Tag: Emissions

California passes most stringent diesel-engine emissions rules: ‘Fighting for air’

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California has passed stringent new rules to limit emissions from diesel-fueled locomotive engines, putting the state on track to implement the most ambitious regulations on high-polluting railways in the country.
The landmark step taken by the California Air Resources Board (Carb), which regulates California’s air quality, requires the phase-out of inefficient locomotive engines more than 23 years old by 2030, increase the use of zero-emissions technology to transport freight from ports and throughout rail yards, and bans diesel-spewing engines from idling for longer than 30 minutes.
In the hours before the unanimous vote, dozens of environmental justice advocates and community members spoke in support of the rules, highlighting the heartbreaking burden placed on frontline communities who have been left to grapple with higher rates of asthma, cancer and other devastating health effects, along with the relentless rumbling that shakes neighborhoods along the tracks.
“We are fighting for air,” Gemma Pena Zeragoza, a resident from San Bernardino, tearfully told the board. Others shared stories of children forced to share inhalers, a kindergartener who couldn’t physically keep up with her love of running and family members lost to respiratory illnesses.
According to California regulators, diesel emissions are responsible for some 70% of Californians’ cancer risk from toxic air pollution. The rule would curb emissions on a class of engines that annually release more than 640 tons of tiny pollutants that can enter deep into a person’s lungs and worsen asthma, along with nearly 30,000 tons of smog-forming emissions known as nitrogen oxides. Carb analysts project a 90% reduction in local cancer risks in the decades following implementation.
The rule would also drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions from locomotives by an amount akin to removing all heavy-duty trucks from the state by 2030.
“It’s going to be groundbreaking and it’s going to address the diesel crisis that’s been poisoning communities near railyards for literal decades,” said Yasmine Agelidis, a lawyer with environmental non-profit Earthjustice.
Still, some advocates had hoped for more. After years of pushing for stronger regulations, many emphasized that there’s more to be done, including narrowing the time locomotives can be left to idle and hastening the transition to cleaner railways.

“I wish we could do more – but this is a good first step,” said John Balmes, a board member, before the vote, calling the rule the biggest single thing that could be done for public health and the environment.
California also still has to get authorization from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to move forward with the rule, but regulators aren’t worried.
“We are talking to them and getting positive feedback from them that we are on the right path with this regulation,” said Hector De La Torre, another board member, during Thursday’s meeting.
Representatives of the rail industry who spoke before the board pushed back against the proposal, saying that the accelerated timeline wasn’t feasible.. “Currently there is no clear path to zero-emissions locomotives,” a spokesperson for Union Pacific said during the meeting, adding that infrastructure and capacity for the shift is inadequate. The company has given itself a longer runway to transition, aiming to achieve net-zero by 2050.
The Association of American Railroads, an organization that represents all major freight railroads across North America, echoed those concerns about mandating a swifter transition, saying in a statement that it “ignores the complexity and interconnected nature of railroad operations and the reality of where zero-emission locomotive technology and the supporting infrastructure stand”.
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The organization has also been outspoken about how essential and efficient freight railway is at transporting goods – especially as online orders continue to rise. “It would have taken approximately 3.5m additional trucks to handle the 63.8m tons of freight that originated by rail in California in 2021,” the organization said.
Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, added the rule would be expensive for rail companies and increased costs will mean higher prices for many goods that move by rail.
But residents who live near railroads and have borne the brunt of breathing toxins say they have waited for clean air long enough.
Heidi Swillinger, who lives in a mobile home park in San Pablo, a small city in the San Francisco Bay Area, along the BNSF Railway, estimates that her home is just 20ft from the tracks. She said it’s not uncommon for diesel fumes to fill her house, resulting in a “thick, acrid, dirty smell”.
“Nobody wants to live next to a railroad track,” Swillinger said. “You move next to a railroad track because you don’t have other options.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 28, 2023
G7 vows more effort on renewables but sets no coal phaseout deadline

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The Group of Seven richest countries set higher 2030 targets for generating renewable energy, amid an energy crisis provoked by Russia’s war on Ukraine, but they set no deadline to phase out coal-fired power plants.
At a meeting hosted by Japan, ministers from Japan, the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the U.K. reaffirmed their commitment to reach zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and said they aimed to collectively increase solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by the end of this decade.
“The G7 contributes to expanding renewable energy globally and bringing down costs by strengthening capacity including through a collective increase in offshore wind capacity … and a collective increase of solar …,” the energy and environment ministers said in a 36-page communiqué issued after the two-day meeting.
“In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it’s important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time,” Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference, according to Reuters.
The ministers’ statement also condemned Russia’s “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine and its “devastating” impact on the environment. The ministers vowed to support a green recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine.
They also published a five-point plan for securing access to critical raw materials that will be crucial for the green transition.
Before the meeting, Japan was facing criticism from green groups over its push to keep the door open to continued investments in natural gas, a fossil fuel. The final agreed text said such investments “can be appropriate” to deal with the crisis if they are consistent with climate objectives.
The ministers’ meeting in the northern city of Sapporo comes just over a month before a G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Trump’s tariff time bomb threatens to blow up transatlantic trade

