Europe prides itself on climate change fight, but does not pay attention to science or give enough money

Jordi Solé Ollé is a reviewer at the IPCC for the next report (AR6), professor at the URV and associate researcher at CREAF. He has coordinated the MEDEAS H2020 EU project on energy transition.

Jordi Vilardell Gómez is a journalist specializing in global warming for Televisió de Catalunya's Information Services. He has directed "Associating with the Earth ecosystem". He is the director of "Latituds".

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On March 4, the European Commission invited Greta Thunberg to present the Climate Law. Maybe they thought she would support it. But the young activist described the European law as "surrender" and accused the audience of wanting to see that "real and sufficient actions are being taken when, in fact, this is not the case."

A closer look at the European Commission documents shows that Greta Thunberg takes into account scientific reports, but instead, the European Green Deal ignores science: Europe objective of reducing emissions and planned budget to reduce them is too low. The Commission further proposes that most of the money, for the transcendent transition to a zero-emission society, come from private investments.

0% emissions in 2050 and 1 trillion euros for the 2021-2030 decade

The proposed climate bill is part of the European Green Deal promoted by the European Commission (EC) and could be approved in June. The EU is proposed to have 0% CO2 emissions by 2050, and to achieve this, mobilize 1 trillion euros during the 2021-2030 decade, 100 billion a year.

The European Green Deal was presented on December 11, 2019, two days before the end of COP25, the UN climate change conference in Madrid. Úrsula Von der Leyen had been chairing the European Commission for five months and announced that with this plan, the EU would position itself as a region that meets the climate action goals.

But is € 1 trillion on the table?

Not exactly. The funding for the European Green Deal is based on the assumption that the EU budget 2021-2027 is approved and that the climate goals of the budget 2021-2027 are maintained in the following budget.

At the moment, the 2021-2027 budget is stalled by the refusal of the richest countries to put more money to offset the loss of income from leaving the United Kingdom. The EC proposes to finance the Green Deal (1,064 trillion) as follows:

47%, 503 billion, of the EU budget through various funds (Rural Development, Agricultural Guarantee, Regional Development, Cohesion, Horizon Europe and Life).

26%, 279 billion, of public-private investments guaranteed by InvestEU, the European fund to stimulate investments.

13%, 143 billion, for the Just Transition, co-financed by the EU, the States, InvestEU and the European Investment Bank (EIB).

11%, 114 billion, of EU states.

2.3%, 25 billion, of the carbon emissions market, which the EU has been paying to emit since 2009 energy, steel, chemical, paper, cement and glass companies.

Coal countries are demanding more money

The first hurdle for the implementation of the European Green Deal came in December, when EU states did not agree with the "fair transition" budget, which must offset more countries dependence on coal and transform the mining regions: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, mainly.

The Green Deal foresees 100 billion euros for the period 2021-2027, and up to 147 billion for the whole decade. But Poland, which is 80% dependent on coal, is demanding € 500 billion to abandon it.

An additional 1.6 trillion would be needed, to a total of 2.6 trillion, according to the EC

The European Commission considers that to make the energy transition in EU, it will require 1.6 trillion euros more, to a total of 2.6 trillion euros by 2021-2030.

The proposal is detailed in a January 2020 document: (Commission Communication on the Sustainable Europe Investment Plan, January 14, 2020, page 3)

"Achieving the climate and energy goals by 2030 requires an additional investment of € 260 million annually. This figure mainly includes investments related to energy, buildings and part of the transport (vehicle) sector."

Significant investments are also planned in agriculture, biodiversity, the circular economy and social investments.

Investing € 100 billion a year The European Commission plans to encourage other investments (page 3), up to € 260 billion a year with public and private investment, and to maintain investments throughout the decade.

Will Private Investors See Business opportunities?

The 260 billion euros a year that the EC hopes to mobilize from the EU public budget, from states and other administrations, it would cover, if approved, only about 90 billion. Thus, it is expected such 90 billion will encourage private investors to cover the remaining 170 billion.

The Commission is committed to further concretizing the proposal in the third quarter of 2020.(page 16 and 17)

"The private sector will be key to funding the green transition. Long-term signals are needed to direct financial and capital flows toward green investments."

The heavy reliance on private investors makes the Green Deal very vulnerable, as renewables are very expensive in fixed assets.

Is 260 billion a year enough money? What does science say?

UNEP, the UN Environment Program (EGR2019, pages XXII and 54), estimates that to keep global warming below 1.5 °C, there must be a global increase in investments over the period 2016-2050, US$ 1.6 to US$ 3.8 trillion a year. Within this range, the specific level of investment will depend on the speed at which energy efficiency is improved and also on the effort devoted to it.

IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, Chapter 4, Strengthening and Implementing the Global Response, page 373), estimates the necessary additional investments in the global energy system at 2.53% of global GDP.

