Over in Canada, Energy Probe has an article that neatly underlines the cheating swindle at the heart of Europeans' promotion of the Kyoto accord in 1997. The first swindle involves Europe using a 1990 baseline. The closure of socialist industry in eastern Europe, a massive Scandinavian economic crisis, and mad cow disease's effect on livestock production crashed emissions by 1995. Result?
"In 1997 in Kyoto, the EU27 signed on to an aggregate cap on their GHGs that was 14% ABOVE the member states' aggregate 1995 actual emissions. [From 1997 to 2008]... Spain, +32.8%; Latvia, +27.4%; Cyprus, +23.1%; Estonia, +21.0%; Greenland (a Danish colony), +16.6%; Luxembourg, +16.2%; Lithuania, +13.6%; Ireland, +13.0%; Ukraine, +11.5%; Malta, +9.0%; Austria, + 7.5%; Bulgaria, +8.4%; Italy, +5.9%; Belgium, +4.0%; Netherlands, +3.2%; Portugal, +4.2%; France, +1.5%; Finland, -1.6%, United Kingdom, -2.9%.
It should be noted, further, that 100% of the emission "reductions" claimed by EU member states to date derive from offshoring manufacturing of goods and services EU demand, which has actually increased."
As their name suggests, they approach this thing from a different angle than I do. But the facts noted in the post are independent of point of view.
Spain, +32.8%
As it is said around here, at least we are first in something.
One of the data sources that more accurately has tracked the Spanish recession has been the power demand, which has shrunk more than 10 % since 2007. This, and the new renewable facilities - whose production is mandatory to absorb by the grid at a bonus price - have pushed coal generated electricity out of the market.
The solution by our government to protect the Asturian miners has been to approve a State subsidy totalling €1.5 billion, a quarter of million per miner, to produce and burn national coal in the power plants. The cost will be shared by all Spaniards through the electricity bill.
As a radio commentator pointed out, there is left wing CO2 and right wing CO2.
In the end, IMHO the issue well illustrates what a swindle is green energy and how the energy market, which cannot be dodged in a modern economy, is used to push ahead the agenda of pressure groups, among the Spanish, the Basque Gamesa, builder of wind turbines; Iberdrola renewables and ACS Energy, and Gas Natural, which is now in a bitter dispute with the rest of all since their brand new combined cycle facilities have also been left out of the market.
Interesting information. I'm not sure that EU27 Kyoto commitment to levels that are above '95 recession levels is a "swindle." The increases since '97 are hard to evaluate without the context of baseline GDP and '97 GDP, compared to '08 GDP, and other factors.
JA: It seems Spain has had a very agressive campaign to subsidize and promote alternative energy? "Pushing coal generation out of the market" is a policy choice; there's a cost associated with it. Such policy choices obviously create winners and losers. The question is not whether it's expensive or not, the question is whether it has the desired effect of reducing GHG emissions and whether the price is deemed "worth it" by the policy makers.
Spain is reported here as +32% GHG emissions '97-'08. This is not sufficient to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the push for green energy. Spain seems to have achieved a 20-30% market share for green energy. Why would you not assume that if this growth in alternative energy had not taken place, the GHG emissions would be higher?
"Pushing coal generation out of the market" is a policy choice
Please note that not in the Spanish case, it has been the recession what has pushed coal generated power out of the market in favour of nuclear and hydro. The political choice has been to, once coal was outside the free trading market, to subsidize it in the same manner wind and solar energy.
This well portrays how, at least in Spain, the objective of green energy is not to reduce CO2 emissions, but to make a few very wealthy from the pockets of all of us.
Why would you not assume that if this growth in alternative energy had not taken place, the GHG emissions would be higher?
Why would you not assume that they are higher because green energy? During a dry year - no hydro - sharp changes in wind power production can only be compensated by combined cycle units fueled by natural gas, and 20% of the Spanish demand represents, not as many as the guys at Gas Natural in Barcelona would like, but a lot of gas turbines, probably more than 20 400MWe units. That's a lot of gas being burnt on a calm day.