EU leaders agree to cut emissions by at least 55% by end of decade

Bold indeed.

So, the initial plan was to reduce emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2020 (3 decades) and by a further 25% in the next decade (to achieve a total decrease of 40%).

We exceeded this target; the reduction was 24% in 3 decades. And now the reduction target for the next decade was increased to 41% ( the math is (1-0.24)*(1-0.41) = 1-0.55). In other words, in a single decade a more ambitious reduction target that the initial target for 4 decades. And starting from a much lower base (i.e. all the low hanging fruits were picked already).

This is indeed bold. Is it impossible? I hope not. But I'd like to see the feasibility study to see what the concrete steps are to achieve this target.

The next-gen turbines that are _actually_ going to be built in the coming years are still hugely impressive:

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore...

I thought I was the only person who thinks they look nice!

Project seems kinda dead? No press releases since 2017.

US emissions have been steadily dropping. This information is absurdly easy to find. Given how shallow your understanding of the facts is, explain to me on what basis you have formed these ideas about what the US, China and other nations should start or stop doing.

Maybe... but most efforts over the last decades to this end have been slow and hard. The alternative thesis is leadership by example. Putting these at odds has been a recipe for stalling, and both the US & China are examples of this.

On that note, I think we should be using carbon reduction leadership more directly to generate industrial advantages within the EU. There are (should be) obvious advantages in getting to the future first. A lot of recent capital investment in green tech (eg tesla, panasonic, the chinese panel industry) were directly or indirectly supported by signals of long term demand (eg end dates for ICE vehicles) from european polities.

EG: Telsa's investment case (besides the L5 autonomy case) is basically formed around a predicted adoption curve for electric vehicles. (Market Share)X(Market Size) for any given T. Long term investments need confident predictions of long term market size. Same for solar panels, battery tech, etc. Most of the footnotes supporting these predictions came from EU (member) politics. Not quite government guaranteed demand, but collectively credible nonetheless.

There should be more effort to get this happening locally.

The UK is no longer EU, but it's a nice legible example so let's use it. Scotland, and now the UK as a whole have been declaring that ICE vehicles will be banned by 2030. Whether that "ban" will really be a ban will be determined later, but that still puts one hell of a footnote on your market size predictions for 2030... directly translatable into hard capital investment. The EU (+UK) is big enough that a good chunk of this investment can be captured within it.

There are costs to carbon reduction locally. Environmental benefits are more global. We should be capturing more of the economic benefits locally to even it out.

As emissions are cumulative, there is no wasting time by cutting your own emissions. Both is best, but change starts at home!

Mainly, China has to work on cutting coal, and the USA has a stubbornly slow-to-green transportation sector. Then there's agriculture and manufacturing, those are much harder long term trends. I'm thinking EU and progressive US areas may drive cost premiums down for green options, so that then other economies can come in at lower price points afterwards.

That's true but you have no power over the actions of other countries. They can always decide to "defect". It's better to work on the problem domestically instead of pointing fingers.

Would already be a good start if the US wouldn't put foreign policy over the environment.

That whole push to export subsidized US LNG, to places like Germany for the sole purpose of further depressing the Russian economy, is complete nonsense from an environmental and efficiency perspective.

What you do in one country absolutely matters in another. Even the US has a significant portion of wind and solar these days. This didn't happen because Donald Trump (or anyone else responsible) made any ambitious climate decisions, it simply happened because policies of other countries made it so cheap that it happened through market forces.

This isn't a solution for everything (there will be areas where the climate friendly solution will always be more expensive), but for example bringing down the prices of electrolyseurs would absolutely matter worldwide and is something the EU can do with policy.

We need both.

> EU set to meet its climate change targets

> The European Union has already achieved one of its three targets related to climate change and energy, as a part of the Europe 2020 strategy.

https://www.europeandatajournalism.eu/eng/News/Data-news/EU-...

Look at the ambitious CO2 emission targets (and associated fines) for EU carmakers, no one's wriggling out of that.

Nah. This decade is different.

Everybody will cut a lot of emissions. The economic interests point on that direction.

Yes. It's called the stock market.

The best bet you can make if you're confident nothing will get done is to not have any children.

And then what? Magic? Are there any viable geo engineering schemes that could be deployed in the short term, without a risk of catastrophic side effects?

Why do you think that? As another comment mentioned, the EU is indeed reducing emissions: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/30/report-eu-g...

EDIT: I do strongly believe there is no way out of this situation without geoengineering. Either with carbon capture or some sort of aerosol. But this news seems genuine.

Any sensible geoengineering plan will be in addition to climate mitigation and emission reductions, not instead of it.

FWIW I think geoengineering should be - carefully - explored and researched.

It's difficult to compare, the UK had a lot of dirty coal power stations in 1990 whereas France was mostly nuclear. We had some low hanging fruit to pick and started doing so for cost reasons more than anything else.

Not really a level playing field, is it? The EU are obviously trying to get a competitive advantage over the U.K. with such a low target

The UK position on this is very odd: we've been quite effective, but nobody wants to take credit for it in public.

This is quite ironic, the EU sets its own standards lower than the UK, but in trade negotiations accuses the UK of potentially lowering the standards to get an advantage. Same stories with subsidies. I guess it's true, cheaters are always the most afraid of being cheated.

The UK seems peculiarly obsessed with wind power. And a few times last month, it was (unusually?) wind-less and the wind power contribution to the national grid dropped to almost zero, whilst at the same time...fossil fuel and nuclear had to pick up the slack.

Polish person here.

Likely nothing until the current deposits are depleted, which is poised happen in the next 20 years:

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel...

Brown coal is only commercially viable if it's not transported too far, so it's been in steady decline for years now(yellow line - brown coal production in Poland over the years):

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydoby...

To my knowledge no large new mines were opened in the past decade.

All this brown coal will likely be replaced with imported hard coal, gas and electricity - currently 8% of the electricity consumed in Poland is imported - mostly from Germany and Sweden - at an average total rate of 1.2GW.

Germany already pledged to shut them down. The problem is that the timeline is stupidly long. The country is also in the process of introducing a minimum CO2 price that is going up year by year. Hopefully that will convince the operators of the coal plants to turn their plants down because of economics instead of a direct ban.

For Germany check out the graph on this page (grey is black coal, brown is brown coal): https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/national...

It will be reduced to half by 2030 and phased out completely by 2038. That's the worst case by law, in practice coal might be phased out faster.

PL: 2 nuclear plants (one in place of old brown coal mine). There could be one left which won't be economical in the near future.

The rest of coal is getting to expensive to extract.

Germany prefers to shut down nuclear instead

Continue using coal and buying green electricity certificates from Norway? Because local green nuclear energy is devilish in Germany and can’t be produced locally anymore.

>Decreasing price of batteries is the most important step in decreasing air pollution and CO2 emissions. Is it? What good does an electric car do if the electricity was produced using fossil fuels?

Well, Merkel has been chancellor for 15 years. Besides, the previous goal of 20% cut by 2020 was achieved, so don't be so quick to dismiss this.

I was curious why you were asking so I thought I’d quickly find an answer with a definitive source but this ended up being much more controversial than I thought.

The popular answer seems to be a decade starts and ends with the decade handle. 200X, 201X, 202X, 203X, 204X. The current decade began when it was 2020 and will end when it’s no longer 202X.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/27/791546842/people-cant-even-ag...

> As Jan. 1, 2020, approaches, it turns out there is a Team Zero and a Team 1 – those who believe the new decade will begin after midnight on the upcoming New Year's Eve and those who believe the burgeoning celebrations of a new decade (and all the "last decade" retrospectives) are in fact a year early.

> In a recent YouGov survey, 64% of Americans said the next decade will begin on Jan. 1, 2020, and end on Dec. 31, 2029. But nearly 20% said they weren't sure – and slightly fewer people said the next decade won't start until Jan. 1, 2021.

> On this question, many voices of authority are with the minority. They say that because there was no Year Zero when the current era began more than 2,000 years ago, all decades, centuries and millenia begin with Year 1.

When did the sixties end?

At the same time, cargo ships transport an unbelievable amount of cargo. They're an order of magnitude more efficient per tonne/km than trucks, and two orders of magnitude more efficient than air freight. Economic incentives from fuel savings alone were enough to reduce the emissions per tonne/km by a higher percentage than many devout green governments reduced theirs.

Cargo ships are responsible for ~3% of global CO2 emissions. Not too bad for providing a backbone for the world's economy.

Nothing is going to matter unless you wake up yourself and go do something about emissions. Nobody is going to do it for you while you are sleeping.

Pretty much the entire US navy runs on nuclear power, so it's not unthinkable to move to zero emissions propulsion.

Cargo ships are a tiny part of the entire supply chain and provide an incredibly efficient service. It's environmentally friendlier to buy something that's in season in the other hemisphere and ship it to you than to grow it locally off season.

Ah yes, we will stop cargo ships. Now we will ship everything by plane, happy ?

It's easy to come onto HN and dismiss something like this. If the EU agreed to count emissions from China there would be something else to complain about. This is a huge move, and by itself it's not enough, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It's also likely that an agreement like this is a required precondition of enforcing this with trading partners.

The actual implementation of this will likely be a little from column A and a little from column B, and will likely have a positive impact on the current situation.

This is being looked at. See:

- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

- https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-carbon-bord...

I think China themselves have targets to cut emissions and transition to clean energy [1]. They've been leading the charge on all clean energy tech so far.

It looked like some of the dirtier industries are being moved on from China to SE Asia (Vietnam etc.) but there's a general push across the world to transition to clean energy.

I'm pretty confident we'll get out of the doom and gloom existential threat to humanity scenarios, but still think large portions of the world's populations will be impacted by climate change.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/27/china-ca....

A more likely output would be chinese factories blatantly lying and certifying that such dohicky was produced using 450 tons of emissions and transport only uses like 350 tons of emissions.

And you wouldn't have any way of verifying whether it's true and demonstrating it's false.

The leadership of the EU states know this well. They also know that industry in the EU is a hugely important employer and a major shift to importing more goods would be very destabilizing. So what does it tell you that they choose to move ahead with this policy, even though it means potentially weakening their economies relative to the competition?

