European Leaders Begin to Put Brakes on Green Energy Transition
Macron asks for a environmental “regulatory pause” and 8 nations are pushing back on restrictive auto emission rules.
Earlier this summer, Sweden’s government ditched plans to go all-in on “green energy,” green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants. Shortly afterward, fossil fuel giant Shell announced it was scaling back its energy transition plans to focus on . . . gas and oil!
Last month, specific wind farm projects are began to topple due to strong economic headwinds, because the cost of the electricity to be generated was deemed too high.
Now, The Washington Post has begun to notice what we have already observed at Legal Insurrection: The green energy dominoes are beginning to fall.
. . . . Britain and the European Union have pledged to go “net zero” by 2050, with steep cuts by 2030. But across Europe — where this summer has brought brutal heat waves and raging fires in the Mediterranean region—a backlash is simmering against some of the world’s most ambitious green targets.
Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Scotland to announce with a big splash his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.
. . . . Sunak’s gambit to commit to more domestic drilling was inspired in part by the results of a one-off parliamentary election in the London suburbs—for the seat that former prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned when he quit the House of Commons. There, voters signaled they were opposed to the pollution charges ordered up by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, to limit the number of petrol cars allowed into the central city.
Furthermore, a group of European nations are banding together to push back against the “Euro 7” regulation, which tightens vehicle emission limits on nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide from 2025.
. . . . The proposed Euro 7 regulation was “clearly wrong” and not even helpful from an environmental pint [sic] of view, said Italy’s Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League coalition party in Italy’s right-wing government.
“Italy, with France, Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary, has the numbers to block this leap in the dark,” Salvini said during an automotive dealer conference in Verona.
“We’re now a blocking minority, we want to become a majority,” he added.
European carmakers have been fighting back against the proposed emission regulations they argue are too costly, rushed and unnecessary. The European Commission says are needed to cut harmful emissions and prevent a repeat of the Dieselgate scandal.
Even the French President Emmanuel Macron is surrendering to reality, and asked for a “regulatory pause,”
[T]o speed up industrial processes and achieve the objectives already set, Macron called for “a European regulatory pause” on environmental constraints.
“We are implementing what we have decided, but we must stop adding to it,” the president said in a speech on Thursday.
“The risk we run is, basically, of being the best performers in terms of regulation and the worst performers in terms of financing,” he added.
Meanwhile, the American press is touting how much the U.S. is “investing” in green technology, courtesy of Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by US president Joe Biden last August, established the US’s largest-ever climate investment aimed at decarbonising the US economy and boosting jobs in green industries.
. . . . [F] figures from industry body Cleantech for Europe show the EU has fallen behind in funding for early-stage clean technologies, with a total of $8.7bn worth of investment going towards start-ups in areas such as carbon storage, electric vehicles and clean power in the year since the IRA came into force.
By contrast, more than $21.7bn has been committed to similar projects in the US, although the EU pulled ahead in energy and transport investments in the second quarter of this year.
Europe may have the last laugh, especially since the U.S. inflation rate just ticked up based on increases in rent.
John Podesta admits Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is actually the Green New Deal.
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) August 16, 2023
Just one year after President Biden signed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” into law, he openly admits that the bill didn’t actually reduce inflation.
Meanwhile, hardworking Americans are poorer today than when Biden took office.
Let that sink in.https://t.co/73Yr2BBJWw
— Rep. David Schweikert (@RepDavid) August 16, 2023
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Comments
The Euros are waking up to the fact that cold, hungry people whose money buys less do not make for happy citizens. Let the tumbrels turn still resonates over there.
The Germans are cutting down forests in North Carolina, grounding up the wood into chips and shipping them to Germany to burn for power.
Burning forests to save the Planet.
That’s God awful
And we are allowing it?
Yes.
The good news is, trees grow. And, as they grow, they sequester carbon. If you’re worried about carbon dioxide in the air, this is a good solution. You can always put a scrubber on the outflow stream of the power plant.
How does a tree grow after it has been cut down?
It’s all been a scam, centered around skimming money. That treasonous slimeball John Kerry has tried to pick-up where that other treasonous slimeball Al Gore left off.
The United States used to lead. But now that the United States government is infested with such utter corruptiion and stupidity, the world is bailing.
Hey folks, we let it happen. And if we had not continued to tolerate such backstabbing scum lead our political party over and over and over and over again, none of this would be happening.
