by Raul Cazan

When we are climbing a mountain, it may witness our behavior with a somewhat remote or mild benevolence. The mountain never fights against us, and it will hold back avalanches as long as it can, but sometimes human stupidity and hubris and a lack of intimate feeling for the environment result in human catastrophes – that is, catastrophes for mothers, fathers, wives, children and friends. There is a sense of both greatness and fragility that escapes us while reflecting upon the mountains.

Breithorn, 4165 m, Switzerland

Purely local mountain cultures are incompatible with cosmopolitan and urban ones. The intrusion of new values and lifestyles rapidly undermines mountain culture. Even though in Europe worship of the mountains has faded in dark ages of history, Arne Naess, the great philosopher, reminds us of some cult of mountains remaining. Tseringma (Gauri Sankar) is still worshiped. “When we suggested to the Sherpas of Beding, beneath Tseringma, that they might have their fabulous peaks protected from “conquests” and big expeditions, they responded with enthusiasm. A special meeting was announced, and the families voted unanimously to ask the central authorities in Kathmandu to refuse permission for climbing expeditions to Tseringma” (The Ecology of Wisdom. Writings by Arne Naess, edited by Allan Drengson and Bill Devall, Counterpoint, Berkeley, USA, 2008, page 65). Goenden, the leader of Beding walk all the way to the Nepalese capital to contact the administration. Alpine clubs and the government largely ignored this initiative even if Sherpas would not mind losing the money they could earn from expeditions. “Enlightened” Sherpas would tolerate organizers of expeditions going anywhere whilst high mountains need no “protection” as they are just great stone heaps and large glaciers.

Probably all parties were right. However, what Naess gets out of it is a certain idea of modesty in human relations with mountains and mountain people. “As I see it, says the philosopher, modesty is of little value if it is not a natural consequence of much deeper feelings and, even more important in our special context, a consequence of a way of understanding ourselves as part of nature in a wide sense of the term. This way is such that the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness. I do not know why this is so.”

FROM SACRED TO TOURISM

Mount Olympus and Mount Ida for the ancient Greeks, even Hephaestus’ workshop at the heart of Etna, or the mysterious Kogayon, the holy mountain of the Dacians somewhere in the Carpathians, through the Alpine peaks of Celtic gods, up to Akkha, the mystic Sami mountain in the Scandinavian North, they all are subdued to an assimilated divine greatness of the Mountains of Europe and of the mountainous peoples of Europe.

Dacian sanctuaries at Sarmizegetusa Regia in the Transylvanian Alps, Carpathians, Romania

Simulacra of biblical mountains, most peaks of Europe have been baptized with saints’ names in centuries of Christianity.

A syncretic combination of various elements also characterized the “sacred mountains” that were erected all over France in the squares and churches of the new Republic at the height of the Revolution in 1793 and 1794. These were constructed from piles of earth and other suitable materials. During the philosophical discussions of previous decades of the 18^th century, nature had interestingly gained an almost mystical character, as the essence of perfection. Society had to reconcile with it. And it was the embodiment of freedom, equality, and brotherhood from the flags of the French Revolution. The artificial mountains were used for the cultic representation of nature. Here, a Supreme Being revealed to man the laws of Nature and Reason, just as the biblical God had once given Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, or the gods of Greek antiquity had lived on Mount Olympus. During celebrations of the Revolution, the artificial mountains were often climbed by a woman dressed in white. Standing at the summit, she was hailed as the new goddess of freedom and reason. (Jon Mathieu, The Sacralization of Mountains in Europe during the Modern Age.

The Sacri Monti (artificially constructed holy mountains) at the southern foothills of the Alps are also clearly related to topography. They developed in some regions near the border with Protestant countries during the decades around 1600. The idea of bringing “Jerusalem” to Europe and imitating it architecturally had already appeared before 1500 and gained greater significance after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The thematic center of the Sacri Monti is formed by the life and the Passion of Christ on the mountain of Golgotha, or by remarkable scenes from the life of Mary, or the life of a saint. Here, as in other regions, it was often conspicuous but seldom very high mountains that received pilgrimage churches (Luigi Zanzi, Sacri Monti, 2002).

From these sacralizations of the mountain, nowadays we descend to a certain commodification.

ASCENSIO AD INFERNOS

Some years ago, in a mountain chalet on Monte Rite in the Italian Dolomites, Pavia University based mountain history professor Luigi Zanzi was screaming out a lecture about the crisis of mountain culture, the greatest provider of ecosystem services – since we are in need of contemporary environmental terms. This is the fragility of mountain communities.