To me, it says they finally see that the consequences of not acting to mitigate climate change are unacceptable, and that there's no solution without risk left.

There are plenty of non-"just import it from China" emissions that will be targeted by this. Think personal and public transportation, heating and cooling, and more. You can't exactly outsource heating your bedroom to China.

That's exactly why every country should do it.

Yes, China makes the steel, etc. They use a lot of coal for all their energy needs.

I remember this 13 year old story about dismantling a German steel mill and sending it to China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.htm...

This comment inadvertently highlights the importance of educating people about where they use fossil fuels. Manufacturing is a small part of the picture and there is a ton of inherently local usage: heating, transportation, and food are significant and easily changed by removing government subsidies for wasteful industries. A lot of personal decisions like eating less (or sustainably grown) meat, driving less, or using less HVAC are sensitive to government incentives.

Here are two calculators for you to learn more about the topic:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon...

https://www.nytimes.com/ask/answers/lower-personal-carbon-fo...

> Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless.

To give some perspective, in the case of the UK (which until this year had been an EU member):

"directly-produced carbon emissions peaked in 1972, total carbon emissions created by the UK economy peaked thirty-five years later in 2007"

So yes, "imported" carbon emissions can make a big difference, but even if you take them into account, the trend for total emissions has been downward for over a decade.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/10/21/imported-emissions...

China has a modern infrastructure with electric transportation and investing in green energy. Their emissions per capital are low

The real problem is the US. High per capital emissions and weak commitments to reduce emissions

The fact that they'll be willing to lose local manufacturing, production, jobs and the linked market and economy – doesn't sound entirely meaningless.

Constructive criticism is good, but really, "meaningless"?

Comments like these make me worried about general built-up pessimism and negativity of the human race. We're not happy when anything happens, but then we're also surprised when nothing happens.

Statistics may be there, but they're just getting discussed and counter-argued infinitely until nothing happens.

In addition to this very obvious "out", there is also the fact that politicians today are unlikely to bear responsibility for outcomes that occur 10 or more years into the future.

Promises to do things in the future seem to be a mainstay of international climate discussions, from Kyoto to Paris and onward.

The EU is working on adressing this on some level, they want to introduce something they call a carbon border adjustment mechanism.

Details are complex and will matter in how effective this is and there's also a lot of resistance, so this is not decided yet. But it sounds like this is probably gonna happen.

Don't let best be the enemy of good.

classic HN comment, nothing is worth anything if not done 100% luckily it's not like that in the real world. Agreements like this are tiny footsteps in the right direction, people are being aware, acknowledging the problem, setting directions, goals, timelines etc. this all helps to reach the goal

More like 40+ years

If that were true then decreasing fuel efficiency would increase economic activity. It obviously doesn't.

Agreed.

I think that the UK should bring back the Mallard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard) and heck, for old times' sake, HMS Dreadnought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906) ), while they're at it.

Just to show'em how it's done!

The EU is (almost) half a billion people who are some of the richest and most polluting in the world. It's a big deal.

I got bullied out of conversation by angry mob (downvoted). But I think, I’ll still provide a clarification. (Fun fact: people in angry mobs are always righteous.)

I was not saying that change is not needed. I am just saying that (total) electricity consumption, say of EU is half of that of US and 1/3 of China. 25% more than India. My electricity consumption is about the same level as of a person in Jamaica or Syria (some years it was less but gone up a bit now). And only 24% percent of my electricity nowadays is fossil (still bad). My newest laptop is from 2015. Many of the people around me are vegetarians or vegans, some people have pretty much given up traveling by plane (* scream emoji *), many use bikes to move around the city.

> Richest. Shmitchest. I happen to think that some of the folks around me are doing pretty good job. Yes, it seems that it may be too late. :( Yes, more needs to be done (likely it will take decades unfortunately)! But “rich” (as you call them) have better opportunities to switch to electric vehicles, adopt energy-saving technologies earlier, and so on.

You can give them credit for living up to the 2020 reductions then?

> They are talking about cutting the energy consumption of ~446 million people by 55%

Emissions and energy consumption are not the same thing.

> We are talking about a combination of things like reducing productivity, reducing mobility, reducing living standards, reducing heating and cooling (comfort), reducing amenities, reducing material possessions, reducing social events, etc.

Economic growth is no longer tied to emissions in the EU.[1]

> the Chinese and Indians and other countries are pumping out emissions at rates that are way beyond the worst the west has ever produced

Not on a per-capita basis, and not considering the total CO2 output since industrialization began.

> China produces twice as many emissions as the USA, but only 75% of the GDP; India has half the emissions of the USA, but only produces 10% of the GDP

China manufactures more than anyone else on earth. They have an artificially low GDP because they devalue their currency to make their products more attractively priced.[2]

Next time just cut to the chase and state that you don't believe that modern technology like renewable energy exists, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

[1] https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Scree...

[2] https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/20858.jpeg

There are studies detailing how to do this. There are some uncertainties in which technologies will prevail when you get to the last few percents before reaching 100%, but 55% is neither hard nor expensive. Much of the tech is already cheaper than fossils.