In Germany, wind and solar energy coexist with energy generated by burning fossil fuels in the Western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Climate experts say it’s crucial to narrow down the global emissions gap to keep global temperature rise within the safe 1.5 degree C warming goal. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
COLOGNE, Germany, Jul 19 2016 (IPS)

Immerath, 90 km away from the German city of Cologne, has become a ghost town. The local church bells no longer ring and no children are seen in the streets riding their bicycles. Its former residents have even carried off their dead from its cemetery.

Expansion of Garzweiler, an open-pit lignite mine, has led to the town’s remaining residents being relocated to New Immerath, several kilometres away from the original town site, in North Rhine-Westphalia, whose biggest city is Cologne.

The fate of this small village, which in 2015 was home to 70 people, reflects the advances, retreats and contradictions of the world-renowned transition to renewable energy in Germany.

Since 2011, Germany has implemented a comprehensive energy transition policy, backed by a broad political consensus, seeking to make steps towards a low-carbon economy. This has encouraged the generation and consumption of alternative energy sources.

But so far these policies have not facilitated the release from the country’s industry based on coal and lignite, a highly polluting fossil fuel.

“The initial phases of the energy transition have been successful so far, with strong growth in renewables, broad public support for the idea of the transition and major medium and long term goals for government,” told IPS analyst Sascha Samadi of the non-governmental Wuppertal Institute, devoted to studies on energy transformation.

Renewable electricity generation accounted for 30 percent of the total of Germany’s electrical power in 2015, while lignite fuelled 24 percent, coal 18 percent, nuclear energy 14 percent, gas 8.8 percent and other sources the rest.

This European country is the third world power in renewable energies – excluding hydropower – and holds third place in wind power and biodiesel and fifth place in geothermal power.

Germany is also renowned for having the highest solar power capacity per capita in photovoltaic technology, even though its climate is not the most suitable for that purpose.

But the persistence of fossil fuels casts a shadow on this green energy matrix.

“The successful phasing out of fossil fuels entails a great deal of planning and organisation. If we do not promote renewables, we will have to import energy at some point,” Johannes Remmel, the minister for climate protection and the environment for North Rhine-Westphalia, told IPS.

Germany has nine lignite mines operating in three regions. Combined, the mines employ 16,000 people, produce 170 million tonnes of lignite a year and have combined reserves of three billion tonnes. China, Greece and Poland are other large world producers of lignite.

A part of the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine, in North Rhine-Westphalia. One of the greatest challenges facing the energy transition in Germany is the future of this polluting fuel. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Garzweiler, which is owned by the private company RWE, produces 35 million tonnes of lignite a year. From a distance it is possible to see its cut-out terraces and blackened soil, waiting for giant steel jaws to devour it and start to separate the lignite.

Lignite from this mine fuels nearby electricity generators at Frimmersdorf, Neurath, Niederaussen and Weisweiller, some of the most polluting power plants in Germany.

RWE is one of the four main power generation companies in Germany, together with E.ON, EnBW and Swedish-based Vattenfall.

Coal has an expiry date

The fate of coal is different. The government has already decided that its demise will be in 2018, when the two mines that are still currently active will cease to operate.

The Rhine watershed, comprising North Rhine-Westphalia together with other states, has traditionally been the hub of Germany’s industry. Mining and its consumers are an aftermath of that world, whose rattling is interspersed with the emergence of a decarbonized economy.

A tour of the mine and the adjoining power plant of  Ibberbüren in North Rhine-Westphalia shows the struggle between two models that still coexist.

In the mine compound, underground mouths splutter the coal that feeds the hungry plant at a pace of 157 kilowatt-hour per tonne.

In 2015 the mine produced 6.2 million tonnes of extracted coal, an amount projected to be reduced to 3.6 million tonnes this year and next, and to further drop to 2.9 million in 2018.

The mine employs 1,600 people and has a 300,000 tonne inventory which needs to be sold by 2018.

“I am a miner, and I am very much attached to my job. I speak on behalf of my co-workers. It is hard to close it down. There is a feeling of sadness, we are attending our own funeral”, told IPS the manager of the mine operator, Hubert Hüls.

Before the energy transition policy was in place, laws that promoted renewable energies had been passed in 1991 and 2000, with measures such as a special royalty fee included in electricity tariffs paid to generators that are fuelled by renewable energy sources.

The renewable energy sector invests some 20 billion dollars yearly and employs around 370.000 people.