Monte Rite, Dolomites, Italy

People of the mountain communities were free until less than a century ago; the areas that these people were occupying had been escaping any fiscal policies of the state, they were literal tax-free zones. Probably last examples of such relative liberty were the shepherd communities in the Transylvanian Alps scattered on the hills around Sibiu/Hermannstadt in Romania or the ones in the Balkan Mountains during the iron fist ruling of the communists.

For inhabitants of the alpine communities there should be no income taxes, says Zanzi, as capitalist economy cannot function over 2000 m altitude. Whereas agriculture, production and services in the lowlands of Europe enter the global economic competition, the economic life in the mountain is essentially local and based on a “integral ecology”.

Mountain economy keeps anywhere in Europe a sense of production and consumption that is always self-sufficient and difficultly defendable against invasion of the big capital usually interested in grand tourism projects. Local production in the mountains inherently presupposes local consumption; in case of extra production, people’s work should not be “exported” or distributed at long distance, says Zanzi, for the simple reason that they cannot afford competing with the bigger businesses in the lower lands.

Mountain economy is subsistence, however there is nothing demeaning in it. This traditional and ecological economy keeps a whole environment on which all subjects of the state depend. It surrounds glaciers, fights climate change and maintains a biodiversity that was lost elsewhere. These provided services cannot be taxed as simple as function of income in money because they are much more complex; they should be not taxed at all, concludes Zanzi.

RISK AND BLACK SNOW

Fragility of the mountain translates though into the fragility of our global climate.

The risks of the mountain must be studied more closely since climate change became obvious. The risks have always existed. They are partly cyclical, said Federica Cortese, Deputy Mayor of Courmayeur in charge of risk and the environment, President of the Fondazione MONTAGNA SICURA.

Mont Blanc, Crevasse on Glacier du Geant, France

But the risks are increased by the natural changes, by urbanization and by the practices of mountain recreation. But the glacier Jorasses (part of the Mont Blanc and Mer de Glace complex), among other causes threats by sliding on a slope driven by gravity. It leads to a steep face of the mountain where periodic blocks of ice break off. The ice can break off at any time, under the effect of buoyancy. Falls are unpredictable.
So the risks are real for practitioners of mountain recreation (climbing, skiing, shelter clients and residences located below). But the risks are real and big for houses in the valley of Val Ferret from under the glacier. Falling ice in winter could trigger destructive avalanches. The glacier des Grandes Jorasses is subject to multiple monitoring: monitoring of the ice mass with surveillance cameras.
More generally, scientists study the evolution of permafrost, the layer of soil, permanently frozen so far, which would tend to warm as a result of climate change. Sensors are placed in diferent locations to measure the temperature of the rock and soil in real time. The information is transmitted from the sensors to laboratories or researchers follow the phenomena and try to create models that predict the behavior of the mountain.
Permafrost in fact depends on phenomena such as the holding of massive rocks often partially stuck by frost. Rising temperatures could cause the collapse of massive rock walls.

Global warming may handicap some parts of agriculture. Melting glaciers may temporarily provide water for crops that warming can be traced back at higher altitude. Valley of Adige around Bolzano in South Tyrol, is covered with yards of apple that provide 10% of the European market. Growing apple trees has developed thirty years ago, enjoying a huge success. The sector is thriving, to the point that cultures extend aloft to enjoy the warming that reduces the risk of frost. But less the cold, less apples get their rosie glow!

In the glacier of Morteratsch in Switzerland, probably the place where glacier melting can be seen with naked eye, climate change works its way towards vaporizing ice and permafrost. High areas such as this “enjoy” quite a warming; increase in average temperatures has long over-passed any thresholds optimistically set by any United Nations branch.

Glacier Morteratsch in Switzerland

Uberto Piloni, consultant and mountain guide, shared the rapid melting and cracking of the Morteratsch; “warm water infiltrates under the big blocks of ice and form literal streams under the calotte making it break and slide downstream. Often times one can be amazed by impressive waterfalls that lie as a visual proof of  a melting at a speed of 1 cubic meter per second. Every here and there, crevasses create actual lakes, in fact some pits in which deep waters last for days. A pit like this is called a “swallower”,” concludes Piloni.

Climate change “has extreme effects on the Alps; the average increase in temperature in all the Alps is higher than the average increase in other areas of the Northern Hemisphere, we had 2 centigrade increase in the Alps (within the last two decades, n.n.), the effects are very visible and, most of all, very expensive. One of the most visible effects is the retreat of glaciers,” Marco Onida, General Secretary of the Alpine Convention told 2C.

