Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The Half Life Of Gas And Coal At COP23

Mary Clare O'Donnell 30th November 2017

Mary Clare O'Donnell

Mary Clare O’Donnell

While Germany has been positioned as a global leader in climate legislation, conflict over climate change policy in COP23’s host country left the Bonn conference’s outcomes in a state of uncertainty.

Last Friday marked the end of the 23rd annual UN Climate Change Conference, this year in Bonn, Germany. COP23 was a crucial opportunity for definitive action to keep global temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius, as agreed by COP21’s Paris Agreement in 2015. While delegates lauded the conference’s progress, there is still a glaring gap between the meaningful action which would be required to reach this goal, and the reality of continued CO2 emissions.

As of the conference’s close, UN countries are no new binding national targets were set, and no major deadlines or breakthroughs on carbon reduction. 2017’s Emissions Gap Report states global emissions must peak and decline already by 2020 in order to keep under 2 degrees. Meanwhile, in some major polluting countries, like Germany, carbon emissions actually increased in 2016. Though this year twenty countries, including Britain, did come together to form an alliance to phase out coal by 2030, this may be far too late.

Several countries, including Germany, avoided entirely making definitive statements on coal, or other fossil fuels. The COP23’s host country, and supposedly a leader on climate legislation, remains the largest CO2 polluter in Europe. Germany’s actions will thus be paramount to climate outcomes in coming years, and whether we will see an increase in climate-related natural disasters already being seen around the planet.

On Nov. 6th, when COP23 began, discussions on climate policy in Germany had become increasingly tense. The climate change topic, and the question of a departure from coal, along with the refugee crisis were the two major issues that resulted in Germany’s failure to form a new coalition government.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Germany’s difficulties with CO2 reduction hold a mirror more broadly to the trials of national climate legislation and commitment, across UN countries participating in the COP23. In 2014, German legislators voted to cut national carbon emissions 40% from 1990 levels by 2020 in a policy known as the Energiewende, or “Energy Switch.” Yet Clean Energy Wire, and the New York Times have reported the country is heading for a “spectacular” miss on their own climate goals. Current projections see a reduction only of 30% emission, in three years, by 2020.

Bonn, the chosen site for COP23, lies in close proximity to Germany’s former industrial heartland, still home to the largest open-pit coal mine in Europe, and one of the largest proportions of CO2 emissions in Europe (with three plants on the list of five top sites of pollution.) Continued coal production plays a major role in Germany being set to miss its carbon reduction targets.

Yet as Angela Merkel made clear in her speech at COP23 in the last days of the conference, moving away from coal is not possible due to “cost factors, that is, the affordability of energy.” Merkel suggested a departure from coal would also impact jobs– neglecting the fact impending digitalization and automation of industry in Europe stand to have a greater effect on the job market than an exit from coal in coming years.

Corporate sponsorship at COP23 did not receive as much negative press as in COP21 in Paris, where there was significant criticism concerning greenwashing in climate negotiations (in light of funding from French energy companies.) At COP23, sponsors from the Germany private sector included the BMW Group, Siemens AG, and Deutsche Bank. A major automobile manufacturer is an interesting choice of sponsor for a climate conference; the angle for BMW to distance itself from recent German emissions scandals is more clear. Siemens meanwhile continues to receive the majority of its profits from the Power and Gas sector, especially with natural gas.

Before COP23, more than 10,000 activists protested continued support for the fossil fuel industry, with energy from coal and gas. Activists from Ende Gelaende (meaning, “End of the Land”) an anti-coal group, pointed out the contradiction that negotiations were taking place only 50km from Germany’s primary open-pit coal mining. The mark of the energy industry’s impact can be seen in Germany’s Climate Action Plan 2050, where ground-breaking climate legislation is marred by remarkably few binding points (i.e. an “action plan”) for how the country is to become carbon neutral.

Though the majority of Germans would already approve of coal plant closures to meet 2020 climate goals, the German example proves it is far easier to set impressive targets than to meet climate goals. In 1990, the benchmark year for the targets, Germany’s carbon emissions according to the Bundesumweltamt or Federal Environmental Agency, totalled 1,251 megatons (or 1,251,000 tons released into the atmosphere.) In 2014, Germany reduced this number to 945 megatons of CO2 released. Despite stated goals, Germany continues to emit around 1,000,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. The difficulties of a technologically-advanced, industrial country to meet its climate goals cast a shadow upon whether developing countries should have to set and keep more stringent targets.

The Paris Agreement was signed at COP21 in 2015 under the collective understanding that future climate conferences would act as “ambition cycles” to create more intensive goals in coming years. Without tightening national commitments, or progress on the actions of COP21, warming above 2 degrees will be difficult to avoid. The influence of the fossil fuel industry, and the failure to meet targets, even in a leading country for climate legislation like Germany, together mean the questions facing COP24 in Poland will be more pressing than ever.

Mary Clare O'Donnell

Mary Clare O'Donnell is a student, researcher, and freelance writer living in Munich, Germany. She has contributed media on both UN COP21 in Paris, and for the ongoing proceedings of COP23.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

You are here: Home / Politics / The Half Life Of Gas And Coal At COP23

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin
central and eastern Europe,unions,recognition Social dialogue in central and eastern EuropeMartin Myant
women soldiers,Ukraine Ukraine war: attitudes changing to women soldiersJennifer Mathers and Anna Kvit
military secrets,World Trade Organization,WTO,NATO,intellectual-property rights Military secrets and the World Trade OrganizationUgo Pagano
energy transition,Europe,wind and solar Europe’s energy transition starts to speed upDave Jones

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube