Newsbytes: Brexit Spells End Of Europe’s Climate Obsession Germany Starts Roll-Back Of Climate Policy

Britain’s exit dashes the European Union’s leadership ambitions on efforts to slow climate change, leaving the bloc on the sidelines while others endorse the global pact it championed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Britain’s vote to leave the union has disrupted everyday affairs and probably displaced climate concerns as a political priority. It also removes one of the EU’s strongest voices in favour of emissions-cutting policies. —Reuters, 1 July 2016

Six months after the U.N. Climate Change Conference – or COP21 – in Paris, the German government is becoming less and less ambitious about implementing the results. It is caving in, especially in the dispute over the future of coal. –-Handelsblatt, 30 June 2016

Germany has abandoned plans to set out a timetable to exit coal-fired power production and scrapped C02 emissions reduction goals for individual sectors, according to the latest draft of an environment ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The new version, which was revised following consultation with the economy and energy ministry, has also deleted specific concrete C02 emissions savings targets for the energy, industry, transport and agriculture sectors. —Reuters, 29 June 2016

By reducing the role of renewables in its energy mix, Poland could go beyond 80% dependence on coal for electricity production. The new bill adopted on Tuesday overhauls a system of green certificates that polluters must buy, while moving to create regulatory barriers for wind farms. In the short run, the new bill is a boon for a struggling coal mining industry. Poland is one of the biggest producers and consumers of coal in the EU 28, generating 80% of its electricity from the black staff. Being the world’s eighth largest producer of coal, Warsaw also has to consider the 100,000 jobs at stake. Brussels and Warsaw are heading for an inevitable standoff on energy policy. —New Europe, 30 June 2016

The UK agreed on Thursday to set a legally binding goal committing the country to steep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions designed to help ward off climate change. But in a sign of the uncertainties triggered by Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the move was dismissed as potentially “unlawful” by the think-tank founded by Nigel Lawson, the former Tory Chancellor and a member of the Leave campaign’s strategy committee.  Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy [Forum] said it was wrong for the government to set in law a fifth “carbon budget” committing the UK to cut emissions 57 per cent by 2032 from the levels of 1990. The goal was “based on the now incorrect assumption that the UK will still be in the EU by 2030”, the [Forum] said. –Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 1 July 2016

Climate scientists and advocates are worried that Britain’s exit from the Eurpean Union will complicate the process of ratifying the Paris Agreement and may install a government that will roll back crucial environmental policies and regulations. –Aidan Quigley, The Christian Science Monitor, 29 June 2016

Economics editor Daniel Wetzel at Germany’s center-right national daily Die Welt here writes that the Brexit may be the end of the Paris climate treaty and that it is a climate-political nightmare for the EU. –P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 30 June 2016

h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser, The GWPF