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BRUSSELS — The next big transatlantic trade fight is primed to explode.
Negotiators from Brussels and Washington are scrambling to solve a five-year dispute over steel and aluminum dating back to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European imports. They have until October to get a deal but are still so far apart that European officials now fear the chances of an agreement are slim.
Without a deal, both sides could reimpose billions of dollars worth of trade tariffs on each other’s goods — potentially spreading well beyond steel to hit products including French wines, U.S. rum, vodka and denim jeans.

While U.S. negotiators are still hopeful that an agreement can be reached in time, the political fallout of failure for President Joe Biden would be serious, with U.S. exports facing a hit just ahead of his potential re-election battle in 2024. More broadly, another breakdown in trade relations between Europe and the United States would heap further pressure on a relationship that is already under strain from Biden’s green subsidies package for American industries.
With a more assertive China threatening to disrupt supply lines, and Russia’s war in Ukraine straining global commerce, the last thing world trade needs is a new crisis between major Western allies. Six EU officials briefed on the talks worry that’s exactly what will happen.
“The start positions are just too far away,” said one of the officials, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive matters. “The huge concessions that would have to be made are politically not realistic in that timeframe.”
The transatlantic disagreement is a hangover from the days of Trump, who imposed tariffs on €6.4 billion worth of European steel and exports in 2018. The tariffs were extra sensitive because Trump had imposed them on grounds of national security.
After he came to power, Biden agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities rather than a complete end to the dispute. His aim was for negotiators to work jointly on making steel production greener and fighting global overcapacity. The unofficial U.S. goal is also to squeeze Beijing’s dumping of Chinese steel, which is made with far more coal-fired power.
But unless a new deal is struck by October, the risk is that tariffs return. A summit between Biden and EU leaders has now been penciled in for October, potentially to coincide with the final leg of talks on the dispute.
China hawks
Officials in Brussels see the ongoing negotiations as just another push from the U.S. to force them into taking a harder line against China. “The language just seems written to tackle one country specifically,” said one of the European officials.
Discussions only recently picked up pace through the exchange of a U.S. concept paper and then an EU response. Those texts showed how far apart the two sides are on key issues, the officials said.
Washington wants to impose tariffs on imported steel or aluminum products, which would increase progressively based on how carbon-intensive the manufacturing process is, according to the proposal seen by POLITICO. Countries that join the agreement, which would be open to nations outside the EU, would face lower tariffs, or none at all, compared to those that do not.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally at Waco airport | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The EU’s response — also seen by POLITICO — does not include any form of tariffs, according to the officials. Brussels fears the American plan for tariffs goes against the rules of the World Trade Organization, which is a no-go for the EU.
But a senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, told POLITICO that tariffs should not be off the table.
“That’s a pretty powerful tool for driving the market both to reduce carbon intensity as well as to reset the playing field to counteract non-market practices and excess capacity,” the U.S. official said. “What we’ve been trying to understand and respond to, in part, is what are those reasons that the EU has to have concerns about a tariff-type structure.”
Karl Tachelet, deputy director general of European steel association Eurofer, said: “We haven’t seen any real ambition or vision to use this as an opportunity to tackle excess capacity or decarbonization. So it can only lead to a clash of views.”
Americans don’t see it that way.
“The U.S. and the EU share a commitment to tackling the dual threat of non-market excess capacity and the climate crisis, and the Biden administration is committed to developing a high-ambition framework that accomplishes those objectives for our workers and these critical industries,” said Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
A student does steel work in Dayton, Ohio | Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images
But the senior Biden administration official argued that the EU proposal lacks ambition. It makes “tweaks around the margin” without actually attacking “the fundamental problem” that the two sides agreed to address when they called their truce.
“Our concern with the EU’s paper is that it doesn’t really change the dynamic of trade,” the U.S. official said.
“If we’re going to change the course of the impact of non-market excess capacity on market economies like the U.S. and EU, as well as really thinking about how can we use trade as a tool to drive decarbonization, we need to produce something that’s different and more ambitious,” the official added.
Several officials said Washington is also seeking an exemption from the EU’s carbon border tax, which imposes a tax on some imported goods to make sure European businesses are not undercut by cheaper products made in countries with weaker environmental rules.
Such an exemption for the U.S. is another no-go for Brussels. A European Commission spokesperson said giving the U.S. a pass on the carbon border tax would constitute a breach of WTO rules and “cannot be compared with” the U.S. steel and aluminum measures.
Workers at LB Steel LLC in Illinois manufacture wheel assemblies for high-speed trains | Scott Olson/Getty Images
Another European concern is that the U.S. wouldn’t scrap the possibility of re-imposing tariffs on the EU, even though the WTO branded them as illegal. Under Trump, Brussels argued only a complete withdrawal of the tariffs would satisfy the EU, contending the duties were an illegal slap in the face of an ally.
The senior U.S. official said that using national security to justify the tariffs — a rationale that would surely draw opposition in Brussels — “hasn’t been a part of our conversation with the EU to date.” But the Biden administration’s concept paper wasn’t written with WTO compliance top of mind, the official added.
Landing zone
Brussels and Washington are now negotiating to find a landing zone.
“Both sides are coming from two different positions on this,” said one of the European officials, while stressing that “there is a mutual interest to find a solution.”
Others were more pessimistic. Either way, a Plan B is taking shape in the background. Several of the European officials stressed the EU and the U.S. can also buy more time by prolonging the current ceasefire. “The deadline is always flexible,” said Uri Dadush, a Washington-based fellow at the Bruegel think tank. “Both sides can easily agree to extend.”
Steven Overly reported from Washington. Sarah Anne Aarup and Camille Gijs contributed reporting from Brussels.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 4, 2023
EU chiefs flew to UN climate talks in private jet

