The UK Government has claimed to become the ‘Greenest Ever Government’ since the previous Labour and Conservative leadership.

Following the announcement of the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill during the Queen’s Speech on 25 May 2010, David Cameron (Prime Minister) promised the country that he would lead the UK to become a low carbon economy through enhanced energy efficiency and low-carbon energy production, both of which remains to be seen.

The previous labour government had committed a total of £405 million towards promoting a green economy, of which the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) was a large arm of this delivery.  The SDC has made £70m savings every year through implementing a number of Green Initiatives.  The SDC also claims that additional savings of £350m per year through improvements in energy, water, waste, recycling and transport will also be met, regardless of funding, over the next five years.

However, recent announcements of funding cuts have led to the SDC to be axed.  The Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Caroline Spelman has led the cuts, whilst at the same time calling for the Government to ‘step up’ its green ambitions and drive further energy savings.  This contradictory view was not shared by the Chair of the SDC, who is simply disappointed at the announcement.

Many more cuts are on the way.  The budget led by George Osborne on 22 June had created a sense of hope and expectation that concrete energy policies were on the way, but these hopes were simply not met.  Instead, Osborne made slight references to climate change policies, but the lack of detail on policies, financial plans and commitments were heavily noted.

The government’s commitment to renewables has also come under question, with the Micropower Council saying that it is stalling on the introduction of the Renewable Heat incentive (RHI), which would pay householders for generating low carbon heat.

Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) issued a report yesterday suggesting that a commitment of £10 billion is needed, for investments in pre-construction off-shore wind farm technology if the UK is to meet its renewables electricity target of 30% by 2020. Capital funding for projects is critical to ensure that the UK invests in renewable projects.  The budget announcement was Osborne’s golden opportunity to make the Energy savings the government has promised to deliver.

To add to the frustration, the delay of implementing existing energy policies are being felt in most areas of the UK, particularly in terms of cost and uncertainty for business.

The six month delays to the October introduction date for the Part L changes, which are designed to make homes 25% more energy efficient, are causing losses in both carbon and heating bill savings.  It has emerged that the programme is still subject to approval by the government.

Perhaps more pressing are the delays to the most radical policy which involves defining a replacement for the electricity component of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) by adding a ‘top up carbon tax’ on power generators. This would be a way to establish a carbon ‘floor price’ which is needed to support carbon trading in the EU ETS scheme, which is a major part of the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill commitment.

MP Caroline Lucas has published a statement today arguing that ‘now is the time to invest’, but lack of government financial commitment and delays to current programmes is painting a gloomy outlook at the moment.  Is the UK really committed to becoming the ‘greenest ever government’ as promised at the start of the Coalition?

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have simultaneously launched a call for the European Union (EU) to commit to a larger reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. In recent months, the EU has weathered economic troubles. But the current plan for increased energy cuts is being billed as a bid to help economic recovery and to shore up energy security.

Currently, the agreed EU target is to reduce energy use by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. In scientific terms, the current 20% reduction target is not likely to restrict global temperature rise to the 2°C – the key climate danger threshold identified by the IPCC.

The main line of argument being repeated across the three major EU powers is that Europe’s current focus on recovery from recession must not distract from the type of economy that is appropriate in the medium and long-term. Thus, Jean-Louis Borloo, France’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary, states that “without a path to a sustainable low-carbon future, we will face continued uncertainty and significant costs from energy price volatility and a destabilizing climate.” His counterparts, in the UK and Germany respectively, Chris Huhne and Norbert Roettegen, agree. “We’re determined to make the economic case for the EU to cut its emissions by 30% by 2020 as quickly as possible,” Huhne said.

The current argument is that the recession itself has cut emissions in the EU’s traded sector by 11% from pre-crisis levels. Thus, the current carbon price is too low to stimulate significant investment in “green jobs” and “green technology.” Thus, Borloo, Huhne and Roettegen contest that if the EU sticks to 20% reduction targets, Europe is likely to lose the race to compete in the low-carbon world to countries such as China or the USA—which, following from the Copenhagen COP, they are looking to create attractive environments for low-carbon investments.

