Britain’s coalition Government is fond of flaunting its green credentials. In March, Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, signed a joint letter with environment ministers from six other European countries calling on the European Union to set a more ambitious target for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions.
In a recent interview to mark the opening of fresh United Nations climate change talks in Bonn, Huhne told reporters that Britain is “serious about meeting the climate challenge, not just arguing for it”. It’s a pity, then, that Tory MEPs in Brussels are trying to block that more ambitious target, while British ministers are dragging their feet on plans to clean up Europe’s transport fuel by keeping dirty tar sands off garage forecourts.
In 2007, the EU adopted a series of targets to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, including a pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and increasing this to 30 per cent if other countries made similar cuts. At the end of the following year, with strong backing from then Labour ministers Hilary Benn and Ed Miliband, EU ministers agreed a package of laws with MEPs designed to deliver the 20-30 per cent cut in emissions. At the time, there were strong expectations that a global agreement on climate change would be reached at the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 and an assumption that the EU would move swiftly to the higher 30 per cent target.
Fast forward to 2011. The Copenhagen summit did not secure the hoped-for global agreement. The EU’s carbon dioxide emissions have fallen rapidly – already 17.4 per cent down on their 1990 levels – not because of measures to tackle climate change, but because of the global economic downturn.
Sticking with a target merely to reduce emissions by a further 2.6 per cent by 2020 is not a credible aim if the EU has genuine ambitions to lead the world in the fight against climate change. Arguably more important: such a low target provide will not sufficient incentive for investors to put money into the kind of transformative technologies we need for a low carbon future. This was something Huhne clearly understood last July when he said: “The ‘wait and see’ policy of sticking to 20 per cent risks putting Europe in the global slow lane of maximising low carbon economic opportunities”.
Labour MEPs are in strong agreement. Together with other progressive forces in the European Parliament, we are pressing the EU to adopt the higher 30 per cent target now, without waiting for a new global agreement.
Unfortunately, Tory MEPs on the environment committee, led by Martin Callanan, have voted to block a move to 30 per cent – in direct contradiction of the coalition’s policy. Yet any move to 30 per cent will require the agreement not just of EU ministers, but also of a majority of MEPs in a Parliament where the centre-right has a majority and where the Tories could make the difference. If the coalition cannot get its own MEPs onside, Huhne will certainly struggle to convince other right-wing governments in Europe to follow him on his low carbon path.
It is not just the Tories who are putting the brakes on the EU’s climate change plans.
Lib Dem minister Norman Baker is at the centre of a row about tar sands, which is pitting Connie Hedegaard, the Danish European Commissioner for Climate Change, against a powerful lobby by the Canadian government to get this dirtiest of fuels into Europe’s energy markets.
One of the laws included in the 2008 EU climate change package is the Fuel Quality Directive. This requires suppliers of transport fuel to cut the carbon footprint of their products by 6 per cent by 2020. Since the petrol and diesel we buy at the pump is a blend of oils from different sources, suppliers need to know the carbon footprint of the different oils in their mix. Thus the European Commission is currently working on what are known as “default values” for different types of fuel – including tar sands.
Tar sands are a form of “unconventional” fossil fuel, which are being increasingly exploited due to uncertainty about Middle East oil supplies. The way the oil is extracted from the sand is in itself controversial. Indigenous groups in Canada have complained of huge environmental damage, pollution to water tables and the destruction of the ancient boreal forest. Tar sands are also a much dirtier fuel to produce than conventional crude, requiring on average three times more greenhouse gas emissions.
When first drafts of the implementing measures for the Fuel Quality Directive emerged, this difference in emissions from tar sands was reflected in a separate “default value”. However, in later drafts, the separate value disappeared and suspicions grew that the reason behind this was not science but intense lobbying in Brussels by the Canadian government and oil companies.
Canada is one of the world’s leading exploiters of tar sands. Estimates put Canadian tar sands reserves at 174 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabian conventional oil. Currently, the EU imports very little oil from Canada, but plans are afoot to increase production almost five-fold, and British companies BP and Shell are among the major investors. So a lot is at stake. The Canadians fear that, if the EU labels tar sands as a dirty fuel, other governments will follow suit. There is already a precedent. Under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship, California introduced a low carbon fuel standard which classes tar sands as a “high carbon” fuel.
Following a campaign by a coalition of NGOs and pressure from MEPs, the European Commission has put the idea of a separate default value for tar sands back on the table. European Commissioner Hedegaard, known for her strong green credentials, ordered an independent study from researchers at Stanford University in the United States, which confirms that tar sands do produce more greenhouse gases than conventional fuel.
After pressure from Canada, the EU agreed to a further delay in implementing the Fuel Quality Directive until the Stanford study was peer reviewed.
That peer review has now taken place and the original findings have been confirmed. So do we have a done deal? Not quite. In a last-ditch attempt to stop the EU from acting, the tar sands lobby is again using delaying tactics by asking for yet more studies. And this time they seem to have gained an ally in the British Government, in the form of Lib Dem transport minister Norman Baker. By playing for time, the lobbyists hope to win more recruits to their cause, both among governments and MEPs who will ultimately have to give the green light to the default values.
Before the 2010 general election, Tory MEP Caroline Jackson, a respected former chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, said that David Cameron’s “green line is all talk and no action”. Such sensible voices are now few and far between on the Tory benches in Brussels, where they seem determined to block Europe’s road to a low carbon future. Unless Tory MEPs change their tune and Lib Dem ministers stand up to the lobbyists, Chris Huhne’s green strategy will amount to little more than empty words and hollow promises.
Linda McAvan is Labour MEP for Yorkshire & the Humber and the party’s European spokesperson on the environment and climate change
