EU climate policy badly out of date? | Brussels Blog

EU climate policy badly out of date?

Is EU Policy on climate seriously out of date? Can anyone help me find out?

European Commission waits for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Last year a reply from the European Commission Directorate-General Climate Action told me that they rely on IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)  when making judgements about individual pieces of climate research. This also indicated that the Commission were actively engaged with the IPCC processes, in particular the Fifth Assessment Report, which they expect will produce new comprehensive climate assessments in the coming years.

But is this fast enough?

I have contacted them again to ask how newer climate science (and not several years old) can be fed into policy making.

Tax carbon to create jobs for the young.

The UK Government and Climate Change

That’s been discussed here before:

• The Department of Energy Security
• Committee on Climate Change discounts important science
• Can DEFRA be trusted with the climate?

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Climate officials and climate provisionals

There have been some interesting sessions at the House of Commons Climate Audit Committee.

Conventional coverage by the media largely covers the debate between official scientists (such as those in the IPCC) and the climate sceptics (or lying bastards as some of us call them). But for us cognoscenti the real debate is between the officials and the provisionals. The climate provisionals think climate change is much worse than the officials admit.

I don’t want to be disrespectful of those that have suffered in the complicated Irish tragedy and I have tried to think of alternatives to the terms “officials” and “provisionals” but I can find nothing else that has the right emotional power. The many tragedies that climate change is beginning to visit on the world will dwarf the troubles in Ireland.

Leeds Low Carbon Futures

I’m sure the The Economics of Low Carbon Cities, the City-Scale Mini-Stern Review, has been commissioned with the best of intentions but it is distraction because it follows an approach that is too little to late. It says

Low carbon measures can deliver multiple benefits for cities, enabling them to meet carbon reduction targets whilst at the same time growing the economy, creating jobs, reducing exposure to increasing energy costs and securing a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

The Problems:

The first problem is that the “carbon reduction targets” are woefully inadequate to do anything soon enough to stop dangerous climate change and the report does little to show the rest of the world how to take the problem seriously.

The second they is that they aspire to growing the economy as the means of creating jobs. They should consider the work economist Jeff Rubin, who points out that this century will see only a few exceptional years of growth because of the high cost of oil. He doesn’t claim oil will run out just that growth and globalisation will stall because of its high price.

The third is the assumption that energy efficiency in the absence of price changes can cut carbon emissions. There are several studies that show that energy efficiency measures alone are not particularly successful because of the rebound effect. An example of the rebound effect is when houses are insulated and instead of saving on the fuel bills householders turn up the thermostat. There are cases where this leads to increases in emissions.

The report should be congratulated for advocating the supply of lower carbon electricity.

The Department of Energy Security

It is my belief that Government recognises the danger of climate change but won’t do much that would hurt “UK  interests” – the UK will try keep to the letter of international agreements but not confront difficult problems.  I believe they ignore good science that points to a more catastrophic view of climate (see Committee on Climate Change discounts important science) and downplay the climate impact of  UK activities (e.g. see Can DEFRA be trusted with the climate?, Greenwash on insulation and Buried by Defra).

But they are interested in energy security. Somone I recognise as a top political advisor – who knows the truth behind the spin – once said to me that it’s too late to do anything about climate change, we must have lots of  nuclear power for energy security and a big navy to repel borders. That policy seems to fit many of the facts. Perhaps DECC should be renamed the Department of Energy Security.

It may be that it’s-too-late-just-try-and-look-after-ourselves is a policy to be debated but I’d like to be in on the debate. I know many others that would as well. Now for some small print…

Committee on Climate Change discounts important science

Summary

• We are heading for 4.0°C increase in global temperature this century.

• Missing feedbacks in climate models mean this is an underestimate.

• The Committee on Climate Change aims to limit the likelihood of a 4°C increase to very low levels (e.g. less than 1%)

• The Committee on Climate Change recognises some of the missing feedbacks but does not include them in its assessment of the probability of dangerous climate change.

• They underestimate the probability of dangerous climate change by discounting important science.

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The cost of energy security

In an earlier post, Japan and nuclear power, Robert argued that

the nuclear industry will emerge strengthened rather than fatally weakened [from the Japanese nuclear scare]. With some justification they can say that having stared into the abyss we have emerged relatively unscathed. Obsolete reactors built in the most earthquake troubled region of the world have endured an apocalyptic event. Design faults have been identified and can be rectified.

That assessment may be correct but let’s not do it on the cheap. A recent article in the Guardian by Natalie Kopytko sounded a note of caution regarding rising sea-levels and bigger storm surges. She has a piece published January issue of Energy Policy, Climate Change Nuclear Power and the Adaptation/Mitigation Dilemma. This paper ends

Achieving the desired level of safety, and minimising the impact to climate change adaptation will likely be too expensive at many locations. Therefore, according to the criteria outlined here, nuclear power is not and will not be a suitable mitigation measure.

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