Why can’t the EU power ahead with green subsidies like Biden’s? It isn’t just political procrastination | Yanis Varoufakis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/11/eu-green-subsidies-biden-no-money-no-common-treasury

Last August, Joe Biden signed into law the misleadingly labelled Inflation Reduction Act, which will release hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and tax breaks, over a decade, in support of US industry’s green energy transition. (Estimates for its total value range from $500bn to more than $1trn.) In one fell swoop, Washington had torn up the so-called Washington consensus: the light-touch free trade and industrial policies that the US and Europe had been foisting on the global south for decades. Suddenly, large unilateral subsidies were introduced by a US government that felt no obligation to keep the rest of the world in the loop – the EU included.

The EU’s bureaucrats and politicians were livid. Overnight, the whole of Europe’s mighty manufacturing sector faced tall fences impeding access to the vast US market. The problem went far beyond the impact on German carmakers, whose electric cars became ineligible for the up to $7,500 subsidy that cars assembled in North America will benefit from. By subsidising all domestic battery production, Washington ensured that every manufacturer across the US will face lower energy costs than their European competitors.

The shivers down EU policymakers’ spines were exacerbated by the news that, not long after Biden’s act came into force, the world’s largest chemical producer, BASF, decided to curtail its operations in the EU while Tesla put on hold the completion of a major battery manufacturing plant in Germany. Europe’s rapid deindustrialisation suddenly loomed large on a bleak and inauspicious horizon.

It is hard not to pity the EU’s top brass. They thought that once Donald Trump was out of the White House, Washington would treat them as partners. They expected the Biden administration to endorse Brussels’ preference for carbon taxes and pricing schemes that, unlike subsidies, encourage not just more clean energy but also overall energy savings. They believed that the circle around Biden would appreciate the readiness with which, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe cut itself off from dirt-cheap Russian natural gas to spend billions on the expensive fracked oil and liquified natural gas Europe now imports from Texas and New Mexico.

...

A whole year after the Inflation Reduction Act was activated, the EU response remains in limbo. Some have argued that this contrast is an exaggeration, since the EU, unlike the US, already had a Green Deal in place, involving funding pledges not too dissimilar to Biden’s. Alas, the devil is in the detail: the EU’s Green Deal offers up to €1tn of pledges that – unlike the funding offered in Biden’s act – is not actual money, but rather a fictional number akin to the notorious Juncker plan, whose pledged €300bn of new investment funds never really materialised.

...

The argument that Europe offers equivalent subsidies to every electric car sold in the EU is also shaky. A closer look reveals two key differences. First, in the US, subsidies come from the federal government, which means that domestic producers do not face discrimination depending on their location; in the EU, subsidies are grossly uneven and reliant on the fiscal health of each member state. Second, in the EU all electric cars receive the subsidy, including US-produced Teslas. By contrast, in the US no EU-produced zero-emission vehicles qualify for the subsidy.

Why is the EU not following the dictum “if you can’t beat them, join them”? Why not offer the same subsidies Biden made available to US-based manufacturers to companies manufacturing in the EU? The reason is that, unlike carbon trading schemes that pay for themselves, subsidies require a common budget, lest Portuguese or Slovenian manufacturers receive much lower subsidies courtesy of their governments’ relative impecunity. Without a common money pot for EU-wide manufacturing subsidies, Washington’s choice to discriminate against EU manufacturers will lead richer European governments to massively discriminate against the manufacturers of poorer members. And without a common treasury, it is impossible to replicate in the EU what the Inflation Reduction Act is accomplishing in the US, with the active involvement of the US treasury department.

...

Three pieces of legislation are in the pipeline promising a decent EU response to Biden’s act: the Net Zero Industry Act (which will cut red tape and drop state-aid rules), the Critical Raw Materials Act (which focuses on rare earths and other materials crucial to green tech), and reforms of the European electricity pricing model (which has given a great boost to private oligopolies at the expense of both industry and the struggling classes). While the jury is still out on these, two things are clear already: first, the EU cannot afford the billions it would take to compensate industry for its intolerably delayed response. Second, the EU’s leaders will never create the common treasury the EU needs, even if the alternative is calamitous (ie, exactly as in the eurozone crisis).

