While the media and lobbyists keep insisting that fines loom over us unless we act urgently and not wasting time to do a cost benefit analysis, what they don't tell you is that most EU countries are now on track to miss their 2020 targets. The EU have finally admitted that biofuels were a waste of time. Most countries are learning the hard way that other sources of renewables like wind and solar were not all that they were "cracked up to be" either.
Some ferocious overselling (and little analysis) has taken place.
The EU funded website Keep on Track shows which countries are on track and which aren't in meeting their 2020 renewable targets.
Here is the list of some of the countries NOT on track to meet their 2020 targets :
• Portugal
• Spain
• France
• Belgium
• Netherlands
• Germany
• Slovenia
• Czech Republic
• Poland
• Slovakia
• Finland
• Latvia
• UK
• Denmark (doubts)
• Greece
I would personally add Ireland to the list, we have done little on transport and heating initiatives, instead focusing almost entirely on wind generation. With about 20% of electricity consumption coming from wind over six or seven years, we have to make up another 17% by the next three years (in an increasingly legal quagmire).
That to me seems like a disaster for the EU and it's wall to wall green lobby groups. The question is will they admit they got it all wrong ?
Since bureaucrats with permanent, pensionable tenure are effectively unaccountable, it is more important to save face than to address the cause of a programme that goes off course.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the private sector that has to deliver results on substance, the process, however archaic and ill-founded, is far more important than the substance.
Even if the targets are met, they don't achieve anything so the result will be nothing better.
ReplyDeleteWhenever the subject of targets comes up I check the Mauna Loa CO2 measurement history, to see if said targets are having any effect, the answer (so far) is always a resounding NO:
ReplyDeletehttps://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_full_record.png
But of course politicians setting targets is only ever about politics, so maybe I should be checking the electoral success of "progressive" parties, rather than anything to do with the real world.