earn a living, with predictable results.
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There are demonstrations in Cardiff. Ministers are being pelted with food. And there are marchers with banners complaining that traditional livelihoods are under threat.

Welsh nationalists and the Labour establishment would probably prefer that it was the English, and the wicked Tories, who were facing a wave of popular protests.

But the action by farmers across Wales is directed at the devolved administration, and against its reckless imposition of fanatical net zero rules.

Belgian central banker claims climate fight will leave EU poorer — upsets Green chief

Is the EU’s attempt to ‘confront climate change’, as some see it, with a so-called energy transition creating an economic millstone round the necks of countries in the form of high industrial energy costs? Such costs are likely to go even higher on present policy trends.
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The co-president of the Greens/EFA European parliamentary group, Philippe Lamberts, rebuked recent warnings by the head of Belgium’s central bank that the green transition will make Europe poorer, saying that anyone who does not see the transition as a matter of survival should give the floor to “more serious people”, reports Euractiv.

Talking to Euractiv on Tuesday (13 February), Lamberts challenged Pierre Wunsch’s remarks to the European Parliament’s plenary session on Tuesday that EU policymakers needed to be “more candid” about the climate transition being “a negative supply shock that will reduce [Europe’s] growth potential”.

“If we start saying that basically we cannot afford to invest for [our own] survival then I believe that we need to have a discussion with more serious people,” Lamberts rebutted. [That] Europe should engage full-on in the green transition to me cannot be questioned. It’s a matter of environmental and economic survival.”

Contesting Wunsch’s prediction that the energy transition would not make Europeans “collectively richer”, the Greens MEP said Europe’s failure to confront climate change would be tantamount to “collective suicide”.

Jean-Marc Nollet, co-president of Belgian environmental party Ecolo, echoed Lambert’s warnings.

“It is the absence of a [green] transition that will impoverish Europe and its citizens,” Nollet told Euractiv. “A society that does not invest in the transition is a society that condemns its companies. Conversely, investing means being a pioneer, relocating, and capturing the jobs of tomorrow.”

The price of inaction
Nollet added that Wunsch “should know what the scientists are telling us”, namely that “the cost of inaction is five times higher than the cost of action”.

Antoine Oger, research director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), said yet more daunting forecasts are set to come from a European Environmental Agency (EEA)’s report showing that the accumulated costs of inaction could prove significantly more severe – as much as “one hundred times higher than mitigation measures”.

“It is now clearly cheaper to save the planet than to ruin it.”
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Industrial woes
Wunsch’s remarks, however, channelled widespread worries around the effects the transition will yield on different sectors.

On the industrial front, he suggested that high energy prices may have made European industrial firms permanently uncompetitive compared to those in China and America.

“Before the war in Ukraine [European natural gas] was at around €20 [per MWh]. The new normal is between €30 and €50 [per MWh], and if you add to that carbon capture or the cost of blue hydrogen you need to add another €20 to €30 [per MWh].”

That compares with US natural gas at €10 per MWh, which would make European energy “about five to eight times more expensive than in the US. So yes, one might ask: Is there a future in the EU for energy-intensive firms?”

Full report here.

EU’s new fiscal rules too strict for ‘fight’ against climate change? Churchill analogy invoked

The Greens claimed the new rules are ‘suicidal’ (which could also be said of the proposed spending plans), and imagined bean counters telling Churchill to give up because his World War costs were unaffordable. Climate hysteria rumbles on in its own world.
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The new EU rules for national debts and deficit would hamper member states’ ability to make the public investments needed to effectively combat climate change, a new study commissioned by the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament found.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday (30 January), Philippe Lamberts, co-president of the Greens/EFA group, stressed that the fiscal rules currently being negotiated in ‘trilogue’ discussions between the European Commission, Parliament, and Council would render it “legally impossible” for the bloc to achieve its goal of full decarbonisation by 2050, reports Euractiv.

Echoing earlier comments, he accused the EU of being run by “religious fundamentalists” following “suicidal” policies.

French farmers express net zero nausea as ‘siege of Paris’ begins

The tractors are out in force. Wrestling with onerous climate regulations, squeezed by supermarkets and pressured to give up land, many farmers have had more than enough, and not only in France.
Update: Farmergeddon! – (Daily Mail)
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Why the farmers don’t like the EU’s environmental policies – BBC News.

At the heart of the European Green Deal, which sets out how to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, is a scheme called the Farm to Fork Strategy.