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The EU’s joint presidents flew to last year’s U.N. climate talks in Egypt aboard a private jet, according to data seen by POLITICO that revealed heavy use of private flights by European Council President Charles Michel.
The flight data, received through a freedom of information request, shows that Michel traveled on commercial planes on just 18 of the 112 missions undertaken between the beginning of his term in 2019 and December 2022.
He used chartered air taxis on some 72 trips, around 64 percent of the total, including to the COP27 talks in Egypt last November and to the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021. Michel invited Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the flight to Egypt.

The EU presidents’ choice of transportation to the climate talks highlights a long-standing dilemma for global leaders: how to practice what they preach on greenhouse gas emissions while also facing a demanding travel schedule that makes private aviation a tempting option — even a necessary evil.
When Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, arrived in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, he delivered a sober message to the gathered climate dignitaries: “We have a climatic gun to our head. We are living on borrowed time,” he said, before adding: “We are, and will remain, champions of climate action.”
According to the NGO Transport & Environment, a private jet can emit 2 tons of planet-cooking CO2 per hour. That means during the five-hour return flight to Sharm El-Sheikh, Michel and von der Leyen’s jet may have emitted roughly 20 tons of CO2 — the average EU citizen emits around 7 tons over the course of a year.
Most COP27 delegates — including the EU’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans, according to a Commission official — took commercial flights normally packed with sun-seeking tourists.
The decision to travel to Egypt by private jet was made after no commercial flights were available to return Michel to Brussels in time for duties at the European Parliament, his spokesperson Barend Leyts told POLITICO.
Staff also explored the option of flying aboard Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s plane, but it was scheduled to return before Michel’s work at COP27 would be completed.
Unlike many national governments, the EU does not own planes to transport its leaders. Hiring a private jet was “the only suitable option in the circumstances,” said Leyts. “Given that the president of the Commission was also invited to the COP27, we proposed to share a flight.”
Leyts stressed that the flight complied with internal Council rules, which dictate that officials should fly commercial when possible.
A spokesperson from the Commission confirmed that the famously hostile pair had shared the cabin to Sharm El-Sheikh, noting that reaching the destination by commercial flight was difficult due to the high volume of traffic and von der Leyen’s packed schedule.
“The fact that both presidents traveled together, with their teams, shows that they did what was possible to optimize the travel arrangements and reduce the associated carbon footprint,” added the Commission’s spokesperson.
The Commission previously told POLITICO that von der Leyen’s use of chartered trips is limited to “exceptional circumstances,” such as for security reasons or if a commercial flight isn’t available or doesn’t fit with diary commitments. The institution has previously declined POLITICO’s request to share detailed information on the modes of transportation used by the Commission chief for her foreign trips.
As part of its climate goals, the EU is looking to tighten its rules on staff travel to encourage greener modes of transport and bring down the institution’s emissions.
The Commission is aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 by switching to “sustainable business travel,” favoring greener travel options and encouraging employees to cycle, walk or take public transport to work.
Leyts said Michel’s staff enquired about the possibility of using sustainable aviation fuel, but were “regrettably” told that neither Brussels nor Sharm El-Sheikh airports had provision.
Since 2021, Michel has offset the emissions of his flights through a scheme that funds a Brazilian ceramics factory to switch its fuel from illegal timber to agricultural and industrial waste products, according to Leyts. Since 2022, that has applied to all of his flights.
Erika Di Benedetto contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

March 28, 2023
Brussels to Berlin: We’ll find a way to save the car engine

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On the future of the internal combustion engine, Germany has gotten its own way, again.
The European Commission and Germany’s Transport Ministry announced a deal Saturday morning that commits the EU executive to figuring out a legal way to allow the sale of new engine-installed cars running exclusively on synthetic e-fuels even after a mandate comes into force requiring sales of only zero-emission vehicles from 2035.
“We have found an agreement with Germany on the future use of e-fuels in cars,” the Commission’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans said on Twitter. “We will work now on getting the CO2 standards for cars regulation adopted as soon as possible.”

The deal heads off a row over car legislation that was all-but-agreed until Germany, along with a small club of allies, slammed on the brakes just days before formal final approval on a law that is the centerpiece of the EU’s green agenda.
Timmermans said the Commission would “follow up swiftly” with “legal steps” to turn a non-binding annex to the law, introduced originally at the insistence of Europe’s car-making titan Germany, into a concrete workaround allowing new vehicles running on e-fuels, which do emit some CO2, to be sold post-2035.
As a first step, the Commission has agreed to carve out a new category of e-fuel-only vehicles inside the existing Euro 6 automotive rulebook and then integrate that classification into the contentious CO2 standards legislation that mandates the 2035 phase-out date for sales of new combustion-engine vehicles.
The terms of the final deal from Timmermans’ cabinet chief Diederik Samsom, seen by POLITICO, say the Commission will reopen the text of the engine-ban law if EU lawmakers manage to stop the introduction of a technical annex that would make space for e-fuels alongside the agreed CO2 standards. Reopening the proposed law’s text is a move that is fundamentally opposed by the European Parliament and green-minded countries.
The crux of the standoff was that Germany demanded binding legal language that would ensure the Commission would find a way to satisfy Berlin’s demands even if the European Parliament, or the courts, moved to block any tweaks or legal annexes to the 2035 zero-emissions legislation covering cars and vans.
In the statement, Samsom promised the Commission will publish its full e-fuels proposal as a so-called delegated act this fall. In practice, that means the original 2035 legislation will pass at first — offering the European Commission a critical win — but it sets up a future fight over the technical additions needed to satisfy Berlin.
“The law that 100 percent of cars sold after 2035 must be zero emissions will be voted unchanged by next Tuesday,” said Pascal Canfin, the French liberal lawmaker spearheading the file in the assembly. “Parliament will decide in due course on the Commission’s future proposals on e-fuels.”
Engine endgame
The deal means energy ministers can sign off on the original 2035 proposal during a meeting on Tuesday given that Berlin now has assurances that its demands will be met. In advance, EU ambassadors will review the bilateral deal between Brussels and Berlin on Monday, an EU diplomat said.
The agreement caps a decade of German pushback on EU automotive emissions rule-making.
In 2013, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened late to water down previous iterations of car emission standards legislation, securing tweaks critical to the country’s hulking automotive industry.
The deal means Germany has effectively dropped its last-minute opposition to the car engine ban law | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Since the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal, most carmakers have shifted their investments toward electric vehicles, but some industry interests, notably high-end carmakers such as Porsche and Germany’s web of combustion engine component makers, have sought to save traditional gas guzzlers from the clutches of a de facto EU sales ban.