Within an annual program consisting of sustainable crossing of the Alps and a lot of knowledge sharing – named SuperAlp! – The Alpine Convention let participants, all journalists, discover the conditions of alpine glaciers, one of the most evident indicators of the effects of climate change. It also intended to make this crossing an occasion to communicate the Alpine Convention and its Protocols as tools for the sustainable development of the Alpine region, easily transferable also to other mountain regions of the world. “We chose 5 glaciers in the Alps and we crossed them all in order to see with our eyes what the situation is and to talk to knowledgeable people, glaciologists, experts that have been living here for the last 50-60 years and that are able to explain what is the situation’s evolution, what is the speed of the retreat, what are the problems associated to this retreat and so on,” added Onida.

Marco Onida, Secretary General of the Alpine Convention

The glacier of Gran Paradiso (Grand Paradise) proves an infernal effect. The water that glaciers provide to the lowlands – and here we are talking about long flow rivers of Europe such as the Po or the Danube, carriers of immense biodiversity and culture – has been halved in the last decade, warns Eduardo Cremonese with the Environmental Agency of the Italian region of Val d’Aosta (Vallee d’Aoste). “People started to see that there is less water for them, less hydropower production. This low amount of snow and precipitations in general as well as the increase in average temperature in the spring is the danger for the valleys and also for the alpine areas.”

The research that the Agency in Aosta is carrying out is quite simple. Named “mass balance”, researchers are measuring the amount of snow and ice at the winter peak and then they repeat measurements in late spring. Subtracting, you get the amount of snow and ice melted. Comparative studies carried out each year in the last decade show that the glacier is continuously losing mass. “Just to give you an idea, we measured the ablation of the terminal part of the glacier and in less than 8 years we had to change 2 ten-meter long poles, that is Gran Paradiso lost a 20 meters thick layer of ice.”

At its turn, Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, the longest in the Alps, has broken in 5 “tongues” along huge crevasses. Uberto Piloni says that there is an undeniable truth of constant melting and it is written in stone with nature’s means; in the last 60-70 years, the super-industrial times, there has been a constant melting as lichens that grow on rock show.

Global warming will cause problems especially in the drier parts of the Alps, in the valleys without glaciers with precipitation already low. This is underlined by Marc Zebisch, climate change expert at the European Academy (Eurac), a research center in the region of Trentino South Tyrol, Italy. Glacier retreat is one of the most overt indicators of climate change, however they do not have the biggest impact, says Zebisch. Snow gives the highest degree of fragility; alpine snow is “the water tower of Europe”, vegetation in the lower lands depends on the additional water that comes from the snow melting, that is all river streams and ecosystems consume the water that flows from the alpine snow, therefore less snow will impoverish biodiversity. A 4 degrees Celsius increase in average temperature in the Alps – very possible by 2050 – will cause more water in winter and much less during spring and summertime. This all means water shortages all over continental Europe similar to the drought of 2003 and less vigorous ecosystems.

Old ice and permafrost, due to low amounts of snowfalls, tend to get a darker color, a phenomenon named “black snow”. Naturally, the melting speed increases as this ice attracts the sun’s rays. Paradoxically, however, in the coming years we will have larger amounts of water in the continent due to massive melting of the alpine glaciers. Nonetheless, Carpathians or Apennine mountains lose their snow already in spring, as Eurac satellite photos show, and water shortages are to be expected in the near future.

Longest glacier in Europe, Aletsch in Switzerland

Businesses and developers, on the other hand, think in terms of credit and on shorter periods of time; they keep doing good business with useless ski slopes in the Alps or enjoy the large amounts of water for hydropower. We are living times of egotistic narrow approaches on development, times in which nuclear energy imported from France is used to uplift water basins in the Alps for artificial waterfalls that create hydro energy. These are times when energy and subsequent business are mere speculations, whereas glaciers on the alpine peaks are complexly connected with the fantastic biodiversity of the Danube Delta.

We gathered scientific information for the sake of a good article, but what we need is the modesty that Arne Naess was writing about. “…the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness.” Sustainability means humility and it brings long term thinking as today’s development seems to be upside down: alpine communities are disentangled, but ski slopes prevail; ecosystem services are denied, while big energy projects carve merciless into the body of the mountain; unemployment in alpine areas is frightening, but open cast cyanide mining or mountain top removals are seen as job providers; bad and genetically modified food is creating poverty, inequality and massive land-use change; alternative power sources are presented as panacea while water shortages are looming for downstream communities.

These are times of the “black snow”.