The approach aims to:

— Halve pesticide use by 2030
— Reduce fertiliser use
— Devote at least 10% of agricultural areas to non-agricultural uses (for example by turning it into fallow land, planting non-productive trees or creating ponds)
— Ensure 25% of the total EU agricultural land is used for organic farming
by 2030

These targets are seen by many farmers as unrealistic and expensive.

The Green Deal itself also includes legislation aimed at reducing emissions.

Agriculture accounts for around 11% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so farmers will be very affected by efforts to reduce emissions.

Already in 2019, protests erupted in the Netherlands over proposals to dramatically reduce livestock farming in order to lower emissions.
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‘Just impossible’ to be a farmer in France

There’s a line of tractors behind me which is blocking one of the main motorways into Paris, near Charles de Gaulle airport.

We were driving along with one man who is here with his son-in-law, who has been driving a tractor. His son-in-law has a horse stables not too far from here.

He says things are just impossible for farmers here in France, and that it’s very hard for them to compete with other countries in the European Union, which he says have lower standards.

On top of that, he was complaining about the low cost of food being sold and the challenge that the green agenda is posing for production.

Full report here.

Another ‘net zero’ tax: UK to implement carbon tariff on imports by 2027

The government’s war on a vital trace gas in the atmosphere ratchets up yet again, burdening everyone with more pointless bureaucracy and costs. That includes importers of renewables and electric vehicles.
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Britain said on Monday (18 December) it would implement a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027, with goods imported from countries with a lower or no carbon price having to pay a levy as part of decarbonisation efforts, reports Euractiv.

The government said the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) would apply to carbon intensive products in the iron, steel, aluminium, fertiliser, hydrogen, ceramics, glass and cement sectors.

The charge applied will depend on the amount of carbon emitted in the production of the imported good, and the gap between the carbon price applied in the country of origin – if any – and the carbon price faced by UK producers.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan tipped to host COP29 climate talks

The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline (green) is one of several pipelines running from Baku.

Azerbaijan is one of the birthplaces of the oil industry (Wikipedia). It was part of the Soviet Union from 1922-1991. EU countries were unsurprisingly blocked as hosts by Russia. Maybe there aren’t too many ‘renewables-rich’ countries (if such a category even exists) elsewhere, seeking to be the host next time.
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DUBAI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan is tipped to host next year’s U.N. climate summit, after striking a late deal with longtime adversary Armenia over its bid.

While some diplomats said other countries including Russia – which has blocked other host candidates – were expected to back Baku’s bid, there was no official confirmation from Moscow on Friday.

The issue is still being negotiated at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

German climate policy insufficient, court rules

German Autobahn

The legal consequences of government climate obsession rumble on, as countries keep insisting that their ‘targets’ will somehow make the weather nicer, or something. Some pressure groups want lower speed limits but with a future of (supposedly) EVs that seems fairly pointless.
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The German government must present emergency programmes to improve its climate policy in the transport and buildings sector, a Berlin court ruled on Thursday (30 November), after the country repeatedly failed to meet emission reduction targets, reports Euractiv.

The higher administrative court of Berlin-Brandenburg ruled that the German government must present immediate action programmes to reach the emission reduction targets in the transport and buildings sector, as written in the German climate law.

The ruling follows a lawsuit by environmental NGOs Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), who called it a “groundbreaking” decision.

Why the Dutch election result spells trouble for Europe’s climate efforts

Dutch wind turbines

Climate mythology on the back foot. Some people at least are not keen on being frogmarched into costly and disruptive ‘net zero’ energy policies for more pain than gain, while having their reliability of supply reduced and farmers demonised.
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The far-right party that surged to victory in Wednesday’s Dutch election wants to ditch all efforts to stop climate change, says Politico.

About a quarter of Dutch voters backed Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), whose platform includes exiting the Paris climate accord, dismantling domestic green legislation, and scrapping measures to reduce planet-warming emissions.

While right-wing politicians from Scandinavia to Italy have won big over the past year, this is the first time a party openly calling for an end to the green transition has won a national election in the European Union.

This year ‘virtually certain’ to be warmest in 125,000 years, EU scientists say — ignoring contradictory evidence?

Thermometer with Fahrenheit and Celsius units [image credit: Stilfehler at Wikipedia]

The ‘virtual’ in virtually certain is from a computer model result: ‘we combine our data with the IPCC’. Two things to bear in mind: satellite data only started in the 1970s, with other less accurate (due to shortage of data) records being kept from the 1880s onwards, and ‘the mid-Holocene … mean annual temperature reached 2.5°C above that of today’ (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday (8 November), after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period, says Euractiv.

Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.

Global discord threatens COP28 climate talks, EU commissioner says

Yet another round of the usual excesses of costs and consumption looms, ending with the usual fudges and indecision presented as somehow worth mentioning, to the usual bemusement of onlookers. All paving the way for future COPs ad infinitum of course, or so it seems.
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The need for agreement to tackle global warming is “higher than ever”, but it has never been harder as the geopolitical backdrop complicates international cooperation, the European Union’s climate chief said on Monday (30 October) ahead of next month’s COP28 summit. Euractiv reporting.

Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra also said the EU would not accept an outcome at COP28 that only reached deals on less contentious topics – such as increased use of renewable energy – if it failed to solve tougher issues such as phasing out fossil fuels.

“This is not an à la carte menu. It is actually all that is on the menu that needs to be delivered on,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a preliminary COP28 gathering in Abu Dhabi ahead of the UN summit starting at the end of November.

Idea of green growth losing traction among climate policy researchers, survey of nearly 800 academics reveals

Prosperity via subsidies, making the energy that powers economies more scarce and/or more expensive, always sounded like a fantasy.
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When she took to the floor to give her State of the Union speech on 13 September, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen largely stood by the script, says Phys.org.

Describing her vision of an economically buoyant and sustainable Europe in the era of climate change, she called on the EU to accelerate the development of the clean-tech sector, “from wind to steel, from batteries to electric vehicles.”

“When it comes to the European Green Deal, we stick to our growth strategy,” von der Leyen said.

Her plans were hardly idiosyncratic.

EU reaches deal banning ‘climate-neutral’ product claims

Game over by 2026?
[image credit: climateneutral.org]

The nonsense of climate greenwashing takes a hit, starting 2026.
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In the wake of longstanding complaints of greenwashing by consumer advocates, EU institutions finalised a new law on Tuesday (19 September) enacting a sweeping ban to combat the misleading of its citizens through erroneous claims of sustainability, reports Euractiv.

In March 2022, the European Commission proposed a law to empower consumers, which, following the conclusion of negotiations between EU countries and Parliament, will now ban companies from claiming that their products are climate-neutral.

“We have achieved an excellent deal for consumers,” said the S&D’s Biljana Borzan, a Croatian EU lawmaker who spearheaded the negotiations on behalf of Parliament.

The law, which still requires final approval by EU countries and the parliament’s plenary assembly – a formality – will be felt from 2026, as EU countries will be given two years’ time to adopt the changes.

EU reality check – waking up from hydrogen daydreams

Credit: Scottish Power

Hydrogen is no more the wonder gas than CO2 is the opposite. Apart from being very expensive to produce using so-called ‘green’ methods, it’s running into various obstacles elsewhere, such as absence of infrastructure.
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Europe’s time spent sleepwalking to the tune of hydrogen lobbyists – draining funds and political capital for far too long – appears to be coming to an end as leaders come face-to-face with physical realities, says The Brief @ Euractiv.

This week, I attended a business leadership conference hosted by the German Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. Attendees, all serious businesspeople, were asked which technology is the key net-zero technology. The number one answer? Hydrogen.

Europe’s fascination with hydrogen has become more like an addiction and a costly one, too.

The European Commission estimates that to produce, transport and consume 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen domestically, investment worth up to €471 billion will be necessary.

Poland files lawsuit against key EU climate policies

European Commission HQ, Brussels [image credit: Em_Dee @ Wikipedia]

Poland objects to being bounced into net-zero style policies against its will, so the EU’s climate dogma will get tested in court. Of course arguing with the EU is usually a waste of time, as the UK found out, but there is an obvious alternative (hint).
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The EU’s recently adopted climate legislation was not properly assessed, exceeded Brussels’ authority and now threatens Poland’s economy as well as energy security, legal arguments published by Warsaw on Monday (28 August) contend, reports Euractiv.

The EU has approved a raft of climate laws over the past months, aiming to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to 55% below 1990 levels by 2030 and help the bloc of 27 countries comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

But Warsaw is contesting those laws, now aiming to overthrow some of them in court – including the hard-won agreement on banning the sale of new combustion engine cars by 2035.

“We don’t agree with this and other documents from the ‘Fit for 55’ package and we’re bringing this to the European Court of Justice. I hope other countries will join,” Polish climate and environment minister Anna Moskwa said back in June.