The gas dispute continues to take on new angles. In a telephone call yesterday, Russia’s president told the German chancellor that the contracting parties could continue to pay in euros – Gazprom Bank would simply convert the money into rubles. In Berlin, however, Putin was rejected; Scholz merely asked for written information. Further, the G7 decision still applies: Payment will be made in dollars and euros. So a delivery stop is not yet out of the question. Read Manuel Berkel and Till Hoppe’s Feature on how Germany and other countries are preparing for this.
In addition to the comprehensive specifications on the energy efficiency of energy-consuming products, the EU now wants to impose specifications on the repairability and sustainability of almost all product groups. Manuel Berkel took a look at the amendment to the Ecodesign Directive, which was presented yesterday, and explains to what extent tablets and smartphones are also affected.
An agreement was recently reached on the Digital Markets Act, and the fourth trilogue on the Digital Services Act is due to take place today. One major issue will be who will ultimately be responsible for enforcing the regulation and who will bear the costs. Falk Steiner has written about why the polluter pays principle can be a solution, but also brings new problems with it.
Shortly before the deadline, MEPs from the Greens and S&D groups have filed an objection to the EU’s proposed classification of nuclear energy and natural gas as “green” energy types – so the jury is still out on this. Read more in the News.
In today’s Opinion, Helen Clark, Dan Smith, and Margot Wallström write why getting rid of Russian gas and oil as soon as possible is important not only for energy security. Phasing out fossil fuels and expanding renewables also prevents conflict because the effects of climate change destabilize places fastest where tensions are already high.
The core of the circular economy package presented on Wednesday is the amendment of the Ecodesign Directive (Europe.Table reported). While for years only energy efficiency requirements applied to energy-related products, in the future, almost all product groups will have to meet extensive sustainability criteria – from the recycled content of materials to reparability. “European consumers rightly expect more environmentally friendly and durable products. Greater sustainability and resource efficiency also mean greater resilience when a crisis disrupts our industrial supply chains,” said Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
By 2030, the new regulatory framework can help save the energy content of 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas, almost equivalent to the EU’s imports from Russia, according to the Commission.
Despite the expansion of the Ecodesign Directive, not all energy-related products are covered by specific rules. The Commission, therefore, also presented a work plan for ecodesign and energy labels until 2024 on Wednesday. According to the plan, new rules for smartphones and tablets are to be adopted by the end of 2022. In addition to energy efficiency, this will also address aspects of material efficiency: durability, reparability, and recycling.
“The right to repair will finally become a reality with this proposal, when, for example, the replacement of the battery finally becomes a reality,” said Green Party MEP Michael Bloss. “At the same time, manufacturers must finally explain why they simply burn intact goods when they are returned. This clandestine waste of resources is unacceptable and must be banned. But the Commission proposal misses this clear demarcation.”
For information and communications technology products, the Commission is working on a study that will look at overall energy consumption – including data transmission, connectivity, and user behavior. The authority is also looking at firmware and software. For energy smart appliances, on the other hand, there is to be voluntary regulation by the industry to ensure the interoperability of the devices.
In the fourth quarter, the Commission also intends to implement the announced specifications for photovoltaic modules. It is still being examined whether there should also be limit values for the CO2 footprint. The most promising candidates for new energy specifications are also radiators – with the necessary switch to heat pumps, a large-scale replacement of heat exchangers is also to be expected.
Existing regulations for 46 product groups such as servers are also to be revised by 2025. New regulations for space heaters alone are expected to save 50 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year and 40 TWh for water pumps.
In addition to information on energy labels, the Commission wants to strengthen other consumer rights and take action against greenwashing and planned obsolescence – the deliberate rendering of products unusable after a certain period of time, even though there is no serious wear and tear. In the future, unfair business practices are to include:
In the future, retailers will also be required to inform their customers about manufacturers’ guarantees on the durability of products that extend beyond two years. There will also be information requirements on the reparability of products, for example, in the form of a separate indicator.
