PES Council: moving forward with ‘Save our planet’
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Published Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 16:27
by
Editor
in Save our planet (967 views and 4 comments)
A roundtable debate on the
‘Save our planet’ manifesto theme concluded the first day of PES Council. Here are a few opinions and impressions from the debate:
Hans Eichel, former German Minister of Finance, and chair of the PES Lisbon Network, encouraged the governments of the Left in Europe to develop a coherent and realistic strategy of sustainable development. Eichel explained that the idea of an effective green growth policy has always been one pillar of the Lisbon Strategy, but he underlined that with the “integrated policy guidelines” a good instrument has now been developed for linking the different strategies that used to be separate.
Modern environmental policies are essentially knowledge based; without advanced technologies and innovative policies, the necessary transition to a low carbon future might take too long.
Herbert Schmalstieg, President of the Union of Socialist Local and Regional Representatives in Europe, who had been Mayor of the city of Hannover for 34 years, stressed how important citizens’ involvement is for climate change policy. He emphasised the importance of cities – where more than 50 percent of Europe’s population live – and outlined a number of examples how this can be done successfully in areas like heating, insulation of buildings, or public and private transport. For instance, in the city of Bonn, the 29 parishes have pooled their energy consumption which is expected to lead to a reduction of CO2 emissions of 1100 tons per year. Elsewhere, public facilities such as schools and hospitals can get 50% of the money saved through good energy practices as additional grants. In many cities, so-called “climate agencies” are created to raise awareness and to inform citizens and companies about possibilities of energy efficiency.
In the debate, participants raised other questions and reported best practices:
Mats Andersson (SAP Sweden) pointed out that so far no sanctions are foreseen for member states not meeting their declared emission targets. For the Lisbon strategy there is sufficient peer pressure, but how can member states be encouraged to live up to their climate commitments?
Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, Member of the Finnish Parliament, pointed out the high diversity in the energy mix among EU member states, which makes a common energy policy quite difficult to achieve. Accordingly participants of this debate expressed different viewpoints on nuclear energy. Mrs Kumpula-Natri also reported some concrete ideas from Finnish practice such as more dialogue with environmental NGOs, or car taxation based on CO2 emissions.
Gyula Hegyi, MEP from Hungary, stated that public transport and heating are crucial fields, and criticized that there were so few EU projects in these areas. On this point, Hans Eichel suggested that more European subsidies could be allocated as primes for proven successful practices rather than as prior financing of projects, whose outcomes are always uncertain.
What are your opinions on these ideas – and what else could help saving our planet?
Tags: climate change, CO2, council, environment, nuclear energy, tax
Comments
1. mentsük meg by kata.szabo
on Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 07:56
Szia!Szeretnék egy cikket mutatni....üdv,K2. Integration has its limits by nanne in berlin on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 21:02
The EU needs to make sure that its policies are somewhat coherent, of course. But there also needs to be space for experimentation. Indeed, we don't have the silver bullet. This can be resolved by interweaving a variety of approaches in a certain manner to come to a combined result. But that could get too rigid. I'm more in favour of a mixed solution in which we have some policy integration, but also investment in a variety of different solutions and an exploration of different new approaches.
Right now, the EU and most Member States have a political momentum that's really promising. What's lagging behind is the momentum of the private market, and bottom-up solutions from communities. The EU is generally not as good in starting businesses as is Australia or the US. It's trying to get there, of course. But we need to press the financial sector harder to come up with more seed money, and alternatively provide some ourselves. We also need to shape stable markets. Germany has done this with its feed-in tariffs for renewable energy. Having a feed-in tariff scheme across Europe should be a priority for the PES.
Unfortunately Commissioner Dimas seems to feel more for carbon credits, which are much less effective. They tend not to create a stable market, and don't foster local support, which feed-in tariffs do.
We really need to figure out how we can get people to invest more in energy efficiency in their homes. The big problem there is that people are really averse of big front-up investments (or sometimes just plain incapable of getting the money together), even if these will pay off on the longer term. A solution there should be to provide financing. Right now the state tends to subsidise these investments to a certain percentage, but the subsidies would be much better spent on providing zero interest financing, if possible through the utilities to just integrate the payback in the electricity bill.
3. Carbon credits by zentrist
on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 12:18
I want to emhasise nanne's point about carbon credits. Such a system of tradeable carbon credits will undermine feed-in tariffs for renewable energies which are used in 18 EU member states. You cannot have it both: getting emission credits for using renewable energy sources and at the same time subsidies for introducing renewable energy. Clearly the majority of Member States goes for feed-in tariffs. The Commission should respect it.
To nanne's last point: I think the social dimension of climate and energy issues is a central point for socialists. We cannot accept that the middle classes buy fancy hybrid cars, while their poorer neighbour have to be content with 14 year old Ford Mondeos. Apart from the social issue, it is simply not good enough for the climate when the poorer sections of society cannot participate in reducing emissions.
4. Credits / The Social Dimension by nanne in berlin on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 20:18
When I discussed carbon credits I actually meant to write about 'renewable energy credits' which are a different thing. I apologise for the confusion. But I think zentrist and I are on the same page.
The social dimension certainly is a central point. But we should not just look at restraints we have to take into account. There are many synergies between green and social solutions. We have to focus on those win-win options.
A good example is congestion pricing. Many people think that congestion pricing hits poor commuters harder, but this does not need to be true. Congestion pricing, by making the road less clogged with cars, improves public transport by bus and private transport by bike. If the money earned with congestion pricing is put into public transportation, as it is in London, the results are overwhelmingly progressive.
Cars in a broader sense are a difficult point for me personally because I am offended by the view that everyone has a right to own a car for his or herself. Cars are not a human right.
Still, I can see that people in the countryside are really limited in their mobility if they don't have access to a car. I hope that old-fashioned investment in public transportation and new developments like car-sharing co-operatives and tele-working can compensate for most of that. The long term solution is to change the built environment, as a newer post in this category recommends.
Owning and driving a car is not going to get cheaper anytime soon and the state should not start subsidising fuel or car ownership more than it already does.
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