Though, reduced emissions during the recession has brought projected annual costs in 2020 of meeting the existing 20% target down a projected third from €70bn ($89bn, £59bn) to €48bn. A move up to 30% is now estimated to cost only €11bn more than the original cost of achieving a 20% reduction. To put this into perspective, according to the International Energy Agency, every year of delayed investment on low-carbon energy sources costs €300bn to €400bn at the global level into the future.

But it remains to be seen what the tangible motivation will be for increasing thresholds on carbon reductions to 30%. In the past, feed-in tariffs have been successful; but with a declared reduction target, perhaps even written into law formally, there will be issue with anxiety related to the current recession. Also, competition is key to motivate changes and the USA Congress just dropped the proposed comprehensive climate change package.

The Environment Ministers in the UK, Germany, and France have addressed general public in their call for increased reduction targets. In recent months there has been a surge in popular press discussion of extreme temperatures. The first six months of 2010 brought a string of warmest-ever global temperatures. Connecting these extreme weather months to long-term climate change patterns remains difficult, according to experts. “When we are looking at the scale of a season or a few months, we can’t talk about trends related to climate change,” Herve Le Treut, head of France’s Laboratory of Dynamical Meteorology. But, for the general public these extreme temperatures reflect the concept of climate change.

Between the extreme temperatures recently and potential business-case outlines, 30% reduction targets seem to have some potential. But only time and changing circumstances will tell…

This month, the European Commission published development roadmaps for seven key low carbon technologies. Thy relate to wind, solar, bioenergy, CCS, nuclear technologies, as well as smart grids and energy efficiency, for the period 2010 and 2020. 

There is a long-standing policy debate over how best to spur innovation in low-carbon technologies. One option is to let markets ‘pull’ technology development along. According to this reasoning, if governments ensure there is a credible price for CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, then companies will start to develop new technologies with lower emissions in response to this market signal. The other possibility is for governments to use a policy ‘push’ and pay directly for early-stage R&D into new and promising technologies.

The roadmaps follow the publication of a EU Strategic Energy Technology Plan in 2007. It outlined a vision where the EU enjoyed global leadership in a range of low-carbon technologies. Each roadmap has been developed by the Commission in consultation with the relevant industries, and attempts to describe, step by step, how each technology should develop over the next decade in order to fulfil the vision of the SET Plan. Development in each of the technology areas is backed by an European Industrial Initiative, which is a public-private partnership working in each of the low-carbon technology areas.

In practice, governments usually opt for a combination of the two. The SET Plan was the EU’s policy push for low technologies, accompanying the market pull of the carbon and renewable energy targets included in the Climate and Energy Package it unveiled in the same year.

While the Climate and Energy Package and its 20/20/20 targets have successfully made it into EU law, the SET Plan has arguably been somewhat neglected by comparison. The Commission’s new communication implicitly acknowledges this by speaking of the need for the SET Plan now to be ‘taken forward to implementation’.

But implementation costs money and, critically, the Commission’s new roadmaps don’t come with any new funding plans attached. The Commission calls on Member States to dig deeper into their own pockets to fund energy R&D – a recommendation that is unlikely to receive a warm welcome from treasuries across Europe as they seek to recover their battered public finances – and proposes to use the European Investment Bank’s lending power to fund research in promising areas.

The communication also refers to the role of other countries in developing low-carbon technologies. As with other areas of international climate negotiations, there are large inequalities in the distribution of low-carbon innovation. While the EU can justifiably point to its global climate leadership committing early to substantial emission reductions (at least, compared to other developed countries), the US is leading the pack in terms of its expenditure on developing low-carbon technologies, from biofuels to smart grids. A number of international negotiations are in progress to improve coordination between developed countries and sure that they all pull their weight when it comes to energy R&D; another set of negotiations again are discussing how developing countries can access these new technologies.