Another measure, adopted in 2015 by the government in Berlin, sets out an auction plan for the purchase of photovoltaic solar power, but opponents have argued that large generation companies are being favoured over small ones as the successful bidder will be the one offering the lowest price.

Energy transition and climate change

Energy transition also seeks to meet Germany’s global warming mitigation commitments.

Germany has undertaken to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent in 2020 and by 95 per cent in 2015. Moreover, it has set itself the goal of increasing the share of renewable energies in the end-use power market from the current figure of 12 per cent to 60 per cent in 2050.

In the second half of the year, the German government will analyse the drafting of the 2050 Climate Action Plan, which envisages actions towards reducing by half the amount of emissions from the power sector and a fossil fuel phase-out programme.

In 2014, Germany reduced its emissions by 346 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 27.7 per cent of the 1990 total. However, the German Federal Agency for Environment warned that in 2015 emissions went up by six million tonnes, amounting to 0.7 per cent, reaching a total of 908 million tonnes.

Polluting gases are derived mainly from the generation and use of energy, transport and agriculture.

In 2019, the government will review the current incentives for the development of renewable energies and will seek to make adjustments aimed at fostering the sector.

Meanwhile, Germany’s last three nuclear power plants will cease operation in 2022. However, Garzweiler mine will continue to operate until 2045.

“There are technological, infrastructure, investment, political, social and innovation challenges to overcome. Recent decisions taken by the government are indicative of a lack of political will to undertake the tough decisions that are required for deep decarbonisation”, pointed out Samadi.

Companies “now try to mitigate the damage and leave the search for solutions in the hands of the (central) government. There will be fierce debate over how to expand renewable energies. The process may be slowed but not halted”, pointed out academic Heinz-J Bontrup, of the state University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen.

Meanwhile, the regional government has opted to reduce the Garzweiler mine extension plan, leaving 400 million tonnes of lignite underground.

The 2015 Climate Conference is hosted by France, who also serves as its President. The French has been eager to conclude the talks with an agreement, thus pushing countries to a fast-paced first week. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
PARIS, France, Dec 7 2015 (IPS)

Whatever effort there was made during the past four years to create a global legal architecture to combat climate change, its legacy will be defined in the forthcoming days.

Negotiators from 195 countries walked into the second and final week of the climate negotiations here in Paris on Monday after producing the final draft version of the expected global agreement last Saturday. This has a cleaner look than those preceding it but still major international policy issues lie unresolved.

“We could have been better, we could have been worse, the important thing is that we have a text, that we want an agreement next week and all parties want it,” said French Ambassador for the International Climate Negotiations Laurence Tubiana as talks closed last week.

It’s up now to ministers to continue the technical discussions delegates had during the first segment of the talks but with a politically nuanced view as countries should agree to complex economic and development meeting points to address climate change.

If the accord comes through, the world should break apart from its fossil fuel dependence and quickly move towards a low-carbon economy with more resilient cities, communities and businesses, in what accounts to a complete divorce from the 20th century development model.

For this to happen though, parties must agree to heavy cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and financial support to comply with inversion in cleaner energy and adaptation to climate impacts.

The relatively fast-paced 2015 Climate Conference (COP21) is still on schedule with the expectations of its host, the French government. According to their proposed agenda, the talks will deliver a final text by Wednesday night this week so that translators and legal advisors can prepare an official document in all UN languages. But that’s still several days away.

“The job is not done, we need to apply all intelligence, energy, and willingness to compromise and all efforts to come to agreement. Nothing is decided until everything is decided,” said Tubiana.

How the French Presidency and the facilitators it has appointed handle these upcoming days decides the fate of the agreement, which could provide a global treaty on emissions reduction or another failure like the 2009 conference at Copenhagen.

“We have advanced at the pace the French presidency wanted. There is a negotiating text for this week, but it’s not as clean as we would have liked”, Dennis Castellanos, head of the Guatemalan delegation, told IPS. “The work we have for this week is still pretty significan.t”

Guatemala currently presides over AILAC, the Latin American and Caribbean Independent Alliance, which groups eight developing countries from the region with a progressive stance and is seen as a bridging group between developing nations and the industrialized countries.

“As always, finance would be another of the key issues we would need to address,” Castellanos explained.

The financial support from developed countries, and more unusually as South-South cooperation, will determine the quality of the agreement and the tools countries will have to implement, measure, and verify their current commitments. This remains one of the cloudiest topics of the talks.