* https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:CeivszWI4-YJ:www.unilu.ch/files/The-Sacralization-of-Mountains.pdf+&hl=ro&gl=ro&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShZjiWVOrJtpWvtZiOx70smSWzQQ7Lm6xnqhdZpwI8AvR8bQPb3CQYIovCPCjD89gFixzlXRxT6GFRWdFIkT5CfG2nXb7VQULACgmTQ-DdTV9rhwMBvlfqhsmoCc6p–DNDaBtP&sig=AHIEtbQAkosDfG7CBN-xUsnAiRnRO4Y5gg

A coalition of environmental and health NGOs warned the European Parliament today that hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) of shale gas, shale oil, and coal bed methane represent an dangerous experiment on the environment and human health.

Shale gas in Europe

The warning comes following a draft report on shale gas published on the 11th of April by MEP Boguslaw Sonik for the parliamentary committee working on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. The draft, which promotes the expansion of shale gas developments in Europe, will be presented in front of the ENVI Committee tomorrow. It will influence Europe’s position on shale gas, potentially steering Europe’s energy policy in completely the wrong direction.The report ignores the risks and negative impacts of fracking, while presenting overly optimistic industry interests.

Antoine Simon, shale gas campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Europe must not fall into the shale gas trap – it threatens the health of local communities, the environment, locks Europe into fossil fuel dependency, and undermines renewable energy developments.”

“European politicians must resist industry rhetoric and take account of the very real dangers of shale gas. Member states must suspend ongoing activities, and ban new projects – we must put a stop to this socially and environmentally damaging technology before it spreads across Europe.”

Exploiting shale gas, shale oil and coal bed methane in Europe will increase greenhouse gas emissions and ensure fossil fuel dependency at the expense of renewable energy or cheaper and safer policies to save energy. Additionally, loopholes in European legislation allow companies to remain secretive about chemicals used during fracking, making it impossible to assess the environmental and health risks.

Lisette van Vliet, Senior policy officer for Health and Environment Alliance said: “Getting natural gas from shale is a mark of desperate addiction to fossil fuels and threatens our public health by polluting the environment. Toxic chemicals used in fracking can contaminate groundwater, and subsequently drinking water, and fracking worsens our air quality. We call on Parliament to take a strong stand, and not to feed this addiction!”

Geert De Cock, policy officer for Food and Water Europe said: “Detailed analysis of how European water legislation covers, or fails to cover, the impacts of fracking on the water quality, is dangerously absent.”

“Fracking for shale gas has led to thousands of water contamination cases in the US – leaks, spills, blowouts, and improper treatment of wastewater – yet Europe is turning a blind eye. We must take heed, and suspend all ongoing shale gas developments in Europe”.

Civil society calls on member states to suspend ongoing activities, to abrogate permits, and to place a ban on any new projects, and urges the European Parliament not to promote further development of shale gas.

If one wants to make a political link between Canada pulling out of Kyoto and also being the main producer of tar sands, he or she would not be wrong. Currently, Canada is viciously lobbying together with the oil industry to weaken the EU proposal on fuel quality and delete the value for tar sands.

Beyond closed-doors “comitology” meetings, there will be a debate in the EU’s the environment council about the fuel quality directive (FQD) and values for unconventional fuels, including tar sands. The issue is under the “Any other business” chapter.

Canada’s confirmation that it will withdraw from the Kyoto profile is regretful, according to UNFCCC Chief Christian Figueres.

Figueres also called on the country to act on its “moral obligations”.

“I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing,” said Figueres. “Whether or not Canada is a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.”

“Industrialised countries whose emissions have risen significantly since 1990, as is the case for Canada, remain in a weaker position to call on developing countries to limit their emissions,” she said.

The country had pledged to reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions by 6% compared to 1990 levels by 2012 and instead has seen them rise by 17 percent.

“For Canada, Kyoto is in the past,” said Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment Minister both on the rostrum in Durban on December 6 and in Toronto on Monday.

He denied that Canada was not doing its part for the climate and said that “Canada is carrying its weight, and proud to be doing its share”.

Kent has said that the Protocol is meaningless as it does not include major emitters such as the US and China.

An agreement in Durban to pursue negotiations for a legally binding deal that incorporates all nations will take force by 2020 at the earliest, leaving a gap of eight years without legal emission pledges. The terms for a second commitment period of Kyoto will be agreed upon at COP18 in Qatar.

Background

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, one day after an update was agreed on, saying the accord won’t work.

The Canadian environment minister, Peter Kent, said Canada was invoking its legal right to withdraw. Kyoto did not represent the way forward for Canada or the world, he added.

Canada, Japan and Russia said last year in Cancun, Mexico that they would not accept new Kyoto commitments, but Canada is the only country to repudiate it altogether.