Right, Boehner? Right, McConnell? Right, Graham? Right, Romney? Right, Murkowsky? Right, Ronna Romney McDaniels? The list goes on and on and on….
“European Leaders Begin to Put Breaks on Green Energy Transition”
While I very much appreciate that Europeans recognize their own self-interest more than American Leftist worshipers of Gaia; I think it is “put brakes”. 😉
Subotai Bahadur
LOL. You are right. Fixed, and thank you.
If they pull to one side you’re Braking Bad.
Biden lied. No duh.
It’s what he’s done for the past half century, at least, and I suspect his entire life. Real shame sufficient voters hadn’t figured it out in time to prevent getting within the margin of fraud, For that matter, given his job approval rating not being below 15%, they still haven’t.
There is no margin of fraud , 2020 proved that
They had as many ballots as they needed
Biden does what he is told.
Human contribution to “climate change” is too small to measure. Even if you assume it, it’s a fraction of a degree over a century or more. The fires in Mauri probably polluted more than all the cars in America will this year. A single volcanic eruption will pollute more in a day or so than all humans on this planet could in a year.
Or the Canadian wildfires smoking the US Northern states this summer.
Greens “saving the planet” by burning up the forests. Logic is not their strong suit.
But Canadians being devout Leftists, their fires do not contribute to Climate Change. In modern politics, that is NOT sarc.
Subotai Bahadur
May 18, 2023, 2:35 PM
Exxon Says Net Zero Global Emissions by 2050 ‘Highly Unlikely’
World currently is not on IEA’s net zero emissions pathway
People would not accept drop in living standards, Exxon says
Exxon Mobil Corp. said the prospect of the world reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is “highly unlikely” due to the drop in living standards that would come with such a scenario.
Not to mention the drop in population – which is, of course, the goal.
And still Quid Pro Joe and the watermelon enviros remain Hellbent on destroying the US economy and giving us electric vehicles and a grid which will not be able to sustain charging those vehicles, much less all the other idiocy they plan on saddling us with.
We are witnessing a massive misallocation of capital. Rather than allocate to the most potentially productive areas of the economy, capital is being allocated to less productive areas. This is occurring via government subsidies and hysteria. There will be very long-term negative effects on the economy.
Marxism 101.
At this point, we’re well into Marxism 102.
Europe is already under control. America has to be brought to its knees for Agenda 2030.
Europe is only under control until the Muslims manage to take the reins of power. They aren’t going to be kind to the Marxists, or to the native population that passively allowed unlimited immigration. OTOH, they’re unlikely to be as stupid about exploiting Europe’s own natural resources.
Wait till the gays see what the Muslims are going to do the them.
There was never any ‘green energy transition’. There was only a bunch of grifting bullshit making claims that would never work.
Solar and wind work only on a small scale in near-perfect conditions. Anything else and they are a net NEGATIVE on the energy grid, because they take more energy to manufacture than they are capable of producing over their entire lifetime.
Idiot politicians listened to a bunch of self-interested grifters who wanted the free money stream to continue, promising that breakthroughs were just around the corner.
Now what’s happened is the politicians were stupid enough to actually start shutting down enough of the ACTUAL power producing part of the grid to start to have serious problems.
Solar only works on a VERY small scale.
Wind only works in an environment with constant, sustained heavy wind, which is mostly only on some of the coast, so it also only works on a very small scale.
Europe is finally having to come to terms with the ‘green energy’ snake oil they’ve been buying.
Can we expect to see more green energy idiots glued to airport tarmacs?
What was it Ayn Rand said? “You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
The ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, even if it was intended to do as its name suggests, is a contradiction in terms, in the sense that you cannot reduce inflation by spending more government-printed fiat money.
The only way to reduce inflation is to stop printing and spending money. If the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was truly intended to reduce inflation, it would merely say, “The government is forbidden to print more money’, and that is it.
Erronius
Not too long ago the EU was awash in cheap natural gas piped in from Russia. Cheap because the Trump energy policies opened up the US energy sector and made energy costs competitive world-wide.
What happened? The consequences of the Marxist build back better initiatives and Standing with Ukraine against Russia realities could no longer be ignored. They can’t go begging back to Putin (they could, but they won’t) so now the EU is forced to make up the shortfall themselves.