EU leaders agree to cut emissions by at least 55% by end of decade

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/eu-leaders-reach-deal-to-cut-emissions-by-at-least-55-by-end-of-decade

by billyharris • 6 years ago

263 211 6 years ago

theguardian.com

wazoox• 6 years ago

As the saying goes : "Promises only bind those who believe in them."

iso16315• 6 years ago

Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless.

If you produce an dohicky in the EU and it casues 1000 tons of emissions, and by doing things like greening your grid, moving transport to electric, etc, you drop that to 450 tons, that's great.

If you produce an dohicky in the EU and it casues 1000 tons of emissions, and you instead stop producing it, but instead import it from China, where it was produced with 1500 tons of emissions and used another 500 tons to transport it, that's terrible.

jiehong2• 6 years ago

That's exactly why every country should do it.

young_unixer• 6 years ago

Good lucking getting China to agree.

blonde_ocean2• 6 years ago

Yeah the difficult thing about industrialization is that the cat’s out of the bag in 2 ways.

1) we recognize the positive impacts that industrialization brings, directly and indirectly. Directly raising GDP has an indirect, positive net effect on quality of life (not spiritually or philosophically, though, I might argue; although, I only think of these things because I live in an industrialized, developed, “rich” nation).

2) we recognize the horrible impact that industrialization has on our world.

The industrialized nations are the ones leading the charge in saying, “hey, wait a minute, industrialization is bad! It’s wrecking our world and we will die a horrible death as a species if we continue at this rate so slow down!” But those nations who are just hitting their stride, so to speak, aren’t gonna stop. That’s totally unfair. They think, “what the fuck am I supposed to do? Just sit here and play with sticks? I want the money, I want the goods, I want to be a rich, developed nation.” And so they keep burning, and will keep burning, unless (IMO) the already rich and developed nations somehow help them to develop in the cleanest way possible.

iso16315• 6 years ago

It's why the EU should measure all carbon inputs - be they in the EU or imported, and then tax that to reduce them, and either spend the tax revenue on subsidising greener processes, or on mittigation for climate change effects in Europe, or if you're altruistic mittigation for climate change globally, or on a UBI to offset the average cost of carbon -- those that use less will benefit, those that use more won't lose out.

kieranmaine• 6 years ago

This is being looked at. See:

- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

- https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-carbon-bord...

candu2• 6 years ago

Thanks for posting authoritative sources!

IMHO it's unfortunate when the kneejerk reaction to "governments / leaders do thing X" is "but did they think about obvious edge case Y!?"

Yes, they thought about obvious edge case Y; they employ / engage with loads of policy and domain experts for whom thinking about obvious edge case Y is table stakes, especially if Y is something one can think up off the cuff in a comment on HN. Perhaps not all of that thinking makes its way into final policies, whether for practical or political reasons. Perhaps much of that thinking - especially where nuance, expertise, or uncertainty are concerned - gets dropped from layperson reporting on the policy. Almost always, you can find publicly-available documents, transcripts, etc. that exhaustively list these details - all the arguments, all the community consultations, all the policy whitepapers.

These all exist, and unlike in modern academic publishing, you can almost always find and read them for free! That said, I do agree that we as a society need to put much more effort into accurate communication around expert fields. Specialization, and the resulting glut of information written for and consumed by specialized audiences, is one of many forces that make it harder to build a shared, agreed-upon sense of reality. What might it look like to solve this problem in the 21st century?

safog2• 6 years ago

I think China themselves have targets to cut emissions and transition to clean energy [1]. They've been leading the charge on all clean energy tech so far.

It looked like some of the dirtier industries are being moved on from China to SE Asia (Vietnam etc.) but there's a general push across the world to transition to clean energy.

I'm pretty confident we'll get out of the doom and gloom existential threat to humanity scenarios, but still think large portions of the world's populations will be impacted by climate change.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/27/china-ca....

allendoerfer2• 6 years ago

They've been leading the charge on all clean energy tech so far.

