Dear Commissioners Bulc & Arias Cañete, ECAC President Cherfils & Vice President Gandil, We, European NGOs active in aviation environmental policy, have deep concerns about the extent and effectiveness of opportunities for dialogue between European NGOs, other civil society groups and EU member states, ECAC states and the European Commission on aviation climate change and …
Read more “Letter to European Commissioners Bulc and Arias Cañete, ECAC President Cherfils, ECAC Vice President Gandil on European Civil Aviation Conference”
In April the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against a case by carbon-intensive industries that had sought additional free pollution permits from the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). The Court’s declaration backfired on the companies, when it ruled that the allocation of free permits had in fact been too generous, giving the Commission 10 months to recalculate the amount of free permits for the period up to 2020.
Under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) the power sector no longer receives allowances for free but is required to purchase them from auctioning. An exception is made through the so called Article 10c of the EU ETS Directive. This provision allows lower-income Member States from Central and Eastern Europe to give allowances for free to electricity installations under the condition that they invest at least the equivalent monetary value of the free allowances in the modernisation and diversification of their energy systems.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in France have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €2.7 billion because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
The concept of “carbon leakage” is a major area of discussion in the legislative proposal to revise the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) for the post-2020 period. The Commission’s proposal continues the trend of awarding free allowances, effectively representing a financial subsidy of €160 billion, to heavy emitters without providing evidence for the need of such beneficial treatment. A new Carbon Market Watch policy briefing “Carbon leakage myth buster” brings the ongoing discussions on carbon leakage back to the facts.
EU Environment ministers met in Brussels on 18 September to reach common positions on many of the key elements that they will be negotiating for at the UN climate talks in Paris in December.
Nature Code with WWF, CAN Europe, Greenpeace, Change Partnership, Transport & Environment, and Friends of the Earth Europe staged an Energy and Climate Tug of War. On the day when EU environment ministers were meeting to sign off their final position before the Paris climate negotiations, NGOs urged EU leaders that a commitment to ambitious …
Read more “Media Action: EU Energy and Climate Tug of War!”
Dear Commissioner Arias Cañete,
The European Commission has consulted stakeholders about the role the EU’s land and forests should play in its 2030 Climate and Energy Framework. With this letter, the undersigned organisations are registering their views and state that Option 1 (LULUCF pillar), is their preferred option since it is the only one that could uphold the environmental and social integrity of the EU’s target. They call on the EU to have a clear position ahead of Paris on the need for two distinct global goals, one for LULUCF and another for other emissions, including non CO2 emissions from agriculture.
At the European Summit in October 2014, Heads of State agreed that, by 2030, the EU will domestically reduce its emissions by at least 40 per cent compared to 1990. In the run up to the United Nations climate summit in Paris, the EU should continue to show leadership to tackle climate change by upholding the environmental integrity of the ‘at least 40 per cent’ target. We believe that unless the following points are addressed, the EU is at risk not only of backsliding on its ambition and harming its credibility in this crucial year for climate, but it could entail damaging impacts on biodiversity and local communities.
1. In your view, which of the multiple objectives of agriculture, forestry and other land use will gain most in relative importance by 2030?
It will be critical to ensure the long-term stability of carbon pools for carbon storage, biodiversity protection and ecosystem preservation in the future. Currently the emissions from land use represent a quarter of all human emissions and it is hence vital that the land use sector also contributes to tackling climate change.
The use of biomass is limited due to finite land availability and therefore the use of biomass should follow the cascading hierarchy and only as a last resort be used for lower-quality applications where other viable alternatives exist, which is the case with power generation.
Finally, it should be recognised that food security and sustainable farming should go hand in hand. Actions that support this include no-till farming, silvopastoral practises and demand-side measures to limit excess consumption.
Dear Mr Schneider and Mr Buendia,
As a Member of the European Parliament committed to the respect of Human Rights, we are writing to you to express our serious concern about the Santa Rita Hydroelectric Plant in the Dolores River in Guatemala, which was registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in June 2014 (project number 9713).
In a meeting in March 2015 with a representative of the local indigenous communities we learnt that many of the communities that will be impacted by the project were never consulted in accordance with the CDM local stakeholder consultation requirements. As a result, the project has been, and still is, in the center of a violent conflict between the communities and the power company implementing this project.