As long as climate disaster does not lead to our species’ extinction, Europe, I have no doubt, will bounce back. I don’t know how or when. What I do know is that we are very close to condemning one or more generations of Europeans to persistent underdevelopment.

Climate crisis calls for U-turn in EU’s economic governance – EURACTIV.com
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/opinion/climate-crisis-calls-for-u-turn-in-eus-economic-governance/

Already 50 years ago, Dutch politician Sicco Mansholt, who was at the time the European Commissioner for Agriculture, wrote to the President of the European Commission a legacy letter, in light of the findings of the Club of Rome “Limits to growth” report.

He wrote that a fundamentally different policy needs to be pursued to prevent the world from ‘breaking down’ and that the economy should no longer be aiming at maximising GDP growth per capita.

He called for giving priority to food production; reducing material goods, compensated for by increasing immaterial goods (education, intellectual development, use of free time, access to culture); prolonging the life-span of ‘capital goods’ (which we today call ending programmed obsolescence, ensuring goods and products can be repaired, re-used, then recycled in a circular economy); avoiding the production of ‘non-essential’ products (today, private jets and SUVs are on the spotlight for their huge environmental impact and their uselessness); and combating pollution and the depletion of natural resources.

...

Investors will refrain from putting their savings in certain countries or regions, making access to finance more difficult for countries most exposed to extreme weather events.

...

But as recently stressed by Mario Draghi, no single country can curb climate change on its own: “Just as the euro cannot be stable if large parts of the monetary union are failing, climate change cannot be solved by Germany reducing its carbon emissions faster than Italy.”

...

1) Include the ‘Do No Significant Harm to climate and environment’ principle as an assessment criterion for investments and reforms committed by member states.

(2) Include an obligation for national governments to integrate a socially just and time-bound reduction of fossil fuel subsidies in their fiscal-structural plans.

(3) Require Member States to use Green Budgeting tools when presenting their national budgets to the EU.

(4) Require that national fiscal-structural plans include an assessment of the national investment gap to achieve climate, environment and social goals, and make sure that debt and deficit reduction does not jeopardise their realization.

And of course (5) Make sure the rules don’t prioritise growth at the expense of climate and environment.

The European Commission has released its REPowerEU strategy, responding to the “double urgency” of dependence on Russia and climate change.

In cutting ties with Moscow “well before 2030”, the strategy sees gas consumption in the EU falling by two-thirds – much faster than previously anticipated – and renewable power capacity doubling over the next eight years.

To help cut gas use more quickly, the commission proposes a higher 45% target for renewables’ share of the EU energy mix in 2030, up from the 40% goal proposed only last July. It also suggests a more ambitious target for energy savings, cutting demand 13% by 2030, from a 2020 reference point, instead of the current 9%.

In-depth Q&A: How the EU plans to end its reliance on Russian fossil fuels - Carbon Brief
https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-how-the-eu-plans-to-end-its-reliance-on-russian-fossil-fuels/?

Switching The World To Renewable Energy Will Cost $62 Trillion, But The Payback Would Take Just 6 Years - CleanTechnica
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/06/switching-the-world-to-renewable-energy-will-cost-62-trillion-but-the-payback-would-take-just-6-years/

The researchers looked at onshore and offshore wind energy, solar power, solar heat, geothermal electricity and heat, hydroelectricity, and small amounts of tidal and wave electricity. Batteries were the most common electricity storage solution, with the team finding that no batteries with more than four hours of storage were necessary.

The researchers say switching to renewable energy would avoid utility grid blackouts and save consumers trillions of dollars. One of the main reasons for that finding is that the combustion-based energy systems most countries rely require a lot of energy just to function. In switching to a clean, renewable energy system, Jacobson states that worldwide energy usage would go down by 56% immediately.

Those savings are attributable to the efficiency of clean energy over combustion systems, as well as the efficiency of electrified industry. There would no longer be a need to explore for oil, coal, and gas, drill wells or dig new mines, transport oil to refineries, build and maintain pipelines, or truck petroleum products to end users, according to My Modern Met.

...