No, they did not. Germany did and China profitted.

rebuilder3• 6 years ago

Re: doom and gloom, I'm less worried about the immediate effects of climate change than I am about the knock-on effects. By which I mean wide scale war. For example, large areas in India (and other hot, humid places) may see lethal wet bulb temperatures during heatwaves within a few decades. I'm not looking forward to seeing how things play out when nuclear powers like India and Pakistan have to deal with hundreds of millions of their citizens needing to relocate.

melling• 6 years ago

Yes, China makes the steel, etc. They use a lot of coal for all their energy needs.

I remember this 13 year old story about dismantling a German steel mill and sending it to China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.htm...

maccard2• 6 years ago

It's easy to come onto HN and dismiss something like this. If the EU agreed to count emissions from China there would be something else to complain about. This is a huge move, and by itself it's not enough, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It's also likely that an agreement like this is a required precondition of enforcing this with trading partners.

The actual implementation of this will likely be a little from column A and a little from column B, and will likely have a positive impact on the current situation.

dudul• 6 years ago

Is it really a "huge move" though? I feel like we've seen something like that once or twice a year for the past decade at least.

pydry2• 6 years ago

Added to which, China can be dealt with via restructuring a trade agreement provided there is the political will. Which it looks like there is.

The fact that this plugs one hole in the sinking ship and not two is hardly evidence that it's crap.

LunaSea• 6 years ago

Is it a huge move in the same way the Paris agreement was?

Because it turns out that not one single country managed to hit the targets that were set.

burlesona• 6 years ago

With any policy there is a serious risk of unintended consequences, however.

If this policy does not explicitly include trade, there’s a real risk that European companies will lose in the market as their products are more expensive compared to high pollution imports, or they’ll be forced to move manufacturing to locales where they are permitted to pollute more, both of which are bad for the EU and the world.

whiddershins• 6 years ago

To be fair the ‘let’s just import everything from China’ column has been getting the majority of entries in recent decades.

If done wrong, the regulation just becomes a forced offshoring and willful destruction of national industry.

georgeplusplus• 6 years ago

Too say this is a prerequisite to bring negotiations to the table so that partners like China will have something to match, well to that I say, just look at how good that did in the USA or Australia.

standardUser• 6 years ago

"It's easy to come onto HN and dismiss something like this."

So easy that it happens every single time, like clockwork. There seems to be a cross section of people who eagerly confuse blanket cynicism with thoughtful analysis.

calkuta2• 6 years ago

I find the criticism of this policy to be poignant.

disown• 6 years ago

It's easy to come onto HN and dismiss something like this.

It's easy because the EU and european countries have a history of virtue signaling.

Like how they are so great at recycling by sending their garbage to china.

https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-plastic-waste-3786393-Jan2...

Norway is such an amazing "green" country.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...

Pretty much everything from environment to human rights, the EU and europe are the most destructive and yet pretend to be the best.

If the EU cuts emissions by 55%, it just means that they are going to ship their emissions to china, ASEAN, india and eventually africa in the next 80 years. That's it. I highly doubt they are planning on lowering their standard of living by 55%.

znpy• 6 years ago

A more likely output would be chinese factories blatantly lying and certifying that such dohicky was produced using 450 tons of emissions and transport only uses like 350 tons of emissions.

And you wouldn't have any way of verifying whether it's true and demonstrating it's false.

arez• 6 years ago

classic HN comment, nothing is worth anything if not done 100% luckily it's not like that in the real world. Agreements like this are tiny footsteps in the right direction, people are being aware, acknowledging the problem, setting directions, goals, timelines etc. this all helps to reach the goal

Benmcdonald__2• 6 years ago

China has a modern infrastructure with electric transportation and investing in green energy. Their emissions per capital are low

The real problem is the US. High per capital emissions and weak commitments to reduce emissions

posix_me_less3• 6 years ago

Both are big polluters, both are real problems.

1234fdsazxcv• 6 years ago

Emissions per capita are low because a lot of the population lives in poverty outside the city or in the city on the margins. It is not an eco-utopia.

iso16315• 6 years ago

Their emissions per capital are low

Well I do see far more electric vehicles in Beijing and in Washington DC if that's what you mean

latortuga• 6 years ago

There are plenty of non-"just import it from China" emissions that will be targeted by this. Think personal and public transportation, heating and cooling, and more. You can't exactly outsource heating your bedroom to China.

calkuta2• 6 years ago

In addition to this very obvious "out", there is also the fact that politicians today are unlikely to bear responsibility for outcomes that occur 10 or more years into the future.