“Until now, little was known about banks’ role and responsibility for global warming. While most large commercial banks provide figures on their annual investments into renewable energy, they neither track nor publish their annual investments into fossil fuel projects. Many banks have made far-reaching statements on climate, but are they putting their money where their mouth is?” This is the research question on which a German non-profit group built a study that analyzes direct relations between finance and coal fired carbon intensive power plants. The research conclusions were released at the COP17 in Durban, South Africa.

The study presents new research on the portfolios of 93 of the world’s leading banks. It examines their lending for the coal industry, the prime source of global CO2 emissions. It provides the first comprehensive climate ranking for financial institutions and identifies the top “climate killers” in the banking world.

“By naming and shaming these banks, we hope to set the stage for a race to the top, where banks compete with each other to clean up their portfolios and stop financing investments which are pushing our climate over the brink. We want banks to act and we want them to act now,” authors say.

This study was produced by the environment organization Urgewald from Germany, the social and environmental justice organizations groundWork and Earthlife Africa from South Africa, and the international NGO network BankTrack.

Role and Power of the Finance Sector

Coal-fired power plants are not cheap to build. Typically, a 600 Megawatt plant will cost around US$ 2 billion.4 Power producers therefore rely heavily on banks to provide and mobilize the necessary capital for such ventures. As  much of this financing is indirect – delivered through corporate loans and bonds – banks have for the most part been successful in keeping these investments hidden from public scrutiny.

In order to lift this veil of secrecy and to be able to rank banks according to their negative climate impacts, we commissioned the research institute Profundo to investigate the contributions of 93 large international banks towards financing the coal industry since 2005.

Methodology

For a “climate killer ranking” of the banks, we did not differentiate between banks’ financing of coal mining and coal-fired electricity production, but instead computed a total based on their financial engagement in both areas. As banks often also hold assets of these companies, the study also included the most recent data (2011) on banks’ asset holdings in these companies.

Profundo reviewed the annual reports of coal mining companies and coal-based energy generation companies, their stock exchange filings and other publications, such as archives of trade magazines and the financial press as well as specialized financial databases such as Thomson ONE and Bloomberg to trace financial transactions between these  companies and commercial banks.

For each financing relationship, an assessment was made which portion of the finance was used for the coal activities of a company (the coal percentage).

In total, the research identified 1405 transactions involving 93 different banks. The total value of coal financing provided by these banks since 2005 (the year the Kyoto Protocol came into force) amounts to 232 billion Euro!

Smokey Findings

How financing for the coal industry has evolved since the Kyoto Protocol came into force? The following graph shows the development of coal finance provided by commercial banks between 2005 and 2010.

Although financing goes up and down from one year to the next, the overall trend shown by the graph is that bank’s investments into the coal sector are on the rise. Even during the financial crisis in 2008, the annual total is still higher than the baseline in 2005. In 2010, financing for the coal industry was almost twice as high as in 2005.

Top Twenty Climate Killer Banks

Together, the top twenty banks in the study’s ranking provided over 171 billion Euros to the coal industry since 2005.

This is 74 percent of the total financing the authors identified. For a full list of finance provided to the coal industry by all 93 banks included in the research, see the online annex at the end of the briefing. The top twenty climate killers include banks from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, China, Italy and Japan.

Top 20 of Climate Killer Banks

This ranking is in sharp contrast to the everyday rhetoric of these banks. Almost all of the top twenty banks have made far-reaching statements regarding their commitment to combating climate change. Here are short excerpts compiled from the banks’ individual websites, their environment statements and their Corporate Social Responsibility Reports. They show the complete “disconnect” between banks’ portfolios and their words when it comes to financing coal, the major contributor to climate change.

Cash for Greenwash. Banks’ Climate Commitments

JPMorgan Chase: “Helping the world transition to a low-carbon economy”
Citi: “Most innovative bank in climate change”
Bank of America: “The most formidable challenge we face is global climate change”
Morgan Stanley: “(…)make your life greener and help tackle climate change.”
Barclays: “Managing the climate change risks of our operations and those of our clients”
Deutsche Bank: “Climate change is the dominant environmental issue of our time and one where we can make a significant contribution.”
Royal Bank of Scotland: “As a financial services group our direct impact on the environment in terms of climate change (…) is limited”
BNP Paribas: “A strong commitment to combating climate change”
Credit Suisse: “Credit Suisse cares for climate”
UBS: “Addressing climate change on a global scale will require an unprecedented mobilization of private sector investments”
Goldman Sachs: “Goldman Sachs is very concerned by the threat to our natural environment, to humans and to the economy presented by climate change”
Bank of China: “As a responsible corporate citizen with a global presence, we are committed to responding to the challenge of climate change”
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China: “As an advocate and executor of “green banking”, the Bank is actively advocating a low-carbon way of living”
Credit Agricole: “Combating climate change is central to our strategy”
UniCredit: “The group reiterates its commitment to the achievement of the goals of the Kyoto Protocol in all countries where it has a presence”
Mitsubishi Financial Group: “We will channel our full capabilities into working toward the benefit of the environment and future generations”
Societe Generale: “As a community of 135,000 employees, we are aiming to control and reduce our own carbon footprint”
HSBC: “HSBC adopts a cautious approach to activities which contribute significantly to climate change”

