The Politics of Climate Change (13 page)

In February 2009, the centre-right government announced it was putting new investment into nuclear plants as part of an ambitious new climate programme. The three opposition parties were against the proposal, which was endorsed in parliament by a narrow majority. In the wake of the radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan early in 2011, there were demonstrations against nuclear power in several Swedish cities. (For more details on the happenings at Fukushima, see below, pp. 133–4). The government, however is pushing ahead with its plans.

Sweden is one of six EU member–states to have a carbon tax, which – together with nuclear power – helped cut emissions
from industry and energy production by about a third between 1970 and 1990. When the tax was introduced, in order to neutralize the overall fiscal effect, income taxes were cut by half. Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions were 9 per cent lower in 2006, prior to the recession, than they were in 1990. Over that period the economy grew by 44 per cent.

Sweden has adopted 16 environmental quality objectives, representing goals to be achieved by 2020. There are 72 interim targets to be met. Progress towards the objectives is monitored by the Environmental Objectives Council. Reducing carbon emissions brooks large among these, but they also cover other aspects, such as air quality, the soil, the forests and the Baltic Sea, which is a site of very heavy pollution.

Germany was the original home of the greens and has proved to be an environmental leader, especially among the bigger countries. Since the mid-1980s there has been substantial agreement among Germany's political parties about the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions. A report published by a parliamentary commission in 1984,
Protection of the Earth's Atmosphere
, set the tone for subsequent discussion, arguing for substantial reductions.
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The proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources grew from 6.3 per cent in 2000 to more than 14 per cent in 2011, and Germany is now the world's biggest user of wind power, boasting some 20,000 wind turbines – wind generates about 6 per cent of the country's total energy use. The country is also the world's largest producer of photovoltaic solar power and has the fastest growing market in terms of domestic installations. The Waldpolenz Solar Park is the most extensive solar power installation in the world. The plant deploys thin-film technology and supplies about 40,000 megawatts of electricity a year. Almost 80 per cent of all European solar energy production capacity is in Germany.

These achievements have been strongly influenced by the introduction of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy in the 1990s pioneered by industrialist Hermann Scheer. Anyone who attaches a renewable energy source to his or her property
can have it connected to the grid at a subsidized rate fixed for 20 years. More than 300,000 private home-owners and small businesses have been incorporated into the scheme.

Yet Germany faces significant problems in further building upon its successes. At the moment, the country is heavily reliant upon coal for energy production. Coal-fired power plants supply about half of Germany's electricity, with nuclear energy making up 27 per cent. In September 2010 the German government issued an ‘Energy Concept' document that set out energy strategies to 2050. Its aim is for renewable sources to supply 60 per cent of primary energy supply by that year. Achieving such a target would demand a quite fundamental change in the country's energy system, because of the dominance of coal and the continuing use of lignite – ‘brown coal'. As of 2010 there were 22 coal or lignite power plants either under construction or in the detailed planning stage in Germany. The government is therefore pinning a lot of its hopes on carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Like Sweden, the country was in the past committed to phasing out its nuclear power stations – in both cases mainly because of the influence of the green movement. In 2000 the then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced that the country's 19 plants would be shut down after a life-span of 32 years. According to such a schedule, Germany's last nuclear plant would close in 2020. The legislation was enacted as the Nuclear Exit Law, and two plants were turned off – one in 2003 and one in 2005.

In August 2007, a climate plan – the ‘Meseberg programme' – was published by the government. It then was promoted by the Social Democratic Party within the governing coalition, and called for a reduction in Germany's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent over 1990 levels by 2020.
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Energy efficiency, a further extension of renewable energy sources and the cleaning up of coal and gas power stations were the basis of the plan. Nuclear energy did not figure, but without it, critics argued, the figures do not stack up. In their ‘Energy Concept', the authorities included an extension of the operating life of the country's nuclear power stations. The plants were to be run for 8–14 years longer than was originally decided. The last nuclear plant was supposed to close in 2034.
More recently, policy changed again, with a return to a more positive attitude to nuclear. In 2008 Schröder's successor, Angela Merkel, from the centre-right, shifted the government position to oppose the phase-out of the nuclear industry. These plans in turn were reversed following the episode at the Fukushima nuclear plant. All the country's reactors are now due to be shut down by 2022.

Denmark is also an interesting case, because of its forceful programme for expanding renewable sources of energy and because of the ambiguous results that have followed.
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At the time of the OPEC oil embargo in the late 1970s the country was heavily dependent upon oil, all of which had to be imported. The government of the time determined that this level of dependency should be reduced, and its successors continued similar policies. Taxes on natural gas and petrol were introduced to stimulate energy efficiency. Oilfields in the North Sea belonging to Denmark also started production at this time. In the early 1990s the country introduced a system of subsidies to facilitate the expansion of wind power. At that point renewables accounted for some 5 per cent of its electricity.

The fluctuating nature of wind energy was compensated for by importing hydroelectricity from Sweden and Norway, and by the use of small-scale combined heat and power stations which run on biomass of various kinds and which can be switched on and off quickly. By 2009 the proportion of electricity generated by wind power had jumped to well over 25 per cent and contributed 18 per cent of electricity use. Over the period from 1997 to 2003, under the aegis of a social democratic government (which fell in 2001) an average of 325 megawatts of wind-power capacity was installed each year. Under the successor right-of-centre government, that figure dropped to only 3 megawatts a year. Three projected new wind farms were cancelled, and in 2007 more wind-power capacity was dismantled than was put up. The country has the notable achievement of having kept energy consumption stable during a lengthy period of economic growth. However, over the past few years CO
₂
emissions have risen once again.