Promises to do things in the future seem to be a mainstay of international climate discussions, from Kyoto to Paris and onward.

acdha• 6 years ago

This comment inadvertently highlights the importance of educating people about where they use fossil fuels. Manufacturing is a small part of the picture and there is a ton of inherently local usage: heating, transportation, and food are significant and easily changed by removing government subsidies for wasteful industries. A lot of personal decisions like eating less (or sustainably grown) meat, driving less, or using less HVAC are sensitive to government incentives.

Here are two calculators for you to learn more about the topic:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon...

https://www.nytimes.com/ask/answers/lower-personal-carbon-fo...

rebuilder3• 6 years ago

The leadership of the EU states know this well. They also know that industry in the EU is a hugely important employer and a major shift to importing more goods would be very destabilizing. So what does it tell you that they choose to move ahead with this policy, even though it means potentially weakening their economies relative to the competition?

To me, it says they finally see that the consequences of not acting to mitigate climate change are unacceptable, and that there's no solution without risk left.

taneq• 6 years ago

Don't let best be the enemy of good.

hannob5• 6 years ago

The EU is working on adressing this on some level, they want to introduce something they call a carbon border adjustment mechanism.

Details are complex and will matter in how effective this is and there's also a lot of resistance, so this is not decided yet. But it sounds like this is probably gonna happen.

dane-pgp4• 6 years ago

Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless.

To give some perspective, in the case of the UK (which until this year had been an EU member):

"directly-produced carbon emissions peaked in 1972, total carbon emissions created by the UK economy peaked thirty-five years later in 2007"

So yes, "imported" carbon emissions can make a big difference, but even if you take them into account, the trend for total emissions has been downward for over a decade.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/10/21/imported-emissions...

rdsubhas• 6 years ago

The fact that they'll be willing to lose local manufacturing, production, jobs and the linked market and economy – doesn't sound entirely meaningless.

Constructive criticism is good, but really, "meaningless"?

Comments like these make me worried about general built-up pessimism and negativity of the human race. We're not happy when anything happens, but then we're also surprised when nothing happens.

Statistics may be there, but they're just getting discussed and counter-argued infinitely until nothing happens.

agd2• 6 years ago

As comparison, the UK target is a cut of 68% by 2030.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

It's difficult to compare, the UK had a lot of dirty coal power stations in 1990 whereas France was mostly nuclear. We had some low hanging fruit to pick and started doing so for cost reasons more than anything else.

agd2• 6 years ago

True, but Germany has a lot of coal.

mFixman• 6 years ago

Poland and most EU countries in Eastern Europe are using more coal than ever. You can make an incredible reduction by changing those coal plants to oil or natural gas.

petr_tik• 6 years ago

Not really a level playing field, is it? The EU are obviously trying to get a competitive advantage over the U.K. with such a low target

dane-pgp4• 6 years ago

If only the UK had had some way of influencing the EU's policies.

dustinmoris• 6 years ago

This is quite ironic, the EU sets its own standards lower than the UK, but in trade negotiations accuses the UK of potentially lowering the standards to get an advantage. Same stories with subsidies. I guess it's true, cheaters are always the most afraid of being cheated.

sveme2• 6 years ago

Bojo has already stated that they aim to lower their standards to better compete with the EU, so totally understandable that the EU doesn't just believe him.

greatpatton2• 6 years ago

Given that UK is not able to keep its word for more than a year (internal market clause), it is sensible for EU to not trust whatever promise the current PM is making.

M2Ys4U3• 6 years ago

It's almost as if the word "standards" covers a whole host of things in a very, very wide array of policy areas.

pjc50• 6 years ago

The UK position on this is very odd: we've been quite effective, but nobody wants to take credit for it in public.

DrBazza4• 6 years ago

The UK seems peculiarly obsessed with wind power. And a few times last month, it was (unusually?) wind-less and the wind power contribution to the national grid dropped to almost zero, whilst at the same time...fossil fuel and nuclear had to pick up the slack.

jiehong2• 6 years ago

compared to 1990s emissions.

