By Paul Homewood
From euronews:
With the European Commission expected to announce next month a radical new 2040 target for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, there are worrying signs that governments are struggling to meet existing commitments.
As the European Commission prepares a proposal for a 2040 climate target that could see member states pledge to cut net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to just 10% of 1990 levels, there are signs that governments are struggling to achieve more modest existing targets set for the end of this decade.
The groundbreaking European Climate Law commits the EU to a 55% cut by 2030 and full carbon neutrality by 2050, and requires the Commission to propose an intermediate target for 2040 in the coming months. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, a body created by the same legislation, concluded last summer that achieving net-zero will be impossible unless a reduction of 90-95% is achieved by 2040.
Since then, the EU’s new climate action commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, has committed to “defend” fixing a 90% target for 2040, going as far as promising MEPs during his confirmation hearing in October that the EU executive would “explore” the radical political option of suggesting “lifestyle changes including dietary changes” as a means of achieving it.
Putting a 90% target in perspective: annual net greenhouse gas output currently stands at around 32% below 1990 levels. Reaching the goal to which Hoekstra has committed would mean cutting the annual net emissions across the EU by a factor of almost seven between now and 2040.
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Forget about the pie-in-the-sky 2040 target, because I cannot see any way at all that the EU will even achieve its 2030 target of a cut of 55% from 1990 levels. Currently GHG emissions stand at 32% below 1990, meaning that the EU must cut emissions by a third in the next seven years.
These targets, of course, count all GHGs, but if we focus on CO2, which account for the main part of GHGs, we can see how hopelessly unrealistic the 2030 target is. In 2022, for instance, CO2 emissions had only been cut by 28%, itself indicating that the EU has already managed the easy part of cutting other GHGs.
To bring CO2 emissions down to 45% of 1990 levels means a cut of 38% from current levels:
BP Energy Review
Fossil fuels currently account for 71% of total primary energy consumption, but less than a quarter of this is used for electricity generation:
Even if all fossil fuel power generation was eliminated, itself not remotely feasible by 2030, CO2 emissions would only be cut to about 55% of 1990 levels.
Potentially if coal was eliminated more quickly than oil and gas, the emission savings might be proportionally greater. However, given the market situation with natural gas and the reliance on coal of countries like Germany and Poland, the reverse is more likely to be the case; not least because Germany’s decision to shut nuclear plants will almost certainly increase coal power output in the near future.
As already noted, there is simply no way that the EU would be able to do away with all fossil fuel power and rely on renewables instead on this timescale. Even if they decided to use hydrogen as a replacement, it would take decades to build the infrastructure to power it – from building renewable capacity, electrolysers, hydrogen distribution and storage networks, and the power stations to burn it in.
And if the emission savings cannot be made in the power sector, then where else? Just as in the UK, Germans and others are up in arms about being forced to instal heat pumps and buy EVs.
As for European industry, it is already becoming uncompetitive thanks to high energy costs. Any further carbon mandates and taxes will simply drive yet more business abroad.
But at least that will cut a few emissions!!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 11, 2024 at 08:53AM
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