As of 2011, Denmark derives about 80 per cent of power from fossil fuels. A committee appointed by the government has reported upon how a zero-carbon economy could be achieved by 2050.
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The programme envisages a wholesale movement towards electricity, powered from renewable sources. As much as 70 per cent of energy consumption could be met by electricity, compared to the current figure of 20 per cent.

The experience of Spain and Portugal deserves special mention. In Sweden, Germany and Denmark, it took quite a while to develop low-carbon energy sources. Spain and Portugal have shown that rapid energy transformation can be achieved. Spain moved from having 2 per cent of its energy delivered by renewables to 12.5 per cent in little over a decade – with some of its autonomous regions, where the new installations were clustered, greatly exceeding this percentage. More than 11 per cent of Spain's electricity comes from wind power. In total, 20 per cent of the country's electricity now comes from renewable sources. Some of the autonomous regions are aiming at 100 per cent renewable electricity generation in a few years' time.

Although it is a much smaller country, Portugal has managed to act even more quickly. In 2004 the country's leaders decided to reduce its dependence on imported fuels. At that point 17 per cent of Portugal's electricity came from renewable energy sources. By the end of 2009, that proportion had risen to 42 per cent. In both cases these achievements were made with the support of tax incentives and by a partial restructuring of the energy system. The Portuguese government privatized and restructured former state-owned energy companies; at the same time, it took back the grid into public control. The changes in the two countries have not been unproblematic. Consumers saw a rise in the cost of energy. Both were seriously affected by the financial crisis and have vulnerable economies, which in turn has had consequences for their investment plans. On the other hand, renewables form one of the relatively few areas where their companies are internationally competitive.

There is a further important lesson to be learned from the cases of Spain and Portugal. A country that has a high proportion of renewables does not necessarily see an overall reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions, since so much depends on what happens in the rest of the economy. As of 2008, when the recession took hold, Spain's CO
₂
emissions were a massive 43 per cent higher than in 1990. Those of Portugal were 30 per cent higher.
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The reason is the importance of the construction industry to their economic development, together with other high carbon-emitting activities.

These are at most thumbnail sketches. Rather than looking at such initiatives from around the world in depth, I shall take the United Kingdom as a type case. Each country will tread a somewhat different path, but some core problems are generic.

The fact that Britain is on track to meet its Kyoto commitments comes in some part from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to privatize the large state energy monopolies. She was determined to face down the power of the unions, especially in coal-mining. The switch from coal-fired to gas-fired power stations was driven by these aims, but also by the fact that gas was seen as the cheapest available source of energy. The closure of the coal mines coincided with the availability of natural gas supplies from the North Sea. Coal production declined from 84 million tons in 1988 to 35 million tons in 1995, and has since fallen by a further half.

According to current government estimates, about 20 per cent of the UK's performance in terms of controlling emissions of CO
₂
can be put down to the ‘dash for gas', although its contribution to reducing other greenhouse gases is considerably higher. Improvements in energy efficiency (in some part driven by privatization) contributed about 40 per cent. A much smaller proportion can be attributed to environmental policy, such as the Climate Change Levy set up in April 2001, and voluntary energy agreements (in which companies pay a reduced rate of the levy in exchange for
meeting more rigorous energy efficiency targets over a 10-year period).

A Climate Change Bill was introduced in the UK in 2008. It marked a new level of ambition for the Labour government in power at that time, which previously had only a modest record on environmental issues in general, and on combating global warming in particular. The bill introduced statutory targets for emissions reductions. According to its original version, greenhouse gas emissions were to be reduced by at least 60 per cent by 2050 over a 1990 baseline. This proportion has since been raised to 80 per cent. A report on progress has to be published every five years and reviewed by Parliament, as well as the ongoing results of an adaptation programme. A carbon budget will be established to cover each five-year period. Late in 2008 the bill was endorsed by Parliament and became the Climate Change Act.

A Committee on Climate Change has been set up to advise the government of the day on the level of the carbon budgets and on the optimal path towards emission reduction targets. The legislation includes provision for ‘banking' and ‘borrowing' between carbon budget periods. Banking is the capacity to carry over unused quotas from one budget period to a future one; borrowing allows the government to count future anticipated reductions against the current five-year period, such borrowing to be limited to 1 per cent of the following carbon budget. Banking is supposed to provide an incentive to ‘overperform' during a given period, or at least remove disincentives that might kick in if a given budget were achieved early. It is accepted that there are costs involved in reducing carbon output and that energy prices will increase (and, therefore, so will other prices). The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) (see below, pp. 198–200) is already having this effect in the UK, because power generators are able to pass extra costs on to consumers. However, it is suggested that the cost will not be large for individual households, and it might even act as an incentive to reduce energy use.

Recognizing how closely climate change and energy change policy are intertwined, the government introduced an Energy Bill at about the same time as the Climate Change Bill. It was passed as the Energy Act in November 2008. At that time the
government also created a new ministry, the Department for Energy and Climate Change. North Sea oil and gas have supplied most of the UK's energy needs since the 1980s, but stocks are declining. Most of Britain's nuclear and some of its coal-fired power stations will reach the end of their lives by around 2020 – fully one-third of the country's electricity-generation system will need to have been replaced by this point.

The UK is committed to meet the target set for the country by the EU by 2020, which is that 15 per cent of its energy (including electricity, transport fuels and heating) must come from renewable sources by that time.
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To achieve this, about 40 per cent of its electricity will have to come from renewable sources – an increase of 800 per cent over present-day levels. The Labour government of the time accepted that nuclear power has to be part of the mix, and included in the Energy Act were plans to build a new generation of nuclear plants.