healthier, happier and richer

The European Commission has done well in securing some – though not nearly enough – money to support renewables and CCS from the European economic recovery plan and from auctioning permits under the EU’s emissions trading scheme. By comparison, EU countries paid out €3 billion in national coal subsidies in 2008 alone. All OECD countries together give $400 billion every year in subsidies to fossil fuels, compared with $45 billion to nuclear and $27 billion to renewables, according to the International Energy Agency.

The UK government says that it will allow local government to sell renewable electricity. This is an excellent way to get local government to be more in favour of renewables.

It’s a melancholy irony that the right wing faction within the Australian Labor Party, which ended Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministerial career, is the same faction that pressured him to drop his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

The UK coalition government has said that it will be the greenest ever UK government. Despite the UK’s high profile on climate on the world stage, that would not actually be very difficult. But yesterday’s Budget was not a good start.

Once again, European governments have been debating whether the EU greenhouse reduction target should be increased, from 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 to 30%, also by 2020. 20% will be easier to achieve than expected, given the recession, but is not enough of a reduction, so the target should be increased to 30%.

Low carbon energy sources – renewables, CCS and nuclear – all require public financial support. In the UK, the new government has said that there will be no subsidy for new nuclear power stations. Before the general election, the Conservatives said that there would be no subsidy and the Liberal Democrats remain anti-nuclear. Without financial support, no new nuclear stations will be built. Nor will any renewables or CCS – offshore wind and CCS are, in the view of many, going to be even more expensive than nuclear.

Last winter was cold in Europe and North America, leading those who ‘question’ climate change to accuse people like me of alarmism. However, a single event or year means little in climate terms, and Europe and North America are not, despite what their inhabitants often think, the entire globe.

The new UK government has now announced its legislative programme for the next 18 months and there is to be another energy bill. This is a good Bill and should be supported. The government has also announced how it will begin to reduce the deficit.

The Obama administration is not allowing the looming mid-term elections to halt efforts on climate and energy. Nor is it totally distracted by the Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe.

The journal Nature has published results of a comprehensive study of marine temperature data gathered over the last two decades. This is a fully peer-reviewed journal, so should (but will not) end some of the arguments about whether there is any global warming. The study reports that there is now incontrovertible evidence that the top few hundred meters of the sea are warming.