The entire process from mining through combustion to waste disposal has a dire impact on the environment, human health and the social fabric of communities living near mines, power plants and waste areas. It severely disrupts ecosystems and contaminates water supplies. It emits other greenhouse gases like nitrogen oxide and methane as well as toxic chemicals such as mercury and arsenic. It displaces communities and destroys livelihoods. Of course, none of these costs are reflected in the price of coal. All these costs are paid by society – and the heaviest price is often paid by the poor.

A single electricity market will increase competition, improve security of supply, help deliver climate goals and integrate modern energy technologies including renewables. Whilst development of a single power market is progressing, development of the infrastructure urgently needs a very major boost.

According to recent data, to achieve the 20% increase in renewable energy sources, and the 20% decrease in greenhouse-gas emissions, the EU needs to construct 42,000 km of new transmission lines (14% more than the existing lines). Since one of the biggest challenges to development of renewable energy is the capacity of the power grid to handle the varying input, all new lines will have to employ ´smart´ technology. Old lines will have to be renovated to support the same issue.

The creation of an internal market for energy is crucial for the ´core´ EU countries who are considered to be poor in renewable energy potential. In fact, the largest potential lies in the outer fringes of the EU – the extreme South of Europe for solar power and the further Northern fringes for wind energy. Until the new grid is constructed and a 20% increase in EU usage of renewable energy is achieved, the core European states will have to rely on natural gas for the majority of their power generation.

“There is a growing consensus within the financial community that new financing models will need to be found to finance this transition alongside existing approaches,” the ECF has stated.

The European Commission has already stated that it will launch European project bonds to finance all energy-related initiatives, which will be used alongside existing measures. This is the major set-back for the construction of the new grid connections, especially in the context of the debt crisis.

On the whole, the EU is facing a mountain to climb in order to create an internal market for energy. It seems that EU-level financing will not be enough to contribute to the full implementation of the project, and significant foreign or national financial measures will have to be introduced. Keeping in mind the current debt-related turmoil, if the EU had to choose between the European Financial Stability Facility (requires 1 trillion euro) and the power grid (requires 1.2 trillion euro), it is hard to determine which will be scrapped. However, it must be recognized that a focus on economic growth to recover from the crisis will most definitely be supported by investment in the European power grid.

A major carbon accounting flaw in EU legislation whereby biofuels used in transport and biomass used for power generation are counted as ‘zero emissions’ will have “immense” consequences for the environment. This is the key finding of a report published by the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency, a top EU advisory body.

The report warns that counting biofuels and biomass as ‘zero emissions’ is wrong because it ignores the emissions that come when the fuels are burned, assuming that this impact is automatically offset when new plants grow. In many cases these emissions will not be offset because increased demand for land for bioenergy will just displace emissions elsewhere.

The report goes on to say that “if bioenergy could or should provide 20% to 50% of the world’s energy needs in coming decade…doing so would require doubling or tripling the total amount of plant material currently harvested from the planet’s land.” Such an increase would have devastating environmental consequences.

The report follows the similar findings of a study published in June last year by three environmental organisations, BirdLife Europe, EEB, and T&E. The organisations have repeatedly called for an end to so-called ‘zero counting’ of bioenergy emissions, including those from biofuels production.

The EU is currently reviewing one of the accounting flaws linked to its mandatory renewable energy target for transport, which will mostly come from a switch to biofuels. Currently so-called EU ‘sustainability criteria’ fail to account for the central question of indirect impacts on land use and emissions (Indirect land use change or ILUC). ILUC occurs when biofuel crops replace food crops. The land needed to grow the missing food is displaced, often to the developing world. This in turn causes rainforests and other sensitive eco-systems to be destroyed to grow food, causing a massive release of emissions.

Many EU countries are scaling up on biomass for heat and power, and biofuels for transport to meet mandatory European renewable targets. The report shows that continuing with today’s flawed carbon accounting would lead to an increase rather than a decrease of emissions in the real world.

