Policy makers around the world are hearing a lot of advice on how to design their stimulus packages. This comes from the IEA where Fatih Birol lays out five fundamental lessons we can learn from the stimulus packages that came out of the 2008 global financial crisis. His main headings are: Build on what you already have â and think big (e.g. feed-in tariffs, production tax credits); Choose technologies that are ready for the big time (e.g. wind, … [Read more...]
Four reasons to reconcile EU economic recovery and the climate agenda
Politicians and interest groups are polarising the debate between post COVID-19 economic recovery and decarbonisation. By doing so, they jeopardise Europeâs future. It has to stop. While Pascal Canfin, prominent Member of the European Parliament, launched a vast call to restore Europeâs economy in line with the EU Green Deal, others are calling to delay or freeze climate ambitions. European and national leaders have to understand that they … [Read more...]
Regulatory challenges to foster cross-border trade in electricity systems with increasing shares of renewables
The share of renewable generation in Europeâs power system is rising fast, but interconnection is not keeping up. Join us on May 19, 2020 to discuss this and related issues. More wind and solar makes the supply of electricity much more dependent on the weather. Nobody wants to build capacity only to switch it off when thereâs too much heading onto the local grid. This could put an extra strain on delivering the Green Deal. One solution is to … [Read more...]
Stimulus opportunity: Hand all carbon taxes to households
Governments worldwide now have the opportunity to radically rethink how household consumption can be stimulated, and where that money can come from. And every serious politician knows a radical change in fiscal policy is a rare opportunity to shape perceptions and values. This could be that moment for carbon taxes. Gerard Wynn at IEEFA first notes the success they have had in reducing emissions in the EU. With a rise in the CO2 price on the … [Read more...]
Beyond pilots: scaling up energy innovation in cities
Our current electricity grid was built hundreds of years ago, when power generation was centralised and our energy needs were far simpler. Electricity was distributed from large stable power plants to the consumers through a unidirectional flow that was easily predictable and did not require complex control. But over the last decades, cities have been going through a substantial change, seeing an exponential increase of their energy needs which … [Read more...]
Behaviour Change: Covid-19 lockdown kicks open the door to a net-zero pathway
Working from home and minimal travel are âno brainerâ ways to drastically reduce emissions. Theyâve never been tried on a nationwide scale anywhere. Now they are, everywhere. Everyone is doing their best to make it work. Next, food waste should also be in decline, hopefully. Even if panic stockpiling happens, peopleâs mindsets are being changed as they try to use everything theyâve bought. The act of re-thinking what and how much we eat, in every … [Read more...]
Utilities can help their central banks, âloaningâ electricity during the slump
The coronavirus slump is forcing governments around the world to inject large amounts of cash into the hands of consumers and businesses, until this is all over. In the U.S. itâs $2tn. Catherine Wolfram at the Haas School of Business suggests a way to cut that bill, easing the pressure on central bankers. Utilities (electricity, water, gas) should allow customers to defer payment (instead of using valuable bailout money to pay the utilities). The … [Read more...]
How do we accelerate EU decarbonisation now?
The economic stimulus needed to overcome the current pandemic requires significant resources. But it comes at a time when we need to accelerate the energy transition, which is currently part of the European Green Deal and will also require an increase in resources. Andrei Marcu at ERCSTÂ examines how the transition will be funded, what are the sources of funding and how they relate to and will be impacted by the current health situation. A range … [Read more...]
Coronavirus bailouts should be explicit, not hidden by CO2 tax cuts. And nothing for Oil
Many industries will be pleading their case for a Coronavirus bailout. Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas explains why the oil industry should not be one of them. Oil prices, already on the slide, are indeed sinking lower thanks to the pandemic. But decarbonisation should be sending them that way anyway. And the oil price has always be artificially high thanks to the OPEC cartel and weak or complicit âcompetitionâ from non-OPEC … [Read more...]
New EU Industrial Strategy focuses on emissions, but is it enough?
This month the European Commission released its new EU Industrial Strategy to set the direction of travel for the EU economy in the context of the European Green Deal. Energy-intensive industries - like steel, cement, aluminium, paper and chemicals - account for roughly 17% of EU emissions and have struggled to reduce them in recent years. But Johanna Lehne at E3G doubts the strategy is enough to meet the ambition of becoming the first … [Read more...]
Coronavirus: economic stimulus plans open a door for clean energy
Weâre facing an unexpected global economic slump thanks to the coronavirus sweeping across the world. In response, governments everywhere are tabling stimulus packages to get us through what is a temporary but severe drop in economic activity. That stimulus could be used, as it usually is, to get us back on the same path. But it should be used to steer us further and faster onto the new path of clean energy, says Fatih Birol, Executive Director … [Read more...]
EU Green Deal: meeting targets by lowering non-EU neighbour emissions too
The EUâs Green Deal and its increasingly ambitious transition policies cannot be limited to its member states, writes Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega at the IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate. For its emissions targets to be met in a meaningful way the EU needs to ensure its neighbours to the east and in North Africa follow. The danger is that carbon intensive industries simply shift to those neighbours, and their products get imported back in. … [Read more...]
UKâs COP26 Presidency will be the first big test of its post-Brexit diplomatic skills
Novemberâs COP26 will arguably be the most important since the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. By then, all signatory nations are required to submit their new and improved nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that set a credible pathway towards reducing their emissions. So far only the Marshall Islands, Suriname, and Norway have done so. Lucien Chabason and Lola Vallejo at IDDRI ask whether the UK teams behind their new COP26 President, … [Read more...]
Tech-Neutral Auctions for Renewable Energy: are poorly defined rules creating loopholes?
The ECâs Environmental and Energy State Aid Guidelines 2014-2020 (EEAG) require Member States to implement technology-neutral auctions as part of their renewable energy support schemes. However, the reality looks quite different, write Bastian Lotz and Silvana Tiedemann from Navigant (a Guidehouse company), Lars Jerrentrup of Aurora Energy Research, and Lion Hirth from Neon. Most Member States continue to use technology-specific auctions, using … [Read more...]
The EU can support Central and East Europeâs transition
Six Central and East European nations, heavily dependent on coal, have been very cautious about the pace of the EUâs transition. For them - Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - the political and economic disruption looks far harder to bear. E3G has just released a report that suggests this picture can change. The reportâs authors â Felix Heilmann, Rebekka Popp and Ada Ămon â explain that coal is becoming less profitable, … [Read more...]
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