That's a sequel to Europe's 20-20-20, which effectively achieved the 20%+ reduction [1], so that's ~30% more in a decade, which is bold.

[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/30/report-eu-g...

credit_guy• 6 years ago

Bold indeed.

So, the initial plan was to reduce emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2020 (3 decades) and by a further 25% in the next decade (to achieve a total decrease of 40%).

We exceeded this target; the reduction was 24% in 3 decades. And now the reduction target for the next decade was increased to 41% ( the math is (1-0.24)*(1-0.41) = 1-0.55). In other words, in a single decade a more ambitious reduction target that the initial target for 4 decades. And starting from a much lower base (i.e. all the low hanging fruits were picked already).

This is indeed bold. Is it impossible? I hope not. But I'd like to see the feasibility study to see what the concrete steps are to achieve this target.

perfunctory2• 6 years ago

all the low hanging fruits were picked already

Is the "low hanging fruits" really the right way to reason about this? I think the "economies of scale" is a better framework.

tinus_hn2• 6 years ago

Is there a way to bet money on them wriggling out of it when the time comes for hard decisions as opposed to posturing and finger pointing?

cagenut• 6 years ago

The best bet you can make if you're confident nothing will get done is to not have any children.

sveme2• 6 years ago

Look at the ambitious CO2 emission targets (and associated fines) for EU carmakers, no one's wriggling out of that.

lixtra• 6 years ago

They moved their production out of EU into China, US or even Turkey.

Of course they won’t come back. Congrats.

njharman• 6 years ago

VW certainly tried. Who else has been more successful at cheating?

tinus_hn2• 6 years ago

Yeah that’s the easy finger pointing part. The hard part is doing things and making sacrifices yourself.

marcosdumay• 6 years ago

Nah. This decade is different.

Everybody will cut a lot of emissions. The economic interests point on that direction.

nicbou• 6 years ago

Except developing countries who won't take kindly to deal with restrictions the developed countries didn't have, or any country that derives the slightest economic advantage from not cooperating.

oblio9• 6 years ago

EU set to meet its climate change targets
The European Union has already achieved one of its three targets related to climate change and energy, as a part of the Europe 2020 strategy.

https://www.europeandatajournalism.eu/eng/News/Data-news/EU-...

eiji• 6 years ago

Yes. It's called the stock market.

orangepanda• 6 years ago

Bit of a nitpick but is end of the decade in 2029 or 2030?

MichaelApproved• 6 years ago

I was curious why you were asking so I thought I’d quickly find an answer with a definitive source but this ended up being much more controversial than I thought.

The popular answer seems to be a decade starts and ends with the decade handle. 200X, 201X, 202X, 203X, 204X. The current decade began when it was 2020 and will end when it’s no longer 202X.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/27/791546842/people-cant-even-ag...

As Jan. 1, 2020, approaches, it turns out there is a Team Zero and a Team 1 – those who believe the new decade will begin after midnight on the upcoming New Year's Eve and those who believe the burgeoning celebrations of a new decade (and all the "last decade" retrospectives) are in fact a year early.
In a recent YouGov survey, 64% of Americans said the next decade will begin on Jan. 1, 2020, and end on Dec. 31, 2029. But nearly 20% said they weren't sure – and slightly fewer people said the next decade won't start until Jan. 1, 2021.
On this question, many voices of authority are with the minority. They say that because there was no Year Zero when the current era began more than 2,000 years ago, all decades, centuries and millenia begin with Year 1.

iso16315• 6 years ago

When did the sixties end?

toper-centage2• 6 years ago

Depends on the country. In some places it ended way into the 80s.

lucioperca3• 6 years ago

I hope they will build some of these suggested 50MW wind turbines in the next years not to far from my home such that I can have a look at them.

https://sumrwind.com/

LatteLazy3• 6 years ago

I thought I was the only person who thinks they look nice!

oblio9• 6 years ago

Next up, find a horse and a lance :-D

gok• 6 years ago

Project seems kinda dead? No press releases since 2017.

cr1895• 6 years ago

The next-gen turbines that are _actually_ going to be built in the coming years are still hugely impressive:

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore...