The cost of making the changeover to 100% renewable energy would be a staggering $62 trillion. Wow! That is a ton of money, people. But here’s the thing. Jacobson and his team say the savings from switching the world to 100% renewable energy would be $11 trillion a year. In other words, the initial investment would be paid back in just 6 years! Many people have a hard time distinguishing between an investment and an expense. They tend to see that $62 trillion as an expense and ignore the payback.

There’s one other aspect of renewable energy that you can’t put a price on but it’s extremely valuable nonetheless — energy security. Nations that generate their own electricity don’t need to be at the mercy of lunatics and despots who can decide at any time to cut off the supply of oil, or unnatural gas, or coal. How much is that worth? It may be hard to answer that question, but it is clearly not nothing. The people of Europe are facing a long cold winter because the supply of cheap methane from Russia has ended abruptly.

zajimavost. pruhledy do budoucna, smerem ke klimatickemu povstani? né že bych se na to tesila, ale je ten pan docela vtipny

“Muž, který v bejrútské bance držel několik rukojmích, aby se dostal k vlastním úsporám, byl v Libanonu, který trpí nejhorší hospodářskou krizí v novodobé historii, oslavován jako hrdina.

“Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, 42letý řidič rozvážející jídlo, držel minulý čtvrtek během sedmihodinového zátahu podle agentury Associated Press až deset lidí jako rukojmí. Vstoupil do Federální banky s brokovnicí a kanystrem benzínu, vystřelil tři varovné výstřely, zamkl se s několika zaměstnanci a zákazníky banky a vyhrožoval, že se zapálí, pokud mu nebude umožněno vybrat si úspory - které prý potřebuje na zaplacení účtů za léčení svého otce.

“Libanonským nemocnicím v pokračující hospodářské krizi docházejí léky i personál
Stejně jako mnoho lidí v Libanonu se Husajn nemohl dostat ke svým životním úsporám kvůli přísným omezením, která vláda zavedla na výběry aktiv v cizí měně - fakticky je zmrazila -, když v roce 2019 začala hospodářská krize. V bance měl uvězněno přibližně 210 000 dolarů, uvedla agentura AP.

“Incident skončil po několika hodinách vyjednávání a bez jakýchkoli zranění, když byl Husajn zatčen poté, co se vzdal výměnou za 35 000 dolarů, jak sdělil jeho právník. Jeho manželka venku novinářům řekla, že "udělal, co musel", zatímco jeho bratr ho označil za "slušného člověka", který "bere ze své kapsy, co má, aby dal ostatním."

NPR - Many in Lebanon can't access their life savings... | Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/pfbid0vkJ3mNooEGeT51tkWdnpzoBPAzSF37xuQs5WrGkjuKxsqz4LHq481ps13hTPSac2l

Zejtra jde do senatu. Neni to sice predvolebne avizovany trilion, ale pry uz ma oporu i u drovejsich odpurcu

Here's how the big US climate bill could turbocharge solar and wind
https://electrek.co/2022/08/05/us-climate-solar-and-wind/

The Act would nearly double investment in wind power and solar PV to $321 billion in 2030, versus $177 billion under current policy.

Further, according to REPEAT, it could spur record-setting US wind and solar growth, with annual additions increasing from 15 gigawatts (GW) of wind and 10 GW of utility-scale solar PV in 2020 to an average of 39 GW per year of wind additions in 2025-26 – more than two times the 2020 pace – and 49 GW per year of solar – more than five times the 2020 pace – with solar growth rates increasing thereafter.

Further, REPEAT reports that the IRA would lower annual US energy expenditures by at least 4% in 2030, a savings of nearly $50 billion dollars per year for households, businesses, and industry. That translates into hundreds of dollars in annual energy cost savings for US households.

Tax credits, rebates, and federal investments in the IRA would shift costs from energy bills to the progressive federal tax base. For example, it provides a long-term extension for the US solar investment tax credit at 30% and $30 billion in production tax credits for clean energy and battery storage manufacturing.

As for its impact on fossil fuels, the report notes:

These savings do not include the additional downward pressure the Act will put on prices for oil and natural gas by driving lower consumption of these commodities, which will further reduce US energy costs.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government declared a national water shortage Wednesday caused by the hot, dry summer that is parching much of Europe, and formed a national team to draw up measures to manage supplies, while asking the public to also chip in with savings.