Figuring out a final workaround on e-fuels in the 2035 legislation will still take some months, given that technical standards haven’t yet been clarified for setting out a “robust and evasion-proof” system for selling cars that can only be fuelled on synthetic alternatives to petrol and diesel, according to Samsom’s statement.
The timeline is already clear in Berlin’s perspective. “We want the process to be completed by autumn 2024,” said the German Transport Ministry, which is run by the country’s Free Democratic Party. The FDP, the most junior in Germany’s three-way governing coalition, had wanted fixed legal language to guarantee a loophole for e-fuels, which can theoretically be CO2-neutral but which wouldn’t normally comply with the emissions legislation since they do still emit tailpipe pollutants.
With the FDP’s popularity tumbling, the car policy row with Brussels has been a popular talking point in German media over recent weeks. One survey reports that 67 percent of respondents are against the engine ban legislation. Ahead of national elections in late 2025, the FDP is betting on driver-friendly policies such as e-fuels, new road construction initiatives and a block on the implementation of a national highway speed limit, to raise its profile.
Market watchers don’t anticipate e-fuels to offer much in the way of a mass-market alternative to electric vehicles, given that they are costly to produce and don’t exist in commercial volumes today. A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research reports that even if all global e-fuel production was allocated to German consumers, the output would only meet a tenth of national demand in the aviation, maritime and chemical sectors by 2035.
“E-fuels are an expensive and massively inefficient diversion from the transformation to electric facing Europe’s carmakers,” said Julia Poliscanova from the green group Transport & Environment.
Auto politics
Despite not being on the formal agenda, the issue dominated discussions on the sidelines of this week’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. A deal between Brussels and Berlin was only struck at 9 p.m. on Friday, hours after leaders left the EU capital, before being formally announced on social media early Saturday.
“The way is clear,” said German Transport Minister Volker Wissing in announcing the agreement. “We have secured opportunities for Europe by keeping important options open for climate-neutral and affordable mobility.”
The deal means Germany has effectively dropped its last-minute opposition to the car engine ban law, collapsing a blocking minority of Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic that had put a roadblock in front of final ratification by ministers of the deal reached last October between the three EU institutions.
It remains unclear whether Italy’s attempts to find a separate workaround for biofuels — promoted personally by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the summit — also succeeded. However, without Berlin’s support, Rome doesn’t have a way to block the legislation.
German Transport Minister Volker Wissing | Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Responses to the Commission working up a bespoke fix for its biggest member country on otherwise agreed legislation were generally negative, with many arguing the e-fuels issue is a diversion.
“The opening for e-fuels does not mean a significant change for the transformation to electric cars,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg. He said the Commission’s dealmaking raised “new investment uncertainties” that undermined the bloc’s efforts to catch up with China, the world’s leading producer of electric vehicles.
Still, most are just happy that the combustion engine row is ended, for now.
“It is good that this impasse is over,” said German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, who backed the original 2035 deal without a reference to e-fuels. “Anything else would have severely damaged both confidence in European procedures and in Germany’s reliability inside European politics,” the minister said in a statement.

