Leaked Strategy Paper: EU Plans To Phase Out Green Energy Subsidies

The economic cost of the expansion of renewable energy could become prohibitively expensive. Subsidies in the EU for solar and wind power should be phased out as quickly as possible. That is what the European Commission says in an internal draft strategy paper that EU Energy Commissioner, Günther Oettinger, will present in Brussels early next month. --Hendrik Kafsack, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 May 2012

With the small island countries and the least developed states veering towards the European line on climate change, the larger developing economies came together with African countries, binding around the BASIC four - India, China, South Africa and Brazil - to demand that principles of equity and 'common but differentiated responsibility' be operationalised in the post-2020 climate regime. Developing countries like Malaysia, Argentina, Thailand and Venezuela, along with traditional oil economies like UAE have bundled their cards with the big four emerging economies of the BASIC grouping realizing that they would be the first ones to bear an unfair burden of emission reduction once the firewall is blow away in the new regime under discussion.  --Nitin Sethi, The Times of India, 21 May 2012

Arnaud Montebourg, the newly-appointed French minister for "industrial revival" has promised to revive old plans for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders. Matthias Machnig, a former German environment minister, famously called the French idea "eco imperialism".--EurActiv, 18 May 2012

I’m never all that enamoured of decisions taken by politicians: no doubt this is some form of character flaw. But this decision that the UK Government seems to be taking about shale gas seems more foolish than most. For they’ve decided that it isn’t really going to be a solution to the country’s energy problems therefore it probably shouldn’t go ahead. But The Independent on Sunday has learned that industry experts made clear at a meeting attended by senior ministers, including David Cameron and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, that the UK’s reserves were smaller than first thought and could be uneconomical to extract. The point is that this isn’t a valid decision to be made by government. You know, it’s going to be the market, not politics, which is the proof of this particular pudding. --Tim Worstall, Forbes, 20 May 2012