Someone• 6 years ago

That’s very similar in size to https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind..., which has been built (possibly not in production, but the link has a time-lapse video)

refurb• 6 years ago

EU leaders are big on virtual signaling so Let’s come back in 9 years and see if they deliver rather than giving them any credit for it now?

thomasahle2• 6 years ago

You can give them credit for living up to the 2020 reductions then?

INTPenis• 6 years ago

That promise came one year too late.

kiliantics• 6 years ago

More like 40+ years

admiralspoo• 6 years ago

Alternative title: EU leaders agree to offshore >50% of emissions to Asia by the end of the decade

xiphias22• 6 years ago

I'm really happy that Tesla's price is so high. Decreasing price of batteries is the most important step in decreasing air pollution and CO2 emissions.

I wish EU would stop subsidizing hybrids, and focus on electric cars, as hybrid subsidies are misused extremely.

janmalec2• 6 years ago

Decreasing price of batteries is the most important step in decreasing air pollution and CO2 emissions. Is it? What good does an electric car do if the electricity was produced using fossil fuels?

xiphias22• 6 years ago

Batteries are also extremely important for storing solar and wind energy, as it's a substantial cost of solar and wind farms now that producing electricity is so cheap.

Tesla leadership said many times that the battery part of its operation is going at least as if not more important than the car operations over time.

jellicle• 6 years ago

Any plan that is to be implemented by the next political leader to run your country is worthless. It has negative value, because the existence of the plan is used to prevent current action.

What are you going to do IN 2020 to reduce emissions? What are you going to do in JANUARY 2021 to reduce emissions? What are you going to do in FEBRUARY 2021 to reduce emissions? These are the only important questions. The answer to each is "nothing".

"The next political leader to be elected in my country will definitely reduce emissions" has no meaning.

thomasahle2• 6 years ago

Well, Merkel has been chancellor for 15 years. Besides, the previous goal of 20% cut by 2020 was achieved, so don't be so quick to dismiss this.

beyondcompute2• 6 years ago

Too bad EU population is a drop in a sea and it’s already in some parts quite environmentally conscious (if not to say “friendly”).

TazeTSchnitzel• 6 years ago

The EU is (almost) half a billion people who are some of the richest and most polluting in the world. It's a big deal.

beyondcompute2• 6 years ago

I got bullied out of conversation by angry mob (downvoted). But I think, I’ll still provide a clarification. (Fun fact: people in angry mobs are always righteous.)

I was not saying that change is not needed. I am just saying that (total) electricity consumption, say of EU is half of that of US and 1/3 of China. 25% more than India. My electricity consumption is about the same level as of a person in Jamaica or Syria (some years it was less but gone up a bit now). And only 24% percent of my electricity nowadays is fossil (still bad). My newest laptop is from 2015. Many of the people around me are vegetarians or vegans, some people have pretty much given up traveling by plane (* scream emoji *), many use bikes to move around the city.

Richest. Shmitchest. I happen to think that some of the folks around me are doing pretty good job. Yes, it seems that it may be too late. :( Yes, more needs to be done (likely it will take decades unfortunately)! But “rich” (as you call them) have better opportunities to switch to electric vehicles, adopt energy-saving technologies earlier, and so on.

intended2• 6 years ago

I’ve said this before and it’s only getting less crazy sounding, but this is all a preamble to governments launching geo engineering schemes. They sound good, appeal to new voters, and will have the benefit of being just in time for “its too late for change, but not too late for <cue fanfare> Geo engineering!”

Govt spending follows, and politicians get to sell the idea that no change is needed.

elric• 6 years ago

And then what? Magic? Are there any viable geo engineering schemes that could be deployed in the short term, without a risk of catastrophic side effects?

fn1• 6 years ago

Not geo engineering, but I strongly believe DAC (direct air capture) of carbon will become widespread.

(DAC because BECCS' needs/effects are too complex)

the8472• 6 years ago

If insufficient other measures have been taken up to that point then it only has to be less catastrophic than unmitigated climate change.

hannob5• 6 years ago

Solar radiation management could be deployed in the short term. Whether there are catastrophic side effects is pretty much an open question.

intended2• 6 years ago

The thing is that I wasn’t selling hope, I was selling the opposite. The bulk of our habits suggest that snake oil will be sold and bought, especially in this case.