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March 23, 2023
Toxic Germanity and the battle for ‘das Auto’

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Matthew Karnitschnig is POLITICO’s chief Europe correspondent.
BERLIN — Europe’s worst-kept secret is that the Germans ultimately decide everything.
“I’ll never forget how all the other member states held back in anticipation, waiting to see what the Germans would do,” a senior U.K. official, recalling his time in Brussels, recently told a private dinner of MPs and other German officials in Berlin.

The recollection was meant as a compliment, one the official hoped would ingratiate him with the Germans around the table.
Sad thing is it worked.
The second worst-kept secret in Brussels is that for all the “peace project” kumbaya, the Germans actually enjoy dominating the place. That said, even stalwart veterans of the EU bubble were hard-pressed in recent days to cite a more blatant example of toxic Germanity than Berlin’s last-minute intervention to save the internal combustion engine.
To recap: Last week, EU countries were expected to rubber-stamp a package of measures aimed at ridding Europe’s roads of fuel-burning autos. Under the plan, the EU would prohibit new registrations of cars powered by internal combustion engines beginning in 2035. The sweeping deal, the culmination of years of painstaking negotiations in Brussels and European capitals, is a pillar of the EU’s ambitious goal to become carbon neutral by 2050.
Berlin’s 11th-hour intervention on a deal everyone believed was done and dusted not only left the EU’s environmental policy in limbo, it also laid bare the bloc’s power vertical in all its dubious Teutonic glory. The message: Germany is no longer even trying to hide its power.
Enter France.
“For the French, the situation also represents an opportunity and they are never ones to waste a good crisis,” an EU diplomat said. “The more they can contribute to the idea that Germany goes it alone, the more it strengthens the view that the Germans are an unreliable partner in Europe.”
Germany’s unprecedented move has given rise to fears that other countries will try to follow its example and hold EU reforms hostage by threatening a last-minute veto to win concessions, in effect rewriting the rules of engagement.
Germans may not be known for their finesse, but even so, Berlin’s bare-knuckle tactics to save the engine have not just shocked Brussels veterans, it’s angered them.
That’s why the real significance of the standoff has less to do with CO2 emissions than how Brussels works. One big concern among EU insiders is that the coalition Germany has assembled to save the car, which includes the likes of Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, will go rogue as a bloc on other fronts, with or without German support.
Berlin’s views on “the future of mobility” were so clear that Mercedes, VW and BMW pledged to shift to all-electric by 2035 | Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
It’s easy to mock the circuitous nature of EU decision-making, the push and pull between the European Commission, Parliament and Council, communicated in the opaque dialect of Brussels’ earnest eurocrats.
Boring as it may be, the alchemy produces bona fide results that legitimize and sustain the EU.
That Germany is willing to tinker with this delicate balance betrays either ignorance in the current regime of how the EU works, ambivalence, or both.
One could argue with justification that Germany was never going to kill the golden goose. Invented and perfected in Germany over more than a century by the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Audi, the internal combustion engine has been the wellspring of German pride and prosperity for generations.
The image of a piston-fired Porsche 911 zooming down the autobahn is as core to German identity as sex is to the French.
Take that away, what’s left (aside from beer and bratwurst)?
Indeed, considering that the country’s automakers haven’t proved particularly adept at manufacturing electric cars (or more specifically the batteries at the heart of the vehicles), there was a strong case for Germany to develop low-emission synthetic fuels that would keep the internal combustion engine alive.
Berlin had at least a decade to do so.
Thing is, it didn’t, choosing instead to pour billions into subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles and the infrastructure to recharge them (full disclosure: the author is a beneficiary of such a subsidy).
What’s more, Germany also encouraged other European countries to follow suit. In fact, Berlin’s views on “the future of mobility” were so clear that Mercedes, VW and BMW pledged to shift to all-electric by 2035. The cluster of countries that have served as the workbench for those companies, from Slovakia to Hungary and Austria, all agreed to go along.
That’s why the German insistence this month that the EU carve out an exception to the engine ban for cars powered by synthetic, so-called e-fuels has caught the rest of Europe flat-footed.
Why now? In a word, politics.
Germans may not be known for their finesse, but even so, Berlin’s bare-knuckle tactics to save the engine have not just shocked Brussels veterans, it’s angered them | John Thys/AFP
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats have dropped below 20 percent in a number of recent polls, putting them more than 10 percentage points behind the first-place Christian Democrats.
Scholz’s smallest coalition partner, the business-oriented Free Democrats (FDP), are in even worse shape. The party fared miserably in a string of recent regional elections and in national polls, it is teetering perilously close to the 5 percent threshold parties need to surpass for entry into parliament.
Party leader Christian Lindner, who used to drive souped-up Porsches around the storied Nürburgring race track, has vowed to save the engine from the clutches of the Green lobby.
Scholz, keenly aware that his party’s base also remains attached to “das Auto,” has been happy to let him try and has so far not stepped in to intervene.
About 1 million Germans work in the auto industry and many of those jobs — especially at suppliers — would be lost if the engine is killed for the simple reason that electric cars have far fewer (and different) parts than traditional automobiles.
The real mystery is why the Greens, the other party in Germany’s governing triumvirate, have not done more to resolve the crisis. Not only has the environmental party championed the engine ban for years, but it is also the most pro-European party in the government and would normally be at pains to keep Berlin from even appearing to undermine Brussels.
Yet Green Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has largely been silent on the issue. Far from the fray in Europe, he was last spotted in the Amazon having his face painted by an indigenous girl during a swing through the region.
In a bid to defuse the standoff ahead of next week’s EU leaders’ summit, the German government sent a letter to the Commission on Wednesday, spelling out what it wants in return for lifting its blockade. Its chief demand — a broad exception for e-fuels — was already rejected by the Parliament and other institutions during the original negotiations over the package.
Reversing that would require the deal to be reopened.
The French are sure to cry foul.
And then Germany will push ahead anyway.
Joshua Posaner contributed reporting.

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March 15, 2023
Joe Biden: EU conservative hero

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Joe Biden’s European friends may be miffed about his climate law.
But the U.S. president’s America-first, subsidy-heavy approach has actually gained some grudging — and for a Democrat unlikely — admirers on the Continent: Europe’s conservatives.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook.