As reported by EurActiv, it is not only global cooperation that lies behind the SET Plan: there is something of a technology race occurring between different developed countries, with potentially large future gains available to countries who lead the development of new low-carbon technologies. The IEA this week released its technology road map for CCS that envisages an investment of US$6 trillion by 2050. Companies who are successful in developing CCS technologies now will be able to profit from this economic activity in future. Similar arguments apply to other low-carbon technologies like renewable generation and low-emissions vehicles.

There is no question that low-carbon technologies will be vital during the twnty-first century: without them mitigating climate change will be intolerably expensive. How many of those technologies will be European in origin depends in no small part on whether the Commission succeeds in finding R&D funding at a scale that matches its R&D vision.

Last week the US state department approved an oil pipeline which will carry tar sands oil from Alberta across Canada down to Wisconsin. The move follows long term plans between the US and Canada over energy deals, with tar sands already a key part of the US’s current oil provider. For environmentalists the move is a major setback, with tar sands, considered the dirtiest of all oils permanently and visibility crossing the boundary of the two countries.

Environmentalists both sides of the border and around the world can only greet this with disappointment. It had been thought during the Obama campaign that his rhetoric of “dirty oil” would restrict the development of tar sands to its most likely consumer, the US. However, what now appears likely is that the US has given tacit International approval to the oil sands by creating a permanent pipeline.

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Ice sculpture in Darling Harbour. Image by Kirsten Spry.

There are only a few months left until leaders of the international community convene in Copenhagen to agree upon a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. Prime Minister Rudd has already declared that Australia will not go to the convention empty-handed. So far, Australia’s climate change legislation has faced some hurdles with its CPRS bill. However, with the recent approval of the renewable energy target, there is hope that Rudd will be able to keep his promise.

Following the defeat of Prime Minister Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) 42-30 by the Senate on August 13th, the Renewable Energy Target was split from Rudd’s controversial carbon trading legislation. The new legislation – calling for a 20 per cent renewable energy target – was subsequently approved when brought before the Senate again last Friday.

This new target matches the renewable energy target set by the European Union and means that, within a decade, all Australian households could be powered by renewable energy. While the Greens argue that this renewable energy target should be 30 per cent, it is huge increase from the 8 per cent target in place prior to the bill’s approval.

Upon the failure of Rudd’s CPRS scheme, Minister of Water and Climate Change, Penny Wong, vowed to bring the legislation up for a vote once more in three months time.

“I urge those opposite who have become supporters of renewable energy in recent times to join the bigger fight, the bigger fight against climate change, and I urge them to support when the government next presents the carbon pollution reduction scheme,” says Wong.

With the approval of the new renewable energy targets, Australia is guaranteed at least some legislation on hand in Copenhagen. However, the Rudd government faces an uphill battle in the months ahead to get their carbon trading scheme through.

With one failure already on its books, the carbon trading legislation will need re-tooling over the course of the next three months in order to stand a chance at success.

In its current form, the proposed legislation faced several opponents who will make the same claims in the next round of votes if their concerns are not appeased. These opponents included the Greens, Conservatives and independent senators who blocked the emissions trade scheme due to its impact on the economy, environment, and on jobs for Australians.

With so many groups to appease, can Rudd make the necessary adjustments in time to get his carbon trading legislation through parliament? The timing might be short, but the Opposition has already begun drafting amendments for the bill and Government continues to have talks with the coal industry.

It may be impossible to please every opponent, but hopefully by mid-November, some form of consensus will be reached on an emissions trading scheme for Australia, allowing Rudd to bring a solid example of Australia’s commitment to combat climate change with him to Copenhagen.

As the G20 and UNFCCC meetings draw closer, France’s Green Plan (le Grenelle Environment Round Table) and a couple recent additions are worth a quick review. So a few things:
• The Oceans Initiative (Le Grenelle de la Mer) was originally announced in February 2009, but major action has just started in the past weeks.
• the French government will launch in April an eco loan of up to 30,000€ with no interest rate to increase the use of thermal renewable energy sources and of energy conservation.