Biomass and biofuels receive generous subsidies and tax breaks across Europe, leaving the EU faced with the prospect of an ‘environmental’ measure causing disastrous consequences, and largely funded by the taxpayer.

Ariel Brunner, Head of EU policy of BirdLife Europe said: “The EU has been basing its entire bioenergy policy on fake carbon accounting; the result is a sub-prime bioenergy mortgage that will never be paid off unless the EU changes course immediately.”

Faustine Defossez of the European Environmental Bureau said: “This study should be taken as a wake up call to start bringing out some badly needed policy adjustments: it is now clear that the increase in harvesting of plant material for energy purposes, foreseen under the Renewable Directive, will have serious negative environmental, including climate impacts”

Nusa Urbancic of Transport & Environment said: “The European Commission has been sitting on its hands for almost three years figuring out what to do about the indirect effects of biofuels. Every serious scientific body that has studied the issue says action is needed, the EEA is the latest in a long line. The EU should waste no more time coming forward with a proposal to fix this massive accounting hole. It’s important not just for the environment but also for the biofuels industry in Europe, which has frozen most of its investments, until it knows what the future rules are going to be.”

Read full report here.

One of the two reactors at Romania’s nuclear power plant in Cernavoda will be shut down on September 16, for maximum two days, for repairs of an equipment malfunction.

“There are no safety issues, and the malfunction is not related to the drought,” sources declared for Mediafax.

The state-owned nuclear power plant currently runs on two of its five designed reactors, providing some 18% of Romania’s electricity consumption.

The plant uses water from the Danube to cool its reactors. High temperatures seen lately have caused water levels on the Danube to decrease. However, the plant’s operator, Nuclearelectrica, said the low water levels do not entail the need to shut down reactors at this time.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity can be competitive with grid electricity in some European markets as early as 2013, and in all market segments across the continent by 2020, according to a new study by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA).

PV technology has shown impressive price reductions over the last 20 years, with the price of PV modules decreasing by over 20% every time the cumulative sold volume of PV modules has doubled. Importantly, there is a huge potential for further generation cost decline: around 50% until 2020. The new EPIA report compares the real cost of PV electricity generation to that of other energy sources over the coming decade, and finds that under the right conditions PV can be competitive across Europe by 2020.

“Already today, PV electricity is cheaper than many people think,” said EPIA President Ingmar Wilhelm. “In the coming years it is going to get even cheaper thanks to ever-improving technology and economies of scale. As also the price of electricity from conventional sources increases, solar PV will be become a fully competitive part of the energy mix.”

EPIA’s extensive analysis of 5 markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), carried out with the support of the strategic consulting firm A.T. Kearney, shines new light on the evolution of Europe’s future energy mix and PV’s role in it. It shows that under the right regulatory and market conditions, PV electricity can reach full competitiveness with conventional power sources across Europe by the end of this decade.

By determining the full generation cost of PV electricity and comparing it to market trends over the coming decade, the study reaches the following conclusions:

Dynamic grid parity – the point at which, in a particular market segment in a specific country, the present value of the long-term electricity revenues from a PV installation equals the long-term cost of receiving traditionally produced and supplied power over the grid – could occur as early as 2013 in the commercial segment in Italy and then spread out in Europe to reach all types of installations considered in all the selected countries by 2020.
Generation value competitiveness – the point at which, in a specific country, adding PV to the generation portfolio becomes equally attractive from an investor’s point of view to investing in a traditional and normally fossil-fuel based technology – could be reached as early as 2014 in the ground-mounted segment in Italy and then spread out in Europe to all the selected countries by 2020.

Achieving PV competitiveness across Europe will, however, require political commitment to regulatory frameworks that support development of the technology and removal of market distortions. The smart deployment of support mechanisms, such as Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), has helped PV gain a market foothold in many countries of the world, compensating for the difference in cost competitiveness between PV electricity and that of conventional sources. As that competitiveness gap narrows for the PV sector, due to technology development and parallel decrease of generation cost, PV will be able to rely progressively less on dedicated financial support, leading to the phasing out of such support schemes. This will happen even quicker if internalisation of external effects is implemented for all technologies and subsidies to other energy sources are also phased out, leading to a truly level playing field.

Renewable energy sources, including PV, will be essential to achieving Europe’s important goals of reducing greenhouse gases and guaranteeing the security of a safe and local energy supply. Encouraging PV development will also play a major role in the EU effort to create a smart, sustainable economy for the future – one in which high-tech innovation creates jobs and social cohesion. But an appropriate regulatory framework and favourable market conditions will be needed to ensure that PV can roll-out its full and increasingly promising potential in our future energy mix.

