In mid-July, the EU published sweeping cross-sector plans intended to cut emissions by 55% compared to 1990 by the end of the decade. Using rising carbon prices under the Emissions Trading System (ETS) to literally fuel the clean energy transition, the proposed legislation covers a lot of ground: it increases renewable energy targets, sets in place the phase-in of hydrogen, increases energy efficiency and helps encourage housing renovation while ensuring the path of progress is “just.” Beyond helping the bloc reaches its climate objectives, policymakers hope to set an example of global climate leadership in the face of COP26 in Glasgow. In the first of three pieces, lead blogger Michael Buchsbaum breaks down some of the policy’s complexity.
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The quest for equity, fairness and justice in an international carbon market
A carbon market may reduce carbon emissions as shown by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS). But market-based approaches to climate change raise several issues that politicians need to resolve during COP 26 in Glasgow. In this last article in a series of analysis into Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, Michael Davies-Venn explores how injustice, unfairness and inequity are implicit in any international carbon market.
Livestock and maize at sharp edge of climate emergency in southern Africa
Southern Africa is warming at twice the rate of the global average. Worsening drought and rising temperatures are likely to bring about a collapse of two keystone agricultural activities — livestock and maize farming — warns the latest climate science, presented in the long-awaited United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) new report.
Could a Green New Deal clean up Africa’s dirtiest electricity grid?
Civil society organisations in South Africa are proposing a post-WW2-style economic recovery programme to steer energy transformation for the state utility that echoes Roosevelt’s New Deal in the USA. But the country has been thrown into an even deeper energy crisis, following an explosion at one of the country’s newly-minted power stations. Could this make the ‘Green New Eskom’ idea even more relevant? Leonie Joubert investigates.
Pink and grey with just a hint of green: Biden’s “cleaner” Hydrogen plan
Over the summer, the US Senate passed a much smaller than promised infrastructure package. Despite most climate protection and clean energy aspects being stripped out, one of the big winners in the $1 trillion infrastructure plan is hydrogen (H2). In a provision originally introduced as a separate bill by fossil-rich West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, some $8 billion will go to fund dozens of “clean hydrogen” projects including the creation of four new regional integrated H2 hubs. Hailed by President Joe Biden as a key tool to tackling the growing climate crisis, almost all energy funding in the bill will go to advancing “grey” H2 production from fossil gas as well as “pink” H2 generated by increasingly marginalized nuclear plants – throwing a lifeline to both sectors while ensuring little overall emissions reduction. In the next part of a longer series, lead blogger and podcaster Michael Buchsbaum reviews America’s murky steps into the increasingly over-hyped H2 solution.
Visegrad Fit for 55? Making the European Green Deal a Deal for everyone
The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties − COP26 – is happening at the moment, with countries to be asked to cut emissions by 2030 in keeping with the goal of striking net zero by the middle of the century. The European Union (EU) aims to be climate neutral by 2050, as climate change and environmental degradation loom large over its economies and societies, including the Visegrad countries (V4). The summer heat wave in Europe, with its increased risk of wildfires and impact on food prices coincided with flash floods cause chaos in many countries while Poland and Czech Republic suffered devastating tornadoes. These extremes flag risks for the future. Diana Süsser and her colleagues from the V4SDG Lab organised an online workshop on climate action in the Visegrad countries and summarised the debates in this blog post.
Beyond Copper: How Virtual Power Plants Make the Smart Grid Smarter
Across Europe, information and communication technologies are optimizing clean-energy systems by making them more connected, intelligent, efficient, reliable, and cheaper. Germany and France lead the pack.
UK’s Hydrogen blues: fossil gas is key to the Britain’s not-so-clean scheme
The UK government finally launched its long-awaited hydrogen strategy in mid-August 2021. However, their new “twin-track” hydrogen (H2) plan will only fund small volumes of green H2 produced from wind and other renewables with the bulk coming from “blue” H2 generated from fossil gas and dependent on unproven carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to reduce emissions. Released days after new studies showing that relying on blue H2 could be worse than burning coal, the plan was met with skepticism from the climate science community. In the next installment in a series on hydrogen’s hype, lead blogger and Energy Transition podcaster Michael Buchsbaum breaks down some of the details.
Exploring innovative ways to bring down methane emissions in the energy sector
After long years of neglecting the science about the negative climate impact of fossil gas (i.e. methane) the EU Commission finally came up with a Methane Strategy, with a concrete legislative proposal on the energy sector expected later this year. There is large consensus on the need to reduce methane emissions due to its high warming potential to limit global heating, but will the EU Commission propose sufficient measures and what other innovative policy options exist? Andy Gheorghiu summarizes the key highlights of an online event around a new study exploring this question.
A new roadmap to phase out coal in Ukraine
Ukrainian municipalities in coal regions, which are still dependent on mining, are becoming increasingly aware of the sector’s terminal decline and are scouting for sustainable alternatives for the future. NGOs and active municipalities in the Lviv-Volyn coal basin in the west and Ukrainian-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east, are joining up forces to create post-industrial green options. Oleh Savytskyi has the details.