EU Commission Plans Fundamental Course Change In Energy Policy – More Focus On Economics, Less On Climate

EU CommissionMajor German dailies today are reporting that Europe is beginning to give up on the big green dream it once so deeply cherished and envisioned a great society powered by clean sunshine and wind. After trying for years to force renewable energies onto consumers, the bill came and eyes popped.

Suddenly we are also seeing studies showing that warming won’t be so bad after all, and that CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than first thought. The policy-making pressure coming from the threat of climate change is disappearing rapidly.

The German leftist TAZ and center-right Die Welt report today that the EU Commission is preparing to embark on a policy to make energy prices lower, and to push climate protection measures off the stage.

The TAZ writes that the “EU Commission is preparing a fundamental change of course in energy policy. Because of the recession in many countries, state and government leaders are to undertake a paradigm change at their summit in Brussels on Wednesday“.

The overall sentiment is expressed, for example, by statements from EU Commissar Günther Oettinger, who told Die Welt:

Over the last decades Germany has continuously made energy more expensive with taxes, levies, fees, and contributions. That now has to change.”

The high energy prices have taken a toll as companies are finding it more difficult than ever to compete globally. The TAZ writes:

Indeed because of the economic weakness in many EU countries, climate change no longer has any priority for the Commission. The sole target of getting 20% of energy demand from renewable sources has been pushed off further. Commission officials are backed by a paper from the mighty European industrial association: Business Europe. According to the study, energy costs for Europe’s concerns are 1.5 to 3 times higher than the USA.

If 400,000 new jobs in the sector of production are to be created, then the EU ‘has to overhaul its climate protection and energy policy,’ said Europe-Business-President Jürgen Thumann.”

So why is energy so much more expensive in Europe than it is in USA? The TAZ writes that this is primarily due to the fact that USA is “exploiting its shale gas reserves using controversial fracking“. The TAZ adds:

According to the EU Commission, energy prices in the EU have risen 37% since 2005. In the USA that have even dropped slightly.

The EU Commission maintains that the following guideline has to apply: “EU energy policy has to assure uninterrupted supply of households and companies, affordable and competitive prices.”

When it comes to the clash between economics and climate protection, it appears economics is emerging as the most pressing.

Photo credit: EU Commission, JLogan, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

 

14 responses to “EU Commission Plans Fundamental Course Change In Energy Policy – More Focus On Economics, Less On Climate”

  1. DirkH

    I do know they can make things more expensive, but I have yet to see a single thing they can make cheaper. This is the EU. It’s bankrupt. They will never give up looting more.

  2. tdg

    And so, finally the road they’ve chosen is to blame the economy, and not the collapse of AGW apocalysm.

    How many are they fooling . . . .

    1. Mike Heath

      The doomsayers will soon morph into coolists, and argue that they follow where the evidence leads. AGC can serve better than AGW because cooing really does make things worse. They are already creating the concept – warming creates more humidity and the humidity creates cooling ( I saw it today concerning Oklahoma).

  3. Juergen Uhlemann

    The right step but way too late.
    Some 19.2 Million official unemployed. Euro zone in sixth quarter of decline.
    Just open the business news and you see that the whole system is held together by duct tape. World public debt $50,000,000,000,000 and counting.

    Jean-Claude Trichet said quite some time ago that this recession is very different to all the previous recessions and we don’t have a playbook for it.

    I guess Germany and others are finally realizing that they have no magic wand to make it disappear. The listened to the banks for too long.
    The banks gambled and lost. Sorry, not really, as they pushed the politician’s to sign anything they dictated. The Irish government mad quite deals and the Irish public still doesn’t know everything. Ireland’s debt level increased from 25% to about 120% through the banking collapse and with a bailout and Ireland is seen as good boy in the Euro zone. The have a reduction in the unemployment number but guess what, people are leaving the country. We had job fairs for people to leave and it was overcrowded. I know people that left Ireland.

    It’s like a ship with 10 holes and you have 9 plugs to close them. All the sudden you get another plug but the bad news is that you’ve got another hole.

  4. Juergen Uhlemann

    Should read:
    The Irish government made quiet deals and the Irish public still doesn’t know everything.

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  6. D Cotton

    Without gravity acting to restore the thermodynamic equilibrium which is stipulated in the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which says: “An isolated system, if not already in its state of thermodynamic equilibrium, spontaneously evolves towards it. Thermodynamic equilibrium has the greatest entropy amongst the states accessible to the system”) and thus, as a direct corollary of that Law, supporting (at the molecular level) an autonomous thermal gradient, then …

    (1) The temperature at the base of the troposphere on Uranus would be nowhere near as hot as 320K because virtually no direct Solar radiation gets down there, and there is no surface at that altitude. The planet’s radiating temperature is under 60K because it receives less than 3W/m^2.

    (2) The temperature of the Venus surface would be nowhere near as hot as 730K (even at the poles) because it receives only about 10% as much direct Solar radiation at its surface as does Earth at its surface.

    (3) Jupiter would be nowhere near as hot, even in its core, which receives extra kinetic energy which was converted by gravity from gravitational potentential energy due to the continual collapsing of this gaseous planet. This is why Jupiter emits more radiation than it receives.

    (4) The core of our Moon would be nowhere near as hot as it is thought to be, probably over 1000K.

    (5) Earth’s surface would indeed be perhaps 20 to 40 degrees colder, and the core, mantle and crust nowhere near as hot, maybe no molten material at all.

    Think about it! If you’re not sure why, it’s explained in Sections 4 to 9 and Section 15 here.

    1. Mike Heath

      Interesting stuff but isn’t it a bit out of place in this particular article? At least I don’t see the connection apart from the general AGW bogus science connection, but that is common to every article.

  7. TheJollyGreenMan

    I am getting sick and tired of reading ‘controversial’ stuck with ‘fracking’ like an Italian couple kissing in a public park in every article about natural gas. Isn’t it time the journalists vary their articles a little bit? Or is that too controversial to ask?

    1. DirkH

      The TAZ are hard left activists. Left of the Black Bloc.

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