There are strong reasons that this particular solution is PR and big spending friendly. It converts the big issue into something which can be solved by “somebody else”

This does nothing to resolve the drives that generate pollution, and allow us to continue on our current path. It’s going to look amazing, the imagery of man grappling or synergising with Gaia will be relatively easy to sell compared to a say carbon taxes or voluntary targets.

Functionally humans operate at a global scale without a consensus mechanism that is effective at a global level as well as with our current development disparity levels.

hannob5• 6 years ago

Any sensible geoengineering plan will be in addition to climate mitigation and emission reductions, not instead of it.

FWIW I think geoengineering should be - carefully - explored and researched.

miltondts• 6 years ago

Why do you think that? As another comment mentioned, the EU is indeed reducing emissions: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/30/report-eu-g...

EDIT: I do strongly believe there is no way out of this situation without geoengineering. Either with carbon capture or some sort of aerosol. But this news seems genuine.

LatteLazy3• 6 years ago

Increasingly, nations need to force the US and China to start cutting, not continue cutting their own emissions. Otherwise global will continue to rise and they'll be wasting their time.

dalbasal• 6 years ago

Maybe... but most efforts over the last decades to this end have been slow and hard. The alternative thesis is leadership by example. Putting these at odds has been a recipe for stalling, and both the US & China are examples of this.

On that note, I think we should be using carbon reduction leadership more directly to generate industrial advantages within the EU. There are (should be) obvious advantages in getting to the future first. A lot of recent capital investment in green tech (eg tesla, panasonic, the chinese panel industry) were directly or indirectly supported by signals of long term demand (eg end dates for ICE vehicles) from european polities.

EG: Telsa's investment case (besides the L5 autonomy case) is basically formed around a predicted adoption curve for electric vehicles. (Market Share)X(Market Size) for any given T. Long term investments need confident predictions of long term market size. Same for solar panels, battery tech, etc. Most of the footnotes supporting these predictions came from EU (member) politics. Not quite government guaranteed demand, but collectively credible nonetheless.

There should be more effort to get this happening locally.

The UK is no longer EU, but it's a nice legible example so let's use it. Scotland, and now the UK as a whole have been declaring that ICE vehicles will be banned by 2030. Whether that "ban" will really be a ban will be determined later, but that still puts one hell of a footnote on your market size predictions for 2030... directly translatable into hard capital investment. The EU (+UK) is big enough that a good chunk of this investment can be captured within it.

There are costs to carbon reduction locally. Environmental benefits are more global. We should be capturing more of the economic benefits locally to even it out.

tengbretson• 6 years ago

US emissions have been steadily dropping. This information is absurdly easy to find. Given how shallow your understanding of the facts is, explain to me on what basis you have formed these ideas about what the US, China and other nations should start or stop doing.

noobermin• 6 years ago

Relative to when? If you choose 2005 on these graphs[0] then yes, or it can look flat like it does to me since 1990.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas... fig

LatteLazy3• 6 years ago

US emissions are 17 tonnes of CO2 per capita. France is 5.5, the UK is 6.

US emissions are down about 25 percent from peak. France cut theirs by 40 percent already.

If some says "I accept the science and the responsibility, but I don't want to cut my emissions so fuck it", I might not like it but its honest. Pretending the US isn't vastly worse and making much less progress than other countries isn't even honest.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france?country=FRA~GB...

imtringued5• 6 years ago

That's true but you have no power over the actions of other countries. They can always decide to "defect". It's better to work on the problem domestically instead of pointing fingers.

titzer3• 6 years ago

As emissions are cumulative, there is no wasting time by cutting your own emissions. Both is best, but change starts at home!

M2Ys4U3• 6 years ago

We need both.

WhompingWindows• 6 years ago

Mainly, China has to work on cutting coal, and the USA has a stubbornly slow-to-green transportation sector. Then there's agriculture and manufacturing, those are much harder long term trends. I'm thinking EU and progressive US areas may drive cost premiums down for green options, so that then other economies can come in at lower price points afterwards.

hannob5• 6 years ago

What you do in one country absolutely matters in another. Even the US has a significant portion of wind and solar these days. This didn't happen because Donald Trump (or anyone else responsible) made any ambitious climate decisions, it simply happened because policies of other countries made it so cheap that it happened through market forces.

