What happened to the “green” transition promised by the EU?

When the European Commission launched the Green Deal in 2019, it promised that the European Union would be the first bloc of countries in the world to reach zero emissions by 2050. sharp lack of action.

According to Brussels estimates, Europe is at risk of 400,000 premature deaths a year due to pollution, 2.2 million people exposed to floods and extreme climate events, the extinction of 16% of animal species and economic losses of 190 billion euros per year. At that time, global warming would have pushed hundreds of thousands of migrants to the gates of countries fleeing EU countries in the south of the world, affected by drought and famine.

The Green Deal was designed to avoid exactly this scenario, and implementation was entrusted to the Dutch Frans Timmermans, the powerful Vice-President of the Commission, who oversaw its implementation.

To show that this was serious, the Community executive quickly followed the plan, with a series of legislative measures – giving only the general direction to follow – to give concreteness to its action. In 2020, Fit for 55 started with the “Ready for 55” reform package, with a full 55% reduction in emissions by 2030 (Timmermans now even supports 57). It is necessary to reach at least 65%.

But the war in Ukraine (at least in part) blew up the plans and became a motivation (or excuse) for some governments for Brussels to abandon its ambitions and dilute parts of the plan. Italy has extended the life of its coal-fired plants to compensate for the reduction in Russian gas supplies. Germany did the same, postponing its already agreed nuclear exit, signing ten-year deals with gas producers in Africa and the Middle East, and building terminals to receive LNG loads from abroad. That’s not exactly what the Green Deal wants.

non-crisis

“But there is no energy crisis, there is a price crisis, there is actually a fossil fuel crisis, and the main cause is not war but dependence on fossil fuels,” Can Europe manager Chiara Martinelli tells Today.it. umbrella organization of European environmental NGOs, which includes, among others, Greenpeace and WWF. “So if we want to respond to this crisis, we have to go and find out why, and understand that we cannot invest in non-renewable energy infrastructure under the pretext of war, as some nations do, but we must support the energy transition, otherwise we will never really get out of it,” says Martinelli.

The Green Deal was “definitely an unprecedented program in the EU with the merit of having a holistic, systemic approach to environmental interventions for the first time. It is not limited to just one sector. And it should be recognized and protected”, he says, but in his view “architecture is right more must be done and the Green Deal must become better, faster and fairer”. It seeks to weaken several areas of the Green Deal, despite protests from large corporations and various capitals, which argue that economic and industrial systems take more time to adapt to the new rules. For now, the overall structure of the plan seems to hold and dodge attacks.

cars

The latest example of an attempt to soften the targets was the blockade by Germany and Italy of the regulation that bids farewell to polluting cars from 2030. Thanks to the support of our country, Berlin held hostages for weeks until an exception was added. eFuels, which is created by the ‘recycling’ of C02 held in the atmosphere and appeals to luxury car manufacturers such as Ferrari and Porsche, who do not want to give up their internal combustion engines, are for vehicles that work exclusively with synthetic fuels. Our country has also tried to introduce a derogation for biofuels, but without success (at least for now). However, it is a change that does not destroy the entire system and will not ensure the survival of cars with internal combustion engines.

renewable energy

The last legal package completed is the renewable energy package. This week, the EU Parliament and Council reached an agreement on the goal of doubling the share of green energies in States’ energy consumption by 2030. This target will cover all sectors from industry to transportation, passing through buildings. This is a binding target of consuming 42.5% of renewable energy sources by the end of the decade (32% before), which is exactly double the current level of 22% in the 27 member states. In Italy, this share was 19% in 2021.

Emissions trading

A general agreement between the Strasbourg Chamber and subsequent governments on the reform of the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS, Emissions trading system) has been reached, which has not yet become legal; it can buy from those that produce less CO2 than unused allowances, reward green industries and penalize those that are less ecological. At least on paper. In reality, thanks to ‘free allowances’, free quotas granted by States, companies pay almost nothing and indeed often find improved quotas that they can re-market and earn, despite polluting the environment. The Green Deal provides for the gradual, albeit gradual (by 2034) termination of unpaid benefits in most industrial sectors. It also initiates CBAM (carbon limit adjustment mechanism) for imports from third countries. In practice, to prevent unfair competition, non-EU companies that do not comply with our environmental standards will be required to pay a tax on their exports to the EU commensurate with their emission levels exceeding those permitted in Europe.

Homes and energy saving

The so-called housing directive has caused much controversy in Italy (but not the rest of the European bloc), requiring most buildings to be renovated to make them consume less and, above all, to avoid wasting energy. “It is important to invest in energy efficiency and savings, because it is not yet possible to provide 100 percent renewable energy to buildings, in this sense the directive on the efficiency of buildings allows us to take big steps forward,” says Can’s manager. . Brussels’ goal is for existing buildings to achieve energy performance class E by 2030 and energy performance class by 2033, and new buildings to be carbon neutral from 2028. However, there are a number of exceptions that mainly concern historic buildings, holiday homes and homes. already occupied

social fund

The Green Deal provided a fund to help families cover the costs of the transition, which will always exist and fall on everyone. The Climate Social Fund will have around 86.7 billion euros in the period 2026-2032, of which around 9 billion euros should go to Italy, which will be the third beneficiary of the tool. “The EU could have done more and made the Green Deal fairer,” Martinelli said, emphasizing that “the equivalent value of the ETS free allowances for the period 2021-2030 is 416 billion euros”. If we let industries pollute them, we can use that money for social policies related to the energy transition.”

Agriculture was not touched.

One of the areas where the Green Deal is most at risk of weakening is agriculture. This is an area where industry lobbies are very powerful and put tremendous pressure on governments to reduce their ambitions. agricultural strategy farm to fork It has been attacked (from farm to fork) by large corporations: They complain that their targets to reduce emissions and pesticide use from farms are too stringent. The European Commission has proposed to halve the use of pesticides and the most dangerous substances by 2030, but the revolt of agricultural organizations and right-wing and centre-right parliamentary groups against Strasbourg has begun, and the response is progressing incredibly. It’s slow and not yet confirmed.

In Parliament, especially with the far-flung Agriculture and Environment commissions (both in charge of discussing the project) and the Environment commission, which wants to increase the discount to 80%, the contention is heated. download. Even in the European Council, states expressed their various surprises and demanded that a study be conducted on the sector. The fear is that everything will be postponed to the next legislature, hence after 2024. Don’t respect standards. But governments have changed the Uba thresholds (adult livestock units) that determine what types of barns can fall under the directive, doubling down on them. For chickens, for example, the number of animals has increased from around 10,000 to over 21,000, thus leaving many structures outside the scope of application of the new rules.

latest arrivals

The latest ‘children’ of the Green Deal are the ‘Net Zero Industry Act’ and the Raw Materials Act, the package of proposals the European Commission plans to respond to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the US maxi plan. Billion dollars for the ecological and digital transition. The macro target is to produce at least 40% of the clean technology required for the green transition in Europe by 2030. To achieve this, the EU is ready to grant a range of subsidies for projects involving strategically defined technologies: from wind energy to photovoltaics, from biogas to electricity. In an anti-Chinese function, no more than 65% of strategic raw material purchases (including converted ones) are expected to come from a single third country. Given that three of the four solar panels we currently import into the EU come from Beijing, the hope is to support the construction of photovoltaic panels on the block.