Their frustration is homing in on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a putative conservative the EPP itself helped install. Officials fear they have let von der Leyen lead the party away from its pro-industry, regulation-slashing ideals, according to interviews with leading party figures.
Biden’s law has now brought their grumbling to the surface.
On Thursday, a wing of EPP lawmakers defected during a Parliament vote over whether to back von der Leyen’s planned response to Biden’s marquee green spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their concern: it doesn’t go far enough in championing European industries.
Essentially, they want it to feel more like Biden’s plan.
The IRA was an “embarrassment” for Europe, said Thanasis Bakolas, the EPP’s power broker and secretary general. The EU “had all these well-funded policies available. And then comes Biden with his IRA. And he introduces policies that are more efficient, more effective, more accessible to businesses and consumers.”
A bitter inspiration
European leaders were blindsided last summer when Biden signed the IRA into law.
Since then, they have complained loudly that the U.S. subsidies for homegrown clean tech are a threat to their own industries. But for the EPP, ostensibly on the opposite side to Biden’s Democrats, the law is also serving as bitter inspiration.
“It’s a little bit like in the fairy tale, that someone in the crowd — and this time it wasn’t the boy, it was the Americans — pretty much pointing the finger to the [European] Commission, and saying, ‘Oh, the king is naked?’” said Christian Ehler, a German European Parliament member from the EPP.
Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
Under the EU’s centerpiece climate policy, the European Green Deal, the European Commission, the EU’s policy-making executive arm, has doggedly introduced law after law aimed at squeezing polluters from every angle using tighter regulations or carbon pricing. The goal is to zero out the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Biden’s IRA approaches the same goal by different means. It is laden with voter- and industry-friendly tax breaks and made-in-America requirements. Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission.
For some, the sense of betrayal isn’t directed at Washington, but inward.
“We learned that we lost track for the last two years on the deal part of the Green Deal,” said Ehler, who is using his seat on Parliament’s powerful Committee on Industry, Research and Energy to push for fewer climate burdens on industry. “We are in the midst of the super regulation.”
The irony is that Biden and the Democrats probably wouldn’t have chosen this path were it not for Republicans’ decades-long refusal to move any form of climate regulation through Congress.
The IRA was a product of political necessity, shaped to suit independent-minded Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin of coal-heavy West Virginia. If Biden and his party had their druthers, Biden’s climate policy might have looked far more like the Brussels model.
Let’s get political
As party boss, Bakolas is preparing the platform on which the EPP — a pan-European umbrella group of 81 center-right parties — will campaign for the 2024 EU elections.
He is also flirting with an alliance with the far right, meaning the center-right and center-left consensus that has dominated climate policy in Brussels could break up. Bakolas advocates “a more political approach.”
“We need to do the same [as the U.S.], with the same tenacity and determination,” he said.
One big problem: It’s hard for the European Union, which doesn’t control tax policy, to match the political eye-candy of offering cashback for electric Hummers (something Americans can now claim on their taxes).
“Can Europe, this institutional arrangement in Brussels … act as effortlessly and seamlessly as the American administration? No, because it’s a difficult exercise for Europe to reach a decision … but it’s an exercise we need to do,” said Bakolas.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
In other words, the EPP is looking to emulate Biden’s law — at least in spirit, if not in legalese.
The conservative thinking is beginning to coalesce into a few main themes: slowing down green regulation they feel burden industry; using sector-specific programs to help companies reinvest their profits into cleaning up their businesses; and slashing red tape they say slows already clean industries from getting on with the job.
EPP lawmaker Peter Liese said he had been “desperately calling” for these red-tape-slashing measures. He was glad to see some in von der Leyen’s contested IRA response plan. But Liese and the EPP want more.
“We can have an answer of the two crises, the two challenges, that we have: the climate crisis and challenge for our economy, including the IRA,” said Liese.
Green groups and left-wing lawmakers argue the EPP is simply using the IRA and Europe’s broader economic woes as a smokescreen to cover a broad retreat from the Green Deal. In recent months the party has blocked, or threatened to block, a host of green regulations proposed by the Commission.
“This is like trying to put on the ballroom shoes of your grandfather and trying to do a 100-meter sprint,” Green MEP Anna Cavazzini told Parliament on Wednesday.
Bakolas rejected that.
He said the party had finally woken up to the need to set a climate agenda that better reflected its own, center-right, free-market ideals.
“What the IRA did,” he said, “is to ring an alarm bell.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
In from the coal: Australia sheds climate pariah status to make up with Europe

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Europe loves the Aussies again.
Australia was, until recently, an international pariah on climate change and a punchline in Brussels. But a new government in Canberra coupled with Europe’s energy and economic woes mean a better relationship is now emerging — one that could fuel Europe’s transition to a clean economy, while enriching Australia immensely.
“Europe is energy hungry and capital rich, Australia’s energy rich and capital hungry, and that means that there’s a lot that we can do together,” said Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.
A little over a year ago, relations between Australia and the EU were in a parlous state. The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison had reneged on a nuclear submarine contract — a decision the current government stands by — incensing the French and by extension the EU. Equally as frustrating for many Europeans was Australia’s climate policy, which was viewed as outstandingly meager even in a lackluster global field.
The election of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — whose father was Italian — last May brought a change in tone, as well as a new climate target and a trickle of policies designed to cut greenhouse gas pollution that heats up the planet.
Those moves were “the entry ticket” to dealings with Europe, Bowen told POLITICO in Brussels, the second-last stop on a European tour. “Australia’s change of climate positioning, climate policy, has changed our position in the world.”
That’s been most notable in progress on talks on a free trade agreement with the EU. Landing that deal would be a “big step forward,” said Bowen. Particularly because when it comes to clean energy, Australia wants to sell and Europe wants to buy.
Using the vast sunny desert in its interior, Australia could be a “renewable energy superpower,” Bowen argued. Solar energy can be tapped to make green hydrogen and shipped to Europe, he said.