This isn't a solution for everything (there will be areas where the climate friendly solution will always be more expensive), but for example bringing down the prices of electrolyseurs would absolutely matter worldwide and is something the EU can do with policy.

freeflight3• 6 years ago

Would already be a good start if the US wouldn't put foreign policy over the environment.

That whole push to export subsidized US LNG, to places like Germany for the sole purpose of further depressing the Russian economy, is complete nonsense from an environmental and efficiency perspective.

DrBazza4• 6 years ago

Anyone here from Poland or Germany and know what those governments are going to do about brown coal?

lnsru• 6 years ago

Continue using coal and buying green electricity certificates from Norway? Because local green nuclear energy is devilish in Germany and can’t be produced locally anymore.

DrBazza4• 6 years ago

It sounds like both countries are going to do some horse-trading then to do their part.

freeflight3• 6 years ago

As a German it's a bit annoying to keep reading this kind of stuff when it's just flat out wrong.

Right now there are still 6 commercial fission reactors running in Germany [0]. They are slated to phase out at the end of 2021 and 2022, but I really wouldn't be too surprised if they reinstate the running-time extensions that were revoked after the Fukushima disaster.

The nuclear phase-out, that was decided and ratified back in 2001/2002, was backed by the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world. In major parts responsible for Germany's massive renewable capabilities because it also utilized Germanys leading position in renewable tech back then.

Germany is also a major player in nuclear fusion research, being home to the largest and most advanced stellarator [1] and a major contributor to ITER [2].

It's also been at the forefront for hydrogen research and application, which has very real potential to be the green fuel of the future: Using the abundance of renewable energy for electrolysis of hydrogen, which can then be stored.

Yet whenever "German energy" comes up, all that's brought up is this flat out wrong "Germany doesn't do nuclear! It's all coal or Russian gas!" meme.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deu...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Tade02• 6 years ago

Polish person here.

Likely nothing until the current deposits are depleted, which is poised happen in the next 20 years:

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel...

Brown coal is only commercially viable if it's not transported too far, so it's been in steady decline for years now(yellow line - brown coal production in Poland over the years):

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydoby...

To my knowledge no large new mines were opened in the past decade.

All this brown coal will likely be replaced with imported hard coal, gas and electricity - currently 8% of the electricity consumed in Poland is imported - mostly from Germany and Sweden - at an average total rate of 1.2GW.

DrBazza4• 6 years ago

Interesting, thanks.

oblio9• 6 years ago

I guess if green energy provided by your neighbors becomes super cheap, you might just import it and shut down the coal plants. Should be feasible for 2025 - 2030.

ed_balls2• 6 years ago

PL: 2 nuclear plants (one in place of old brown coal mine). There could be one left which won't be economical in the near future.

The rest of coal is getting to expensive to extract.

skrause• 6 years ago

For Germany check out the graph on this page (grey is black coal, brown is brown coal): https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/national...

It will be reduced to half by 2030 and phased out completely by 2038. That's the worst case by law, in practice coal might be phased out faster.

imtringued5• 6 years ago

Germany already pledged to shut them down. The problem is that the timeline is stupidly long. The country is also in the process of introducing a minimum CO2 price that is going up year by year. Hopefully that will convince the operators of the coal plants to turn their plants down because of economics instead of a direct ban.

option• 6 years ago

Germany prefers to shut down nuclear instead

ffggvv2• 6 years ago

emissions = economic activity.

britain got out at a good time. the eu just keeps getting more irrelevant

oblio9• 6 years ago

Agreed.

I think that the UK should bring back the Mallard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard) and heck, for old times' sake, HMS Dreadnought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906) ), while they're at it.