The pressure for delegates is double: they not only have the mandate to produce a globally binding agreement after the two-week long Paris talks, but it needs to be as ambitious as possible to create a longstanding solution to climate change.

The latest review of the current pledges show global warming was curved down, but still not enough as to prevent catastrophic impacts around the globe.

“The ministers have a choice: either they meaningfully address the inadequacy of current climate targets, or they make a deal that puts the world on a path to catastrophic three degrees of warming,” said Wendel Trio, Director of Climate Action Network Europe in a press release.

A key issue still undecided is what should be the limit of the temperature increase, a target set in two degrees Celsius after a political debate in the Copenhagen talks but hotly debated over the past years as still too dangerous.

The 2013-2015 review, a scientific analysis of existing literature made by a subsidiary body of the Climate Convention, concluded among other elements that 2 degrees would be catastrophic for lowland regions around the world, especially the atoll nations of the world.

The scientific body submitted a three-year long scientific review which may have convinced nations that a 1.5 Celsius target was possible, but strong opposition by an oil-rich country made it miss the last chance to be approved before the final week of talks.

As over 100 countries among the least developed and most vulnerable, along with some key players like France and Germany, push for this more ambitious target needing a faster transition to renewable energy but could in turn trigger increased actions for the private sector.

“Paris needs to send a signal that the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end, so that businesses can plan for a carbon-free future. So the language in the Agreement needs to be clear,” argued Martin Kaiser, Head of International Climate Politics at Greenpeace.

As delegates are aware now that the current voluntary pledges made by countries won’t be sufficient to comb down the planet’s temperature increase to safe levels, Kaiser said “The Agreement then needs to provide the means for getting there. That’s the mechanism to scale up ambition every five years.”

This mechanism, also called the Paris Ambition Mechanism among the hopeful who push for it, would institute mandatory and periodical reviews for country’s commitments where they can be scaled up to further reduce emissions. This would be completed by a global analysis of how much can be achieved globally.

However, Kaiser stated, the first review should be before 2020 and not to “wait for the first review or stock-take to happen in 2024 or 2025, because that will set in stone the current pledges.”

So begins the last week ever of the road to a Paris Agreement, which would enshrine the process as a masterful year-long successful effort to combat climate change is down to a handful of days.or another step humanity takes into the war against itself.

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By Ban Ki-moon
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

On Sep. 23, I have invited world leaders from government, business, finance and civil society to a Climate Summit in New York so they can show the world how they will advance action on climate change and move towards a meaningful universal new agreement next year at the December climate negotiations in Paris.

This is the time for decisive global action. I have been pleased to see climate change rise on the political agenda and in the consciousness of people worldwide. But I remain alarmed that governments and businesses have still failed to act at the pace and scale needed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

But I sense a change in the air. The opportunity for a more realistic dialogue and partnership has arrived. Ever more heads of government and business leaders are prepared to invest political and financial capital in the solutions we need. They understand that climate change is an issue for all people, all businesses, all governments. They recognise that we can avert the risks if we take determined action now.

I am convening the Climate Summit more than a year before governments head to Paris to give everyone a platform to raise their level of ambition. Because it is not a negotiation, the Summit is a chance for every participant to showcase bold actions and initiatives instead of waiting to see what others will do.

An unprecedented number of heads of state and government will attend the Summit. But it is not just for presidents and prime ministers. We have long realised that while governments have a vital role to play, action is needed from all sectors of society.

That is why I have invited leaders from business, finance and civil society to make bold announcements and forge new partnerships that will support the transformative change the world needs to cut emissions and strengthen resilience to climate impacts.

The sooner we act on climate change, the less it will cost us in lost lives and damaged economies. Economists are also showing that new technological advances and better policies that put a price on pollution mean that moving to a low-carbon economy is not only affordable, but can spur economic growth by creating jobs and business opportunities.

All countries stand to benefit from climate action – cleaner, healthier air; more productive, climate-resilient agriculture; well-managed forests for water and energy security; and better designed, more livable urban areas.

Instead of asking if we can afford to act, we should be asking what is stopping us, who is stopping us, and why? Let us join forces to push back against sceptics and entrenched interests. Let us support the scientists, economists, entrepreneurs and investors who can persuade government leaders and policy-makers that now is the time for climate action. Change is in the air. Solutions exist. The race is on. It’s time to lead.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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