European governments are listening closely to the pitch. Bowen was in Rotterdam on Monday, inspecting the potential to use the Netherlands port as an entry for antipodean hydrogen. He signed a provisional deal with the Dutch government to that end. Last week, Bowen announced a series of joint investments with the German government in Australian hydrogen research projects worth €72 million.
It’s not just sun, Australia has tantalum and tungsten and a host of minerals Europe needs for building clean tech, but that it currently imports. In many cases those minerals are refined or otherwise processed in China, a dependency that Brussels is keen to rapidly unwind — not least with its Critical Raw Materials Act, expected in March.
According to a 2022 government report, Australia holds the second-largest global reserves of cobalt and lithium, from which batteries are made, and is No. 1 in zirconium, which is used to line nuclear reactors.
Asked whether Australia can ease Europe’s dependence on China, Bowen said: “We want to be a very strong factor in the supply chains. We’re a trusted, reliable trading partner. We have strong ethical supply chains. We have strong environmental standards.”
But Australia has its own entanglements.
Certain Australian minerals, notably lithium, are largely refined and manufactured in China. Bowen said he was keen on bringing at least some of that resource-intensive, polluting work back to Australia.
While its climate targets are now broadly in line with other rich nations, the rehabilitation of Australia’s climate image jars with its role as one of the biggest fossil fuel sellers on the planet.
Australia’s coal exports, when burned in overseas power plants, generate huge amounts of planet-warming pollution — almost double the amount produced annually by Australians within their borders. Australia is also the third-largest exporter of natural gas, including an increasing flow to the EU. At home, the government is facing calls from the Greens party and centrist climate independents to reject plans for more than 100 coal and gas developments around the country.
But how many of Bowen’s counterparts raised the issue of Australia’s emissions during his travels around Europe? “Nobody,” he said. “We are here to help.”
Antonia Zimmermann contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 8, 2023
Dutch PM Rutte wants EU to play it frugal in face of mega US subsidies

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Don’t inject fresh money into the European Union — just reform national policies, says Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
That’s the best way to prevent EU industry from getting wiped out by U.S. companies under Washington’s major new green subsidies scheme, Rutte told a group of journalists at the office of the Dutch embassy to the EU in Brussels on Tuesday.
“There’s so much money at this moment in the system,” Rutte said shortly after meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. He also argued for deeper reforms, stressing how some European countries spend so much on their pension systems — “all money you cannot spend on innovation and green tech.”
Rutte is often viewed as the key leader of the so-called “frugal” group of European countries, comprised of like-minded fiscally conservative nations. The group, which also includes Denmark and Sweden, has been reluctant to increase national contributions to EU coffers — at least until the coronavirus pandemic forced them to partly adjust that line.
The discussion among EU decision-makers on how to preserve the bloc’s industrial base is taking place ahead of a meeting of EU leaders next month as the U.S. moves to roll out a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
The U.S. legislation has stoked fears about consequences for European industry and sparked calls to revisit rules on state aid. Another concern is that such subsidies put the EU’s single market at risk by conferring an outsized advantage to countries with larger fiscal capacity, such as Germany, which have more space to financially maneuver.
Rutte, who was recently in Washington to visit U.S. President Joe Biden, said: “There are a number of consequences to this Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — but unintended.” The IRA “forces us to think about how we organize ourselves” to remain competitive, he added.
On the one hand, he sees U.S. attempts to meet climate targets as a positive development. On the other hand, he pointed to risks to having a level playing field, like with electric mobility. “Companies might shift investments from the EU to the U.S.,” he said, parroting a much-repeated fear.

But EU subsidies should remain unaltered, Rutte argued. Regarding calls to adapt to the IRA by changing EU aid rules, he conceded: “I can accept some changes as long as they are limited.”
Rutte was clear on his belief that no fresh EU money should be put on the table. “I mean, not grants, but even not loans,” he said. “There’s so much still around” — for example loans in the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the centerpiece of the EU’s pandemic recovery plan.
A draft of the text that leaders would seek to agree on at their upcoming European Council meeting hints at opening up new sources of EU funding. The draft, seen by POLITICO, makes calls “to take work forward building notably on the success of the SURE programme,” referring to the EU’s loans-based program to support employment floated by Rome and others.
Rutte stressed that he would not like to see this proposal in the text, which will be discussed by EU ambassadors on Wednesday.
On the question of whether he’d be in favor of a new SURE program, “My answer would be that we have serious doubts,” he said.
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023