An amendment to the Construction Products Regulation will make it easier to recycle construction materials in the future. A digital product passport and a database for construction products will also be introduced. According to the Commission, buildings are responsible for half of the resources consumed in the EU and for 30 percent of the waste generated.
“For almost 10 years, the system of technical regulation and standardization of construction products has proven to be a catalyst for competitiveness and innovation. Unfortunately, this system has been faltering for some years. I therefore welcome the fact that today, with the published revision of the Construction Products Regulation, the Commission intends to clear the backlog of harmonized standards in the construction products sector that has prevailed for several years and to close existing legal gaps,” said Christian Doleschal, a member of the CSU.
“However, I am critical of the fact that the Commission is now also regulating all sustainability requirements for construction products in one and the same regulation, which regulates the safe use of construction products. This not only creates more bureaucracy and overregulation, but also slows down innovation,” the MEP said.
The Commission also wants to regulate the eco-design of textiles. It also wants to tackle the problem of microplastics. “In three years, according to European law, all member states must collect textiles separately from household waste,” explained SPD MEP Delara Burkhardt. “The textile strategy can only be successful and offer added value if the social dimension is also considered. It must set environmental standards in the textile supply chain, which at the same time also makes workers’ rights mandatory.”
DMA, DSA, and AI Regulation have one thing in common: Their effectiveness is questionable without enforcement. How this is to be done in concrete terms is one of the thorny questions, that is answered differently in each of the legislative acts. Particularly under the impression of deficits in the decentrally organized enforcement of the GDPR by national authorities, Parliament, Council, and Commission have pushed ahead with the search for alternative models. One of the lessons of the GDPR: If nation states have a strong vested interest in a weak supervisory authority, European consistency of enforcement is hard to guarantee. However, this would be a massive problem for the effectiveness of the DSA, DMA, and AI Act.
This is why an unusual event occurred in the discussion about the Digital Services Act: France, which otherwise so often pays attention to national sovereignty, proposed that the Commission should supervise online platforms with lower hurdles than originally planned. The goal: National supervisory authorities – called Digital Services Coordinators in the DSA – should not be able to creatively interpret the European legal framework for important companies under any circumstances to give locational advantages to the country where the company or its main European representative is based. In the case of the GDPR, it had become apparent that such behavior can only be recaptured by long and circuitous routes, if at all.
But above all, the personnel capacities for direct supervision by the Commission are limited, which is why Vice-President Margrethe Vestager surprisingly raised the issue on the fringes of the third DSA trilogue: Wouldn’t it be a good idea to make the supervised pay for their own supervision? After all, there are already precedents for this – for example, in environmental law, where the so-called polluter pays principle is widely applied. And in banking supervision, too, the supervised parties share in the costs.
A proposal by the Green Group in the EP on the DSA, Amendment 2075, had presupposed the introduction of an independent European supervisory authority, which would have been refinanced via the polluter pays principle. An “annual supervisory fee for very large online platforms” should have been effective here in addition to the budget provided by the EU. But there was no majority in the European Parliament for this. Yet there is already a model in the EU’s digital legislation.
The model of the eIDAS Regulation would be radical: There, Article 20 contains a provision whereby so-called qualified trust service providers must be audited by special conformity assessment bodies at the latest every two years at the expense of the providers. The supervisory authorities can also initiate a special audit at any time. Here, too, the audit costs must be borne by the service providers. The requirements of the eIDAS Regulation could easily be transferred to the DSA.
But would that be desirable? “When regulators profit from fines or their actions against companies, that always creates problems,” says Ben Wagner of Delft University of Technology. The specialist in digital governance mechanisms sees an independent European enforcement authority as a better solution than enforcement directly by the Commission. He is critical of the polluter pays principle: “It would be better to have a clean, proper funding of the authority, staggered according to the actual effort.”
Bitkom does not think much at all of ideas like polluter pays. “Usually, in the case of competition authorities, the state or the community of states bears the costs of enforcing the law and is the recipient of the fine payments in the case of rule violations,” says the head of trust and security, Rebekka Weiß. “We see no reason why this should be done differently in the case of DSA oversight.”