The IPCC and UNEP calculations are the same. World GDP is US$ 68.3 trillion (2016); 2.53% to energy transition, as the IPCC estimates, is US$ 1.728 trillion annually, which is in the order of magnitude calculated by UNEP.

Other scientific studies substantially raise the cost of energy transition by up to 4% (Jacobson and Delucchi, 2011; Bardi and Sgouridis, 2017 ) or 5% of world GDP (2016) for total decarbonisation of the economy. (MEDEAS, 2019, page 79).

How much should the EU invest, according to scientific knowledge?

European Union GDP is 21.8% of world GDP (2016) and, consequently with the analysis of UNEP and IPCC, the EU investment in energy transition should be this 21.8 % of world GDP (Eurostat. 2018. The EU in the world, page 68). That's 342 billion euros a year, totalling 3.4 trillion euros for the entire decade.

If the European Union's investment in energy transition is calculated using other scientific studies, it should rise to € 674 billion annually if it starts immediately.

In short, what does science calculate and what does the EU aims to?

UNEP and IPCC scientific studies estimate an investment of 342 billion euros per year.

The European Green Deal seeks to "mobilize" 260 billion euros a year, 80 billion less, and mostly from private investors.

The direct investment of the public system proposed by the European Commission is around 90 billion euros a year, a total of 1 trillion euros by 2021-2030, which is 29% of what science considers necessary.

4.2 trillion on the financial rescue, 1 trillion on the climate

Between 2009 and 2013, European governments injected 1.6 trillion euros into the European banking system in four years.

In 2015, the European Central Bank printed 2.6 trillion more, in four years, to stabilize the banking system.

A total of 4.2 trillion euros in ten years, from the public system, to rescue the bank in the period 2009-2018.

What the European Commission is now proposing is to allocate € 1 trillion, also in ten years from the public system, to the European Green Deal: four times more money to rescue banks than to fight for climate.

0% of emissions in 2050?  Too late...

The Green Deal that the European Commission proposes to approve in 2020 aims 0% of emissions by 2050. The same as the 2015 Paris Agreement Article 4.1 (page 4). But the Paris Agreement also says that emissions reduction will have to be made "in accordance with best available science."

It is accepted that the best scientific information available is that of the IPCC.  Since 2018 the IPCC has warned that the security threshold is 1.5 ° C global warming (page 107), and not 2°C as previously thought. At the current emission rate we exceed the safety threshold in 2028, and to avoid it we need to reduce the emissions more sharply, reaching 0% of emissions by 2040 (page 9).

The European Green Deal: leaving the effort for the last minute

To prevent a 1.5 ° C warming, science is urging to reduce global emissions by -55% by 2030 from 2018.

The European Commission had planned to include in the climate law an increase in the EU emission reduction target by 2030 from the current -40% to -50% or -55%, but has not reached enough consensus.

But what the EU is talking about is to reduce emissions taking as reference year 1990, not 2018 as science demands. Changing the reference year, the EU makes a much smaller effort to reduce emissions by 2030, since EU emissions have since fallen by -22% since 1990 mainly due to the outsourcing of the Europe industry.

Greenwashing?

The European Green Deal proposed by the European Commission is receiving strong criticism. A few weeks ago, they received a letter from Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler, from DiEM25, a movement that promotes a strong New Green Deal.  In an article published on The Guardian on February 7, they called the current proposal a "colossal exercise in greenwashing", a simple marketing operation, and "taking the slogans of climate activism without considering any really useful action".

The drift of European bureaucracy

The Green Deal proposal seems to follow only the inertia of the European administration. This is not a new proposal, it is only an update of an older document, 'A clean planet for all', which was published by the European Commission in November 2018.

Ursula Von der Leyen, a German politic of the same party as Angela Merkel, was raised at the core of European administration. Her father, also from the CDU like her, was a high-ranking European official since the establishment of the EEC in 1958. This is why Ursula Von der Leyen was born in Brussels and lived there until she was 12 years old.

The 20's is the time available to fight the climate change

The climate crisis has very serious implications and consequences.  If we keep up with the current trends we are in a potentially catastrophic situation starting in 2028. Policies and budgets should not be misleading, they must be consistent with the scientific knowledge.

The UN Environment Program warned in November 2019 that, in order to avoid exceeding the security threshold of 1.5 ° C, a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is needed, starting in 2021, -7.6% annually to reach a -55% reduction by 2030.

On March 4, a group of fifteen prominent scientists warned that action is needed from 2020. The missed decade of 2010-2019 means that the measures to be taken now must be four times more ambitious than if we had begun ten years ago.

It is necessary to focus on climate action in manageable terms. Talking about 2050 does not mean anything: it does not force anything now and it is too late, because by 2028 we could cross the security threshold of 1.5 ºC.

The climate change fight needs to be aimed for 2030, a deadline that forces immediate action by 2020.