“Switching to solar photovoltaic electricity is not just a desirable option for achieving our energy and environmental goals,” said Mr. Wilhelm, “it is also a realistic and competitive one. By creating the right conditions now for the development of PV, we can ensure that it fulfils its promise as a clean, safe and infinitely renewable energy source and a major part of Europe’s energy mix.”

The full study “Solar Photovoltaics Competing in the Energy Sector – On The Road to Competitiveness” is being released on 5 September 2011 in Hamburg, at the 8th EU PV Industry Summit, part of the 26th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (26th EU PVSEC). It is also available for download on the EPIA website.

Growth in the EU’s biofuel consumption faltered in 2010, increasing by only 1.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent compared with 2.7 Mtoe the previous year, according to the latest annual report by renewable energy group Eurobserver.

Consumption grew by 13.6% to reach 13.9 Mtoe. This is well below the estimated 18 Mtoe needed to meeting the EU’s indicative 5.75% target for 2010. Only Sweden, Austria, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia have met this target. Collectively, member states are expected to have achieved 4.7%.

One reason for the slowdown in 2010 could be the confusion over EU sustainability criteria, suggests Eurobserver. The announcement of the first seven EU-approved certification schemes in July is likely to help boost biofuel consumption. Fuels certified under these voluntary schemes will be assumed to meet the criteria.

For further details please consult Eurobserver’s biofuels barometer at:

http://www.eurobserv-er.org/pdf/biofuels_2011.pdf

Biofuels can represent an environmentally-friendly replacement of fossil fuels, reads a European Commission’s press release. However, we need to make sure that tropical forests and carbon rich peatlands are not turned into oil palm or sugarcane plantations. We also have to guarantee that compared to fossil fuels biofuels used in the EU deliver tangible greenhouse gas savings. To this end, the sustainability of biofuels needs to be checked by Member States or through voluntary schemes which have been approved by the European Commission. Today the Commission recognised seven such voluntary schemes: ISCC, Bonsucro EU, RTRS EU RED, RSB EU RED, 2BSvs, RSBA, and Greenergy. This recognition applies directly in 27 EU Member States.

Guenther Oettinger, Energy Commissioner

Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger said: “We need to make sure that the entire biofuels’ production and supply chain is sustainable. This is why we have set the highest sustainability standards in the world. The schemes recognised on the EU level today are a good example of a transparent and reliable system which ensures that these high standards are met”

During the press conference, the Commissioner has outlined in very thick lines the effect of Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC):

In order to receive government support or count towards mandatory national renewable energy targets, biofuels used in the EU, whether locally produced or imported, have to comply with sustainability criteria, further reads the press release. These criteria aim at preventing the conversion of areas of high biodiversity and high carbon stock for the production of raw materials for biofuels. In practice this means that biofuels made of crops that have been grown on land that used to be rainforest or natural grassland with a unique ecosystem cannot be considered as sustainable. In addition, the greenhouse gas emissions over the whole production chain need to be at least 35% lower compared to fossil fuels. That threshold will increase over time.

The EU has set itself an objective to achieve a minimum share of 10% renewable energy in transport by 2020. Where biofuels are used to achieve this target, these must meet a set of sustainability requirements. This means that biofuels cannot be produced from areas which have a high biodiversity value, such as protected areas, or from areas that store a high amount of carbon, such as forests or peatlands.

Companies can choose whether to demonstrate compliance with these sustainability requirements through national systems or by joining a voluntary scheme which is recognised by the Commission.

When the Commission has thoroughly checked a scheme against the sustainability requirements and is satisfied that it adequately covers the sustainability requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive1, it will give its recognition for five years. Such a scheme verifies where and how the biofuels are produced. If the rules of the voluntary scheme have been met, the scheme can issue a certificate for that product.

After a detailed assessment made by the Commission and various improvements the following schemes were recognised:

• ISCC (German (government financed) scheme covering all types of biofuels)
• Bonsucro EU (Roundtable initiative for sugarcane based biofuels, focus on Brazil)
• RTRS EU RED (Roundtable initiative for soy based biofuels, focus on Argentina and Brazil)
• RSB EU RED (Roundtable initiative covering all types of biofuels)
• 2BSvs (French industry scheme covering all types of biofuels)
• RSBA (Industry scheme for Abengoa covering their supply chain)
• Greenergy (Industry scheme for Greenergy covering sugar cane ethanol from Brazil)

The Commission is currently discussing with other voluntary schemes how these can also improve their standard in order to meet the sustainability requirements for biofuels.

The recognised schemes and the assessment reports will be published on the Transparency Platform at:

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/biofuels/sustainability_schemes_en.htm