Commission sources said that a mixed model is being considered: Commission funds would be used to provide a basic level of personnel. The levies of the companies concerned would be used for this purpose, on a case-by-case basis or for a limited period of time, the use of seconded national experts as well as external support.
He thinks a supervisory fee is an interesting idea in principle, if it would also drive a much-needed expansion of supervisory capacity at national and EU level, says Julian Jaursch, platform regulation expert at the German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. “It could also provide funding for external experts who should be involved in consultations and supervisory decisions.”
However, the use of external forces could also bring new problems, for example if law firms were to work for regulators and regulated parties with a time lag or even only separated by Chinese walls – and the market for specialized legal and technical experts is obviously empty. Ben Wagner of TU Delft has doubts that the trilogue parties are getting the size of the task right: “The Commission lacks both resources and independence. All the players are not aware, in my opinion, of what a huge effort this is.”
Julian Jaursch also sees a problem here, and calls for a more fundamental discussion among the negotiators due to the polluter pays idea: “If a supervision fee is now suddenly up for debate towards the end of the DSA negotiation, the previously planned supervision structure should also be reconsidered and a specialized, independent EU platform supervision considered instead.” If supervision is financially dependent on the companies, independence must be guaranteed even more strongly.
At the latest, if not only the Commission for its responsibilities, but also the member states were to partially refinance their DSA supervision via supervisory fees, an effect already known from the GDPR could otherwise occur: a kind of non-regulatory competition of the member state supervisory authorities. This is because companies could relocate their headquarters in Europe at any time if the supervision does not suit them. One way to get around the problem is suggested by Julian Jaursch: “If the EU really wanted to innovate, it would not only make large platforms contribute to the costs of EU supervision, but set up an independent fund with a possible fee.”
While the DMA has already been negotiated, with the Commission to counter the largest players with about 80 posts, the issue could play a greater role again today in the fourth DSA trilogue. However, the plea for a corresponding regulation on the part of the Commission has come rather late, according to parliamentary circles. However, it is primarily the member states and the Commission that want to adopt the DSA as quickly as possible. In the case of the AI Regulation, on the other hand, there is still plenty of time to debate the design and load distribution, despite all the haste.
The United States recently announced an immediate ban on imports of Russian oil and gas, while the United Kingdom and the European Union pledged to curb them more gradually. The rationale is clear: punish Russia, reduce its leverage, and restore peace to Ukraine. But wrong choices now – specifically, continuing to favor fossil fuels over renewable energy – could lock in a far less peaceful future.
Some Western countries have let themselves become overly reliant on Russian oil and gas in recent years, so the decision to cut back was not easy. But the bigger, tougher decision facing Western governments is how to reduce their overall dependence on fossil fuels. Simply replacing one dirty energy source with another would leave the growing dangers of climate change to be dealt with later – if at all.
Given the pressure of the current Ukraine crisis, such shortsightedness would be understandable. Western governments must close the energy gap created by stopping Russian fossil-fuel imports, while minimizing the damage to national economies. For now, they have the public with them. But if energy costs rise too high, or shortages become too disruptive, the resulting economic havoc could erode public support
Any alternative energy sources must therefore come onstream quickly and provide affordable, reliable supplies. And they should not create new geopolitical entanglements that might cause problems later.
At the recent annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas, Big Oil CEOs and their lobbyists were quick to propose boosting oil and gas production, removing output caps, easing regulations, and reversing policies aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Several energy analysts and economists have echoed this line.
But with climate change fast becoming a leading driver of insecurity worldwide, doubling down on fossil fuels would be a tragic mistake – a choice that could make the world a more violent place in the coming decades.
The 2021 Production Gap Report highlighted the disconnect between current fossil-fuel production plans and climate pledges. Under current policies, global warming is on track to reach a catastrophic 2.7° Celsius this century. We need to be rapidly closing down wells and mines and shrinking production, not adding more capacity.