“The water shortage is already having a negative effect on shipping and agriculture in particular,” said Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Mark Harbers.

He urged people “to think carefully about whether they should wash their car or completely fill their inflatable swimming pool. The Netherlands is a water country, but our water is precious here too.”

nejak pozitivni zpravy. manchin couvnul a prestal blokovat klimatickej plan

In a joint statement, Manchin and Schumer said: “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will make a historic down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030.”
According to a policy brief, the bill will generate $739bn through a 15% corporate minimum tax, prescription drug savings and other means. It excludes surtaxes on people making at least $10m a year, ending Democrats’ push to make the wealthiest Americans pay more taxes.
The proposal would invest $396bn in energy security and fighting climate change, and $64bn to bolster healthcare. Manchin also indicated that provisions to reform the permitting process for energy infrastructure, including gas pipelines, would be included in the deal.

This Dutch construction innovation shows it’s possible to quickly retrofit every building – Energiesprong
https://energiesprong.org/this-dutch-construction-innovation-shows-its-possible-to-quickly-retrofit-every-building/

Energiesprong (which translates to “energy jump”), a nonprofit that the Dutch government helped launch a decade ago, is coordinating a system of mass retrofits. “We thought, okay, let’s make home retrofits into a scalable solution,” says Christian Richter, who works in the organization’s market development team in Germany.

In one Dutch factory, a company that’s part of the program called RC Panels makes lightweight insulated panels that can be popped on the front of existing row houses. The company uses a laser scanning tool to take measurements at the old house; then, at the factory, a machine cuts out windows and doors to match the old facade exactly. When a truck delivers the panels, they’re attached directly to the old wall. The company also makes insulated panels, with solar panels attached, that can be put over an existing roof. Other Energiesprong vendors supply heat pumps for heating, cooling, and hot water. The retrofits are faster than traditional retrofits, in some cases happening in as little as a day, leading to more energy savings.

Estimating a social cost of carbon for global energy consumption | Nature
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03883-8

we project that emerging economies in the tropics will dramatically increase electricity consumption owing to warming, which requires critical infrastructure planning. However, heating reductions in colder countries offset this increase globally. We estimate that 2099 annual global electricity consumption increases by about 4.5 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST), whereas direct consumption of other fuels declines by about 11.3 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in GMST. Our finding of net savings contradicts previous research7,8, because global data indicate that many populations will remain too poor for most of the twenty-first century to substantially increase energy consumption in response to warming. Importantly, damage estimates would differ if poorer populations were given greater weight14

Let's chose a "Biosphere regeneration" diet, not a "Climatarian" diet! - Thorsten Arnold's Homepage
https://thorstenarnold.com/lets-chose-a-pro-biosphere-diet/

I pledge to all listeners that we don’t vilify farm animals per se as culprits of environmental destruction. Instead, we need to take a close look at HOW we farm, and foster those production systems that revitalize natural cycles. We need to find systems that convert the full potential of solar energy while fostering biodiversity. We need faith in nature and in our human ingenuity to find symbiotic farming methods. Yes, I know that we could do this here in Ontario! And we need to find financial mechanisms that allow more regenerative farming such that we transform our landscapes: in the short run, that is less profitable than industrial farming. But it brings mostly positive externalities for our society. Today, short-sighted rent seeking behaviour mainly pushes financial investment into farmland re-zoning for urban development, which uses industrial farming as short-term “bridging activity” that saves property taxes while speculators are waiting for rezoning. We need to reverse this trend. Large-scale biosphere regeneration would buy humankind the time that we need to overcome our addiction to fossil fuels, with technological and lifestyle transitions.

This seems unlikely to you today? Imagine the year 2005: we could have dismissed “electric cars” because “the typical car” has a large environmental footprint – and electric cars are still cars, right? Well, electric cars are not “typical” cars – just like regenerative livestock is not “average” livestock and has a different environmental footprint. Back in 2005, electric vehicles was a negligible market segment, like ecological farming in Ontario is today. Within only 15 years, electric car and bike technology is maturing and at the verge of becoming mainstream! I am confident that we can produce more food on less land, in ways that heal our landscape and build climate resilience and sequester carbon. Based on our daily observation on our own farm, and globally emerging research in landscape regeneration.

But we need urban support. We cannot do this with a “climatarian diet” that is based on national average impact measurements of commodity foods. Such diet would just convert more wilderness into carbon monocultures. We need to go deeper, care more, sharpen our senses, and choose a “biosphere regeneration diet” – foods that grew by strengthening nature’s cycles. And we need to address speculative land purchases for re-zoning, which push land into cash cropping as interim stream for moderate profits and tax savings. We need strong allies from the urban population

#savings

Vysoky ceny nakonec budou k necemu dobry, lidi se minimalne zamysli nad priroritama. Jestle by bylo fajn podporit to i nejakym dlouhodobejsim planem a misto vypinani lamp, je treba vymenit za uspornejsi...

Obce zahalené tmou? Starostové řeší, jak čelit skokovému zdražení energie - iDNES.cz
https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/domaci/obce-energie-elektriny-plyn-rozpocet-investice-dph.A211029_193200_ekonomika_ven#utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=ekonomikah&utm_content=main

TADEAS:

komentar od chrise hedgese

The corporate state came for human rights lawyer Steven Donziger — and we're next | Salon.com
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/13/the-corporate-state-came-for-human-rights-lawyer-steven-donziger--and-followed-orders/

Judge Loretta Preska, an adviser to the conservative Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a major donor, sentenced human rights attorney and Chevron nemesis Steven Donziger to six months in prison ... she said at the sentencing, "It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law" — capped a judicial farce worthy of the antics of Vasiliy Vasilievich, the presiding judge at the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, or the Nazi judge Roland Freisler, who once shouted at a defendant,"You really are a lousy piece of trash!"

...

"No lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90 days, and that was in home confinement," Donziger told the court. "I have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my profession. I have no passport. I can't travel; can't do human rights work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can't see my clients in Ecuador; can't visit the affected communities to hear the latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of constant exposure to oil pollution. In addition, and this is little known, Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan is the judge for Chevron's lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his handpicked judge for the contempt charges.] He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life's savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That's where things stand today

PER2: zase dobra prilezitost a argument pro rapidni dekarbonizaci
l
Last Wednesday, a team at Oxford University released a fascinating paper that I haven’t seen covered anywhere. Stirringly titled “Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition,” it makes the following argument: “compared to continuing with a fossil-fuel-based system, a rapid green energy transition will likely result in overall net savings of many trillions of dollars--even without accounting for climate damages or co-benefits of climate policy.”

We're Finally Catching a Break in the Climate Fight - by Bill McKibben - The Crucial Years
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/were-finally-catching-a-break-in

#synergy

Solar makes a lot of sense at ground level, too – pv magazine International
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/14/solar-makes-a-lot-of-sense-at-ground-level-too/

Solar projects that support native grasses can sequester more carbon than farmland alone.
...
From an emissions-capturing standpoint, these native grassland habitats are important because they sequester almost 60% more carbon per acre than modern agricultural activities.

The study modeled and averaged solar facilities in seven states in the Upper Midwest. Their modeling suggests that native grasses planted as part of 10 GW of solar generation capacity would sequester 129.3 tons of carbon per hectare; that is 65% and 35% greater than either an agriculture or a solar-turfgrass scenario, respectively.

The researchers said that this volume of emission sequestration is equivalent to the emission savings of 5,000 GWh of fossil generation shifting to solar power, which would correspond to greater than 3 GW of solar capacity.

The paper found that in addition to carbon sequestration, native grassland habitats also produce a three-fold increase in habitat for local pollinators, like bees and butterflies, when compared to pure agricultural usage. The threat of erosion from poor management still looms for midwestern soil. Solar and native grasslands would protect this fertile asset from losses of up to 9,000 tons of sediment erosion annually, and would retain more than 40,000,000 cubic meters of water from runoff annually.

Prior observational research has shown that solar panels create microclimates in semi-arid regions by significantly increasing the water retention in soil, which in turn increases sheep and cow grazing grasses by 90%.