The European Council, the bureaucratic agency that runs the European Union, in one day agreed to sweeping changes. These changes will be implemented by 2030. No one knows how it can be done, but we are assured that it will be done.
There was no discussion of exactly what sanctions will be placed on nations that do not meet the targets. It promised unnamed subsidies to unnamed nations that do not give up coal and oil to meet the targets.
Greenhouse gas emissions will be cut by 40%. How? They did not say. They are politicians. They simply announce what will be achieved by scientists.
All of them will be forgotten in 2030. None will still be in office.
The meeting at which this was announced was attended by hardly anyone. Reporters did not show up.
They also agreed to boost the use of renewable energy by 27%. Not 26%. Not 29%. Exactly 27%. This will be done. They have so decreed. Energy efficiency will rise by 27%. This is science. It is precise. It was hammered out in one day by politicians.
China did not attend. The USA did not attend. So, Europe will soon find that it faces competition from the two nations with the largest coal supplies — the two largest economies on earth. Europe’s politicians have placed businesses in Europe in a straightjacket in the area of energy. These firms will now get to compete with businesses in China and the USA. They will be successful. The politicians have so decreed.
This article is just stupid, and misleading. The stupid part is o say "China did not attend. The USA did not attend." It was a EU summit, not a global meeting. And the EU countries were highly divided with Poland leading a block that opposed such ambitious goals without exemptions for those countries that rely heavily on coal for their electricity. The weak agreement reached here was for show and negotiating purposes in Paris next year. It appears to show solidarity in the EU when there really is none. The part the article conveniently fails to highlight is that the "commitment" was conditional and will not be made at Paris unless other countries – like China and the US – commit to equally as ambitious goals. This is not going to happen and they know it. Obama has never been able to get Congress to act on CC legislation like cap and trade even when Dems had control of both houses. To think that he could get agreement on a reduction scheme guaranteed to kill job growth with a weakened position in Congress is ludicrous. And despite his continuing use of pen and phone he can not – he dare not – try to commit to a treaty in violation of US law without Congressional approval. This is why Clinton and Gore never even sent the Kyoto Protocol, which they said they supported, to Congress knowing it would fail.
Germany and France, as well as much of the rest of the EU, are teetering on the brink of a triple dip recession. Their big industries are telling them the added cost to energy required to meet this GHG reduction would kill job growth and cause them to lok at expanding elsewhere. Australia, Russia, Canada, and several other countries are already saying they will not agree GHG reductions in Paris. This article is from the BBC site and represents the UK government position that stronglt supports GHG reduction despite waning support among their citizens. It is far from complete and makes no attempt to represent all sides of the story.
If one cuts the coal utilization by 27 percent, then one has to increase the efficiency by 37 percent in order to maintain the same amount of usable energy, rather than 27 percent as is stated. (You need to make up for the 27 missing percent from the remaining 73 percent. So, ((27/73)*100) is the percent increase that you need.)