Climate change is already making the world more dangerous and less stable. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – dubbed “an atlas of human suffering” by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres – offered a stark assessment of the huge economic and human costs of even the early effects of climate change that we are experiencing now. It paints a picture of a future that we must avoid.
A survey of headlines over the past 12 months reveals record floods, storms, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts. All of these weather events are becoming more frequent, extreme, and deadly as a result of climate change, and all of them can increase the likelihood of conflict and instability. Today, 80% of UN peacekeepers are deployed in countries regarded as most exposed to climate change. Likewise, a recent study found that a 1°C increase in temperature was associated with a 54% increase in the frequency of conflicts in parts of Africa where nomadic herders and sedentary farmers compete for dwindling supplies of water and fertile land.
As the IPCC report rightly points out, the consequences of climate change most quickly destabilize places where tensions are already high and government structures are already weakened or corrupt. As research for the forthcoming Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Environment of Peace report shows, armed extremist groups like al-Shabaab, the Islamic State, and Boko Haram have thrived in regions that are suffering the worst effects of climate change. They find recruits and supporters among people whose lives and livelihoods have become increasingly precarious because of floods and droughts.
In our globalized, networked world, the repercussions of local climate impacts can quickly spread, through supply-chain shocks, spillover conflicts, and mass migrations. And, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, the rules-based order is alarmingly fragile, leaving ordinary people to face the terrible consequences.
The West’s rejection of Russian oil and gas creates an opportunity to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. Energy efficiencies and other demand reductions can do part of the job. As for the rest, renewable alternatives like solar and wind power make economic sense. They are far quicker and safer to install than nuclear plants or most of the fossil-fuel alternatives being discussed. And they don’t expose people to the spikes and dips of global fuel markets.
The logic points in only one direction. The world will achieve true energy security – and have a chance of building a more peaceful, livable, and affordable future – only if we leave fossil fuels behind.
The authors are all members of the expert panel advising the Environment of Peace initiative at SIPRI.
In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2022.
The gas dispute continues to take on new angles. In a telephone call yesterday, Russia’s president told the German chancellor that the contracting parties could continue to pay in euros – Gazprom Bank would simply convert the money into rubles. In Berlin, however, Putin was rejected; Scholz merely asked for written information. Further, the G7 decision still applies: Payment will be made in dollars and euros. So a delivery stop is not yet out of the question. Read Manuel Berkel and Till Hoppe’s Feature on how Germany and other countries are preparing for this.
In addition to the comprehensive specifications on the energy efficiency of energy-consuming products, the EU now wants to impose specifications on the repairability and sustainability of almost all product groups. Manuel Berkel took a look at the amendment to the Ecodesign Directive, which was presented yesterday, and explains to what extent tablets and smartphones are also affected.
An agreement was recently reached on the Digital Markets Act, and the fourth trilogue on the Digital Services Act is due to take place today. One major issue will be who will ultimately be responsible for enforcing the regulation and who will bear the costs. Falk Steiner has written about why the polluter pays principle can be a solution, but also brings new problems with it.
Shortly before the deadline, MEPs from the Greens and S&D groups have filed an objection to the EU’s proposed classification of nuclear energy and natural gas as “green” energy types – so the jury is still out on this. Read more in the News.
In today’s Opinion, Helen Clark, Dan Smith, and Margot Wallström write why getting rid of Russian gas and oil as soon as possible is important not only for energy security. Phasing out fossil fuels and expanding renewables also prevents conflict because the effects of climate change destabilize places fastest where tensions are already high.
The core of the circular economy package presented on Wednesday is the amendment of the Ecodesign Directive (Europe.Table reported). While for years only energy efficiency requirements applied to energy-related products, in the future, almost all product groups will have to meet extensive sustainability criteria – from the recycled content of materials to reparability. “European consumers rightly expect more environmentally friendly and durable products. Greater sustainability and resource efficiency also mean greater resilience when a crisis disrupts our industrial supply chains,” said Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
By 2030, the new regulatory framework can help save the energy content of 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas, almost equivalent to the EU’s imports from Russia, according to the Commission.
Despite the expansion of the Ecodesign Directive, not all energy-related