Europe Is Turning Against Net Zero And Costly Green Schemes

The contrast couldn’t be greater.

In Britain, a wealthy cabinet minister goes on television to boast of how he is installing a heat pump in his home – something his government is proposing to force on millions of British homeowners over the next few years despite them costing many thousands of pounds more than a gas or oil boiler.

Meanwhile, in France, the president makes a speech calling for a ‘regulatory pause’ on green issues in order to push for the ‘re-industrialization’ of his country. [emphasis, links added]

So far, Britain and the EU have moved more or less in tandem on climate change – which is not all that surprising given that until three years ago, Britain was a member of the EU and therefore within its regulatory orbit.

Both are committed – at least in theory – to a legally binding target of achieving net zero by 2050; Germany and Sweden have taken it further and have a 2045 target.

Yet over the past few months Britain and the EU have started to diverge – and in the opposite direction to that which had been feared by many Remainers.

While the UK government has declined to weaken its net-zero commitment in the face of a cost-of-living crisis, in the EU the green tide is showing signs of receding.

In Britain the government has refused to budge with its ban on fracking, and only permitted a coking coal mine reluctantly after years of failing to support the project; Germany is tackling the energy crisis by reopening coal mines for thermal coal.

Indeed, the energy giant RWE is removing a wind farm to dig for lignite, the filthiest form of coal.

The fortunes of Germany’s Green party are in reverse, with its share of the vote plunging to its lowest level in 20 years in a regional election in Bremen last week.

In Britain, the main parties seem determined to go into the next general election falling over each other on green promises, with only the minuscule Reform UK daring to question net-zero targets.

In the Netherlands, by contrast, the Farmer-Citizen Movement – BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB – rose from nothing in 2019 to take the largest share of the vote in March’s regional elections and could well find itself in government after the next general election in two years.

Its rise is down to Mark Rutte’s government trying to halve nitrogen emissions by the somewhat negative policy of bribing the country’s livestock farmers to close down their farms.

While in Britain the government remains committed to its proposed ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 (and hybrids by 2035), whatever the cost to the UK car industry and motorists, the EU recently backtracked on its proposed ban.

Following lobbying by the German car industry, the EU has opened the door to internal combustion engines remaining on the market after 2035 – provided they can use synthetic fuels manufactured from hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Most remarkable is the tone of Emmanuel Macron’s speech last week. Five years ago, while Britain was experiencing its first Extinction Rebellion demonstrations, France was in the grip of the ‘yellow vests’ protests sparked by the rise of taxes on diesel.

Macron at first refused to budge, although increases in fuel duty were later shelved. Now, however, the French President has changed tack, asserting that Europe has gone far enough in passing laws to abate carbon emissions – it is the turn of other countries to catch up.

‘We are ahead in regulatory terms of the Americans, the Chinese, and of any other power in the world,’ he said. To plow on ahead of the rest of the world, he added, would threaten investment in Europe.

Macron’s shift did not come out of thin air. It is a response to Joe Biden’s euphemistically named Inflation Reduction Act (which the US President may not have noted has the unfortunate acronym IRA).

The IRA bungs nearly $400 billion towards investment in green energy and other environmental measures. Americans will qualify for handouts towards the purchase of electric cars and heat pumps, for example, on condition that these are made mostly in the US.

While our ministers continue to blather on about net zero creating many thousands of ‘green jobs’ for Britain, even as companies have begun to relocate operations to the US to take advantage of the handouts, the EU has been agonizing for months about how to respond.

As Macron has noticed, Biden has declined to set any kind of target, still less a legally binding one, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 or any other date.

He has continued to approve new oil and gas drilling in Alaska. But what he has been very happy to do is to dress up a blatantly protectionist program in green clothes.

Macron, for one, has had enough.

In 2019, when France and the UK set their respective net zero targets within a week of each other, the theory was that it would inspire other countries to follow suit.

Yet four years on, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit counts a maximum of 23 countries as having some kind of legal net-zero commitment.

Many of them are places with inconsequential emissions, such as the Maldives and Fiji. The list includes neither the US nor China, which between them account for more than 40 percent of global emissions.

There couldn’t be a more dishonest phrase than the oft-repeated ‘race to net zero’ – the biggest polluters have stayed behind the starting line as those that rushed off early have hampered their industries with high taxes and green tape.

Read more at Spectator UK