kravietz 🦇 on Nostr: The larges European Parliament party EPP have pushed a position paper which had been ...
The larges European Parliament party EPP have pushed a position paper which had been conveniently summarised by media using this clickbait:
EPP leaders want to freeze CO2 duty, abolish renewable targets
This has been promptly picked up by various “environmental groups” with lamenting about “climate denial” etc. But if you read the full paper it becomes evident what his is about:
Neither are we in favour of a separate target for the share of “renewable energy” – it should be the competence of Member States to decide with which technologies they want to achieve the climate targets.
It’s essentially all about **abandoning the cargo cult where investor-hyped focus exclusively on wind and PV, which makes countries not see the forest through the trees.
By this I mean countries placing less focus on decarbonization, which is after all the primary goal in climate change prevention and mitigation, than just on adding more capacity in renewables, even when these two are loosely correlated. This leads to absurdly misguided rankings and comparisons which deliver a message that “X has 25% and Y has 43% renewables” with conclusion of “X is dirtier than Y”, when in reality the CO2 emissions intensity of X is 9x lower than Y.
I recommend reading the whole paper because it makes a lot of sense, not only in this single proposal. In short, overall message of the paper is that we can’t combat climate change by strangling our industry and moving it all to China, where it’s all based on coal and forced labour.
https://www.epp.eu/files/uploads/2025/01/EPP-Retreat-Growth-and-Jobs-statement.pdf
EPP leaders want to freeze CO2 duty, abolish renewable targets
This has been promptly picked up by various “environmental groups” with lamenting about “climate denial” etc. But if you read the full paper it becomes evident what his is about:
Neither are we in favour of a separate target for the share of “renewable energy” – it should be the competence of Member States to decide with which technologies they want to achieve the climate targets.
It’s essentially all about **abandoning the cargo cult where investor-hyped focus exclusively on wind and PV, which makes countries not see the forest through the trees.
By this I mean countries placing less focus on decarbonization, which is after all the primary goal in climate change prevention and mitigation, than just on adding more capacity in renewables, even when these two are loosely correlated. This leads to absurdly misguided rankings and comparisons which deliver a message that “X has 25% and Y has 43% renewables” with conclusion of “X is dirtier than Y”, when in reality the CO2 emissions intensity of X is 9x lower than Y.
I recommend reading the whole paper because it makes a lot of sense, not only in this single proposal. In short, overall message of the paper is that we can’t combat climate change by strangling our industry and moving it all to China, where it’s all based on coal and forced labour.
https://www.epp.eu/files/uploads/2025/01/EPP-Retreat-Growth-and-Jobs-statement.pdf