Just to show'em how it's done!

imtringued5• 6 years ago

If that were true then decreasing fuel efficiency would increase economic activity. It obviously doesn't.

ffggvv2• 6 years ago

agree but you have to look at their plans to do it. their implementation is all about cutting stuff back, not improving tech.

that’s why they worship greta and not elon

pmlnr2• 6 years ago

Wake me up when cargo ships are forced to cut emissions and can run on some kind of other, than fossil power (hint: probably the only thing that has enough capacity at the moment is nuclear)

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-cargo-ships-emitting-boatloads...

Nothing is going to matter until this changes.

Kuinox• 6 years ago

Ah yes, we will stop cargo ships. Now we will ship everything by plane, happy ?

throwaway-8c93• 6 years ago

At the same time, cargo ships transport an unbelievable amount of cargo. They're an order of magnitude more efficient per tonne/km than trucks, and two orders of magnitude more efficient than air freight. Economic incentives from fuel savings alone were enough to reduce the emissions per tonne/km by a higher percentage than many devout green governments reduced theirs.

Cargo ships are responsible for ~3% of global CO2 emissions. Not too bad for providing a backbone for the world's economy.

pmlnr2• 6 years ago

Cargo ships are responsible for ~3% of global CO2 emissions

"One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds ": https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...

Cargo ships are bad, much worse, than people think. And this has nothing to do with efficiency, or price, or anything else; pollution is pollution, and emissions != CO2.

titzer3• 6 years ago

Pretty much the entire US navy runs on nuclear power, so it's not unthinkable to move to zero emissions propulsion.

HeadsUpHigh2• 6 years ago

Cargo ships are a tiny part of the entire supply chain and provide an incredibly efficient service. It's environmentally friendlier to buy something that's in season in the other hemisphere and ship it to you than to grow it locally off season.

perfunctory2• 6 years ago

Nothing is going to matter unless you wake up yourself and go do something about emissions. Nobody is going to do it for you while you are sleeping.

frankfrankfrank• 6 years ago

Just to put this into scale a bit. They are talking about cutting the energy consumption of ~446 million people by 55%, and energy is directly correlated to economic output; using energy to add value and/or utility.

Let's be clear about what that means; that equation can only be affected by a few means and I can assure you with a high degree of confidence that it will not be done by impacting the ruling classes. We are talking about a combination of things like reducing productivity, reducing mobility, reducing living standards, reducing heating and cooling (comfort), reducing amenities, reducing material possessions, reducing social events, etc.

There is no other way that you can cut emissions by at least 55% after decades of already cutting emissions around 20% over the last 25 years. Let alone while also importing people from around the world from low impact to high impact societies.

Let's also realize that while the EU and people in the USA are pushing for these kinds of things, the Chinese and Indians and other countries are pumping out emissions at rates that are way beyond the worst the west has ever produced.

For some more perspective; the EU and US emissions are roughly the same as their share of the world's GDP. By contrast, China produces twice as many emissions as the USA, but only 75% of the GDP; India has half the emissions of the USA, but only produces 10% of the GDP.

olau• 6 years ago

There are studies detailing how to do this. There are some uncertainties in which technologies will prevail when you get to the last few percents before reaching 100%, but 55% is neither hard nor expensive. Much of the tech is already cheaper than fossils.

nicoffeine• 6 years ago

They are talking about cutting the energy consumption of ~446 million people by 55%

Emissions and energy consumption are not the same thing.

We are talking about a combination of things like reducing productivity, reducing mobility, reducing living standards, reducing heating and cooling (comfort), reducing amenities, reducing material possessions, reducing social events, etc.

Economic growth is no longer tied to emissions in the EU.[1]

the Chinese and Indians and other countries are pumping out emissions at rates that are way beyond the worst the west has ever produced

Not on a per-capita basis, and not considering the total CO2 output since industrialization began.

China produces twice as many emissions as the USA, but only 75% of the GDP; India has half the emissions of the USA, but only produces 10% of the GDP

China manufactures more than anyone else on earth. They have an artificially low GDP because they devalue their currency to make their products more attractively priced.[2]

Next time just cut to the chase and state that you don't believe that modern technology like renewable energy exists, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

[1] https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Scree...

[2] https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/20858.jpeg

njdullea• 6 years ago

That's an aggressive goal for the next 20 days.

EU leaders agree to cut emissions by at least 55% by end of decade

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