Europe Retreats from Net-Zero Mandates as Biden Administration Charges Forward

Demonstrators block a street in Canary Wharf during a protest outside the Ofgem headquarters, following the energy price cap announcement, in London, Britain, on Aug. 26, 2022. Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters

As the Biden administration presses ahead with its “whole of government” plan to transition America’s economy away from oil, gas, and coal, European governments, which are farther down the path, are starting to backpedal.

French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, on Sept. 25 backed away from imposing a decree to ban gas boilers, stating that while he will continue to push France toward its net-zero goals, “we cannot leave our compatriots, particularly in the most rural areas, without a solution.”

This came just days after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would delay a ban on internal combustion-engine cars and gas boilers, stating that these net zero climate goals imposed “unacceptable costs” on British families.

In July 2022, Germany restarted coal plants, which had been idled as part of the country’s decades-long Energiewende (energy transition), following an embargo of Russian natural gas. This week, the German government suspended new climate-related building efficiency rules that were to go into effect in 2025, at a time when the country’s citizens face a housing shortage.

German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck said that existing laws already mandated energy efficiency in buildings; regarding additional tightening, he said, “it can wait.”

Constantin Zerger, head of energy and climate protection at Environmental Action Germany, called the move a “fatal blow for climate protection in the building sector.”

For energy economists, however, these moves are an indication that the climate movement may increasingly be forced to come to terms with economic and political limits.

“Realities have a way of exerting themselves,” Peter Hartley, energy economist and professor at Rich University, told The Epoch Times.

Climate Models Ignore Many Costs, Benefits

The first reality is that government policies are often based on climate models that have substantially underestimated the cost of the net zero transition, while ignoring the benefits of CO2 emissions, he said.

Just looking at electricity, for example: the transition entails not only the construction of new wind and solar plants to replace functional coal and gas plants that are being retired but also miles of new transmission lines to connect often remote or offshore sites into the grid, as well as backup power sources, typically gas- or coal-fired, and energy-storage technology, to generate electricity when the weather is not cooperating. For the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), there is also the extensive buildout of a network of charging stations, as well as the construction of new generation capacity to meet the additional demand from transportation.

Typically, all of this new capital expenditure is passed on to end users in the form of higher electric bills, which are felt most heavily by the poor and middle class, but increasingly are also taking a toll on companies. In many European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, this has sparked widespread protests as basic necessities become unaffordable.

Germany, once the industrial powerhouse of Europe, was projected by the International Monetary Fund in July to be the worst-performing country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with negative GDP growth in 2023, due in part to higher costs for energy-intensive industries to such as metals, chemicals, cars and fertilizer.

In addition, climate models often ignore the benefits of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions. Because plants consume CO2, higher levels of CO2 coincide with higher levels of plant growth, making farming more efficient. There also is the issue that synthetic fertilizers, derived from natural gas, are essential for current levels of crop yields.

“Eliminating fossil fuels and implementing net zero policies and actions mean the elimination of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that will result in about half the world’s population not having enough food to eat,” states a report titled, “Challenging Net Zero with Science,” by William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Many would starve,” the report said.

Research also suggests that plants absorb much of the CO2 that is emitted before it makes its way up into the earth’s atmosphere. A February 2022 report by Boston University scientists found that “about 30 percent of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are taken in by forests, an effect called the terrestrial carbon sink.”

Developing Countries Ignore Net-Zero Plans

As the higher costs of net zero become apparent, people may also be coming around to the realization that the United Nation’s net-zero goals might not be achievable, no matter how much they sacrifice.

“Is there any chance you are ever going to get to the UN goals?” Mr. Hartley said. “The answer is no, not a snowball’s chance in hell.

“Over the next several decades there’s going to be a tremendous increase in energy demand from the developing world,” he said. “And, basically, what happens in OECD countries is like spitting in the wind; it’s not going to make much difference.”

The trends in high-population countries like China and India, but also throughout Asia and Africa, are toward industrialization and urbanization, all of which are boosting demand for energy, and in particular oil, gas, and coal.

“In every economy, as it goes through that takeoff stage of economic development, there’s a tremendous increase in energy demand,” Mr. Hartley said. “All these people want a modern lifestyle.”

In order for that to happen, developing countries are relying heavily on the cheapest, most reliable sources of energy—predominantly oil, gas, and coal.

According to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, “Coal power plant permitting, construction starts, and new project announcements accelerated dramatically in China in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015. The coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.”

India, which is estimated to have displaced China as the world’s most populous country this year, also announced in June that it will continue to build out new coal-fired plants to satisfy a rapidly growing demand for electricity. These countries and others in Asia and Africa appear unwilling to go along with the net-zero movement in any meaningful way.

“People in the Western world, what gives them the right to say that they want to maintain their lifestyle, but those billions of people living in poverty elsewhere, they’re going to keep living in poverty,” Mr. Hartley said. “It’s not going to happen.”

‘Climate Exaggeration’

The global-warming narrative itself appears to be losing steam. As President Macron was criticizing “climate alarmism,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, an outspoken advocate of net-zero initiatives, stated that global warming is not the existential crisis that its advocates portray it to be.

“There’s a lot of climate exaggeration,” Mr. Gates said at a summit in New York City on Sept. 19. “The climate is not the end of the planet, so the planet is going to be fine.”

Meanwhile, the net-zero proposals keep coming. One recent initiative out of France is seeking to set minimum flight prices across the European Union to cut aviation emissions by ending cheap air travel.

French Transport Minister Clement Beaune said he wanted to “open the debate on the fair social and environmental price of a flight ticket,” though this might make travel unaffordable for the less affluent.

Measures taken by the Biden administration include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandating audited reports on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by all listed companies, as well as their suppliers and customers, and new heavy-handed regulations by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to limit GHG emissions by power plants and motor vehicles. New tailpipe emissions limits set by the EPA would force automakers to shift two-thirds of their production from internal combustion engine vehicles to EVs by 2032.

Climate Collusion

On Sept. 19, the U.S. Treasury Department released its “Principles for Net Zero Financing and Investment,” which encourages banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to unite behind UN climate goals. These principles, which the Treasury says are “voluntary,” emphasized that things like loans and financial services to customers should be tailored to support the transition to net zero.

Beyond the economic issues surrounding net zero, there may also be legal concerns for this coordinated political effort, according to several state attorneys general.

“Merely labeling something voluntary doesn’t make it is so,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes stated.

“The administration cannot bypass legislative and regulatory processes and still protect the net-zero cartels from antitrust scrutiny,” Mr. Reyes said. “The coercive pressure of ESG [environmental, social, governance] and net-zero mandates across the financial sector is a constraint on trade and manipulation of markets amplified by this government syndicate.”

“The administration’s heavy-handed net-zero guidance combines agency overreach with collusion between transnational financial giants, and appears intended to insulate our energy policy from any degree of accountability to the people or our elected representatives,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told The Epoch Times.

“Americans have awakened to the scam of ESG, so the Biden administration must desperately try to resuscitate it,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement released to The Epoch Times. “This has never been about the climate or consumers, but about cronyism.

“My colleagues and I will continue to expose this racket for what it is,” he said.