Le Grenelle is a rare example of federal-level government-led effort to connect the State, unions, employers, NGOs, and local authorities in a rigorous process to determine approaches to climate change.

The “Grenelle Environnement,” officially launched on 6 July 2007, and combines the state and civil society in order to define new actions for sustainable development in France (through 2012). Action plans were developed around the themes of: climate change and energy, biodiversity and natural resources, health and the environment, production and consumption of ecological democracy, development patterns and environmental employment and competitiveness.

With regards to Le Grenelle de la Mer, four working groups have been formed this month around the themes of:
* Sustainable fishing
* Employment in the marine sector
* Coastal development
* Governance at the local and global level

The working groups will produce a road map before the summer, which will then be submitted to an inter-ministerial committee. The project is viewing ocean and fishing issues as strongly tied to changes in climate in the near and long-term futures.

According to the latest report on fisheries published by the FAO in March, around 28 percent of world fish stocks are over-fished.
One big unanswered question is how France will reconcile the need for sustainable fishing policies with the fishing subsidies, which cost France 27 billion Euros per year, according to calculations by Daniel Pauly, head of the Fisheries Center of the University of British Colombia.

Let’s shift gears to the Grenelle Housing Initiative, which is gearing up for action…

The energy and environment Minister, Jean-Louis Borloo expects heavy energy –efficient renovations to go above 400,000 per year, to be compared to the current 40,000. He goes on to say that each construction project built prior to 1990 has to be renovated. This represents 27 million housings, including 15 individual houses.

People willing to benefit from these loans have to choose two or three options among the following:

* Insulation of the roof ;
* Insulation of the walls ;
* Replacement of doors and windows ;
* Installation of a more efficient heating system ;
* Installation of a water heating or housing heating system with renewables.

By choosing two, one can benefit from an eco loan of 20,000€; choosing three, one can get 30,000€. Households will have from ten to fifteen years to payback these loans.

To Mr. Borloo, such a scheme would allow households to cut by 70 to 80 percent their heating bills.

Sounds like Frnace has some good ideas to share at the upcoming international climate change meetings.

The government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington has warned that:

“The UK is heading for a “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources…this will threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions.”

The issue of food and energy security rose high on the political agenda last year during a spike in oil and commodity prices. According to the FAO, a further 40 million people were forced into hunger in December 2008, primarily due to higher food prices, which brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007.  The ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.

Future predictions suggest that demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion. As prices for staple crops continue to rise (rice, maize and wheat) these price increases will be sustained by rising population growth in developing economies. 

“We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame, and if we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages” (Quote: Prof John Beddington)

Professor John Beddington was appointed as Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) on 1 January 2008, was previously awarded the Heidelberg Award for Environmental Excellence (June 1997).  His views are supported by the United Nations Environment Programme which predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025. 

Climate change would lead to pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate; thus according to the UN ”The agriculture industry needs to double its food production, using less water than today.”

Future predictions to fund Biofuel production over the next 15 years, an extra 30bn gallons in the US alone and the EU has a target for biofuels to make up 5.75% of transport fuels by 2010; Beddington comments at the Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster 2009:

“It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty.” (Quote: Prof John Beddington)

Perhaps improving agricultural productivity is one way to tackle the problem, but at present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested (Beddington), so we need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures.

It has also been suggested that genetically-modified food i.e. plants that are resistant to drought- a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding offer a solution, but this too is dependent on better water storage and cleaner energy supplies.  Others state that the uses of GM crops are simply unsafe.

The impact on the UK will be higher food prices and increased fuel poverty, but here in the UK Beddington is currently Chair of a new Cabinet Office task force set up to tackle food security. 

 What are your views on what the UK can do to better prepare for this ‘future scarcity storm’?

While Obama’s visit to Canada rightly made headlines across North America; as the first state visit and one that was open in its discussion of Climate Change measures (even if they Climate Change talks had to take a backseat to the economy. 2009 however, also saw the slow awakening of another key initiative to Combat climate change on the North American continent.

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