23/3/2007
An Auction Of Promises

Last week's European Climate Change and Energy Summit was all target and no plan, writes Peter Sain ley Berry. Not a recipe for success, with difficult decisions shirked.

Climate change and energy targets came tumbling out of last week's European Summit like a jackpot out of a slot machine. The most historic summit I have participated in, Mr Barroso called it afterwards. Really? It reminded me of an auction scene from Alice in Wonderland.

"Do I hear 10 per cent? Yes, sir. What's that? Carburants will contain 10 per cent biofuel by 2020?  Oh, that's very good! Any advance on 10 per cent? Do I hear 20 per cent? Don't all bid at once. My! I see three hands. Yes, madam, you first. 20 per cent of all energy to be derived from renewable sources? I'm sorry? Excluding nuclear? I see. Mustn't make it too easy.

"And you, sir? Yes! A 20 per cent increase in energy efficiency? Wonderful! Just what we need. Oh it's coming along nicely! And now, at the back there, do I hear another 20 per cent?  Reduction in carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020!  Oh yes, they'll all be gasping at that.

"Now, who'll bid me 30 per cent?  Come on! The world is watching. I see a hand. Yes? A 30 per cent cut in emissions if the US and China join in? Wow!  Let's have a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen.

"Right then, some ideas for achieving this. Has anyone come along today with a patent for producing unlimited energy from cold fusion perhaps? No?

"Mrs Merkel, why don't you start? How are we going to do it? Our Kyoto target was an 8 per cent reduction, wasn't it? And I think our collective efforts so far have yielded just over 1 per cent. That's right, isn't it? The rest is just promises and hope? How are we going to achieve this epic switch to renewables and fund the energy saving gadgets these new targets will require?  What's that?  I didn't quite catch what you said. Ah! She says, with the best will in the world she cannot tell us.

"Mr Barroso! Sir! Change our light bulbs? Absolutely brilliant! Why not? Anyone else? Here's a British politician! Proposing to tax budget airlines out of business, are we, sir? Well, there's an idea! Oh, and here is Commissioner Dimas. A speed limit on German autobahns? Well done! Uninventive, but believable. Fuel tourism? Did I hear someone suggest harmonising taxes on diesel - well, that will save a few kilometres and the odd thousand tonnes of carbon, won't it?"

You might be forgiven for thinking the above an attack on the necessity for doing something about climate change.  It isn't. Quite the reverse in fact. But as the management guru, Peter Drucker, points out until a decision has degenerated into action it remains, at best, a good intention.

At worst it gives the illusion of action - fiddling while Rome emits carbon dioxide. For the truth of the matter is that these grand targets are no more than gestures without action to back them up; the equivalent of armchair generals fighting battles with non-existent divisions.

Moreover, without a plan politicians are inclined to shoot from the hip without thinking the matter through. Hence the attack on budget airlines over which British parties of all persuasions are engaging in a competitive frenzy of unthought-through hip-shooting.

Even the target figures themselves don't seem to add up. If we succeed in improving energy efficiency by 20 per cent and at the same time we also succeed in raising the renewable level in our energy mix by the same amount, then we would surely have reduced our fossil emissions by 30 per cent, without any additional encouragement from the US and China.

So what is the primary target? What actually are we trying to do? Reduce emissions, or hit a certain target for renewables (noting that these exclude nuclear) or is it to increase energy efficiency - using less energy regardless of its source?

If the latter, then asking 'Is your Journey Really Necessary?' may do more than speed limits. We could even put businesses and shops back into towns.

More important would be to ask 'Is your Heating Really Necessary?' For it is in the home and office that a great proportion of our energy is used and wasted by the craze for short sleeved shirts and a reluctance to wear pullovers.

There's the international dimension, too.  In his film 'An Inconvenient Truth,' Al Gore says that forest burning and what follows accounts for as much CO2 emission as the United States. Some fires occur naturally, but a great number are prompted, albeit illegally, by our European desire for cheap hamburger beef and for palm oil and soya with which to fatten our pigs and poultry.

The forests are being literally burnt for us. If we aren't careful about biomass we may find ourselves importing fuel to meet a target grown on land that was virgin rain forest only a few years before. Meanwhile we pay our own farmers to leave land idle.

We moan about China opening a new coal-fired power station every week without realising that China is not doing this to improve the living conditions of its rural peasantry but to provide the power to supply the goods and the clothes that we Europeans lap up in our crazy throwaway lifestyle.

The target and plan are like a pair of shoes, the one useless without the other. It is clear that to have any hope of even approaching the aspirations of last week's summit, drastic action will be required - a massive nuclear power building operation, for instance, or massive reductions in space heating, or massive hydro schemes of the sort we criticise elsewhere in the world.

Mr Dimas, the Environment Commissioner is not a fan of nuclear power. It remains unclear how we get rid of radioactive waste, he said recently. He also thinks that dismantling nuclear plants is a big economic problem. Yet nuclear technology - when applied across the world - is the only practical proposition for providing adequate and consistent amounts of power in these latitudes.

Of course there are problems; of course nuclear is not a perfect option. But we know it works. And we could put a budget to it.

If we do nothing, the scientists tell us, we are going to fry. So we might as well take our chances with radioactive waste and get building.  Targets alone and light bulbs will never protect us.

(This article first appeared in euobserver.com)