Carbon emissions from power plants and factories covered by the EU Emissions Trading System rose 0.5% to 1,757.3 million mt in 2017, according to a poll of six market analysts by S&P Global Platts.
It was the first time since 2011 that emissions were estimated to have risen, after industrial production slumped in the wake of the financial crisis of 2009-10.
The increase was attributed to gains in industrial output across the 28-nation bloc, while greenhouse gas emissions from power plants were expected to drop, despite extended outages at French nuclear units and poor hydro generation in southern Europe.
The European Commission will publish preliminary data on verified emissions for 2017 on April 3, which will be used to establish compliance levels for more than 12,000 installations participating in the bloc’s cap-and-trade system.
“We forecast a 15 million mt (0.5%) increase for 2017, hence emissions will be 1,762 million mt,” said Espen Andreassen of Wattsight, an energy market consultancy.
“We expect the power and heat sector’s emissions to have decreased by approximately 3 million mt year on year, even as power consumption in eastern Europe grew strongly. This was, however, offset by a strong increase in wind power, and a marginal increase in photovoltaic power.”
Wattsight forecast industrial emissions rose in two of the three largest sectors: steel by 7 million mt and cement by 6 million mt, with petroleum refining experiencing a decrease of 1 million mt.
“For all other sectors, we expect a 7 million mt increase,” Andreassen said.
Only in a post modern world would a productivity increase be seen as bad.
Or in a world where eco-activists are allowed to call the shots.
This is an encouraging sign. Slowly but surely, if we keep the pressure on, governments are going to be looking to justify the emissions or face recession and a public backlash.
When they realise that not only have the sceptics got an argument they can latch onto but that they have spent 30 years being lied to whil pouring billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars/pounds/euros into a bottomless money pit of fake science and environmental myths and daydreams we shall see some sanity return.
I hope!
We need some cooling for that to happen.
Power plants can not try to reduce CO2 or hope. It is the power draw from consumers that controls the CO2 output.
I saw in the Alberta budget that the provincial government expects to earn a lot of money from carbon taxes and will use it to pay for regular government services. They finally have admitted that it will not be revenue neutral, it will not go toward reducing co2 emissions or saving the planet, it will go directly to general revenue. it’s a straight tax on Albertans, a tax on everything. Wow.
Um, so remind me, why did Albertans vote for these guys again?
It is fundamentally a “sin” tax, supposedly intended to end the “sin”, which would then end the tax revenue stream as well.
So if Albertans were to collectively stop ‘sinning’, the government would go broke even faster.
Even faster than mere loss of tax revenue would indicate. If Albertans stopped “sinning” as determined by this tax, their entire economy would grind to a halt.
Klem, the reason Albertans voted for these guys is a long sad story. Many Albertans (approx. 35%) voted for them as a protest vote against the corrupt PC party. Very few people actually wanted these guys to run the government (approx. 5%). Too bad these foolish people didn’t consider the consequences of their actions.
Most of those who voted for these guys are the same ones who are hoping to benefit from the new spending the carbon taxes will enable.
Ed – people need to learn that sin taxes are all evil. It is not for man to determine sin; that is God’s job. If you don’t believe in God, then there is no sin. Period. Thus, no sin tax. Not on CO2, not on alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, etc.
As the carbon trading scheme was a stealth tax anyway, is it meeting revenue expectations?
After all the arm waving and shouting it’s business as usual in the world. The question is how much longer will it take for people to understand that giving in to the shaming and taxing is nothing more than wealth redistribution with a bunch of bureaucrats determining who gets what according to the UN’s ideology. Hopefully the UN will die a quick death along with so called ‘Climate Change’ as the people realize what a monster it has grown into and its’ real intent.
The EU economy is booming despite the debt of the southern states, the fragmentation of Spain and Belgium and the uncertainty caused by impending Brexit.
How is this bad news?
didn’t you get the memo? The goal is to wipe out Western world, because, you know… So a booming economy is bad, bad news.
Just import the goods from China and call it a CO2 savings. done
Just don’t mention the EU VAT-fraud cases that were also originated in China 🙂
I also read they fixed the problem of auditors not signing off on the EU budget by changing some words and definitions, breaking it up into bits that were good and bits that were not quite as good but now differently named.
I am sure they can apply the same skills to a “carbon” market, a market for a non-existent product that nobody wants to buy but are legally required to. What could possibly go wrong, at least until CNN or the Russians get interested?
Already tried; Europe paid huge money to Mittal to close foundries and have them moved away (to India, of course).
Trouble is, this is just a one-shot move.
Solution is to apply a CO2 tax to goods imported from Asia, SE Asia, India, and any other polluter. Of course, better yet, recognize that CO2 is good for the planet – is the basis of ALL life on the planet, and that the planet dies when CO2 levels fall too low.
” industrial emissions rose in two of the three largest sectors: steel by 7 million mt and cement by 6 million mt”
How much of these increases relate to:
“a strong increase in wind power”
Wind power isn’t very “low carbon” when all factors are considered.
SR
does this mean their little s c a m didn’t work?……or that they just gave up on it?
…it’s hard to keep air in a ball….when the USA refuses to let them use it’s air pump
‘Emissions’ brings pollutants to mind and C02 is not a pollutant. Why use the AGW fraud’s bogus language?
At least when someone says “CO2 emissions”, we know what they mean.
When someone says “greenhouse gas emissions from power plants” I wonder if they are including water vapor from cooling towers.
SR
And if they don’t mean to include water vapor emitted by cooling towers, the big question becomes “Why Not?” Wasn’t water vapor the source of warming in “global warming? Perhaps by not counting H2O emissions from cooling towers any water vapor increases can be credited to rising CO2 levels.
I drove past Ivanpah Solar Power Facility recently where I saw lots of water vapor being emitted.
SR
Stevan:
I think you have got mixed up in your thermodynamics. Water is the prime mechanism that cools the Earth. I won’t go into the details here but essentially it traps energy into its Latent Heat and pumps it up into the clouds, some of which winds up in the Cirrus clouds as ice; dissipating the radiation into space. It is the thermodynamic Rankine Cycle that does it.
The fact that it is a greenhouse gas does NOT mean that it somehow generates heat. Neither does CO2. They both merely absorb energy and re-radiate it. They do not create it. The whole doom laden ethos is a scam.
In trite terms one may say that the Earth sweats to keep cool; just like you and I. That is the Earth’s thermostat.
Forgive me if I have misinterpreted your comments; but confusion is understandable due to the extraordinary misinformation being pumped out by the AGW proponents.
My regards,
Alasdair
Alasdair, you are completely forgiven, as I actually completely agree with your assessment of water vapor’s role in preserving the earth from runaway global warming. Note that I said:
” Wasn’t water vapor the source of warming in “global warming?”
The “Increased atmospheric CO2 causes Global Warming” theory advocates maintain that extra CO2 causes just a little extra warming and then that little bit of extra warming causes increased H2O to evaporate. Extra H2O vapor in the atmosphere was supposed to be the positive feedback producing the catastrophic warming – according to the theory.
I asked (in essence) :
If global warming theory believers think increased atmospheric water vapor will cause harmful warming, why aren’t they counting water vapor emissions?
SR
So, despite the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Accord, the U.S. leads the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, member nations increased their outputs, with few, if any,exceptions. Crriouser and curiouser.
SR
Not so much. Having mouth telling the opposite of what’s the hand does, as a way to balance things out, is very common. Hypocrisy, this is called: the more you sin, the more you preach (and vice versa). Really sinless people don’t need to preach as much.
Obviously if the left is going to save the planet and the human race more tyranny is needed to impose the necessary measures.
Carbon trading fails because every government trying knows that the rational response of industry would be to move elsewhere. Which would crash their economies and their political survival. So they set the price of carbon just high enough to annoy and look like We Are Doing Something, but not high enough to actually change behavior.
Meanwhile, the USA keeps on improving the efficiency of its industry and appliances, without signing any “climate” treaties.
It was never about reducing emissions, never! It was about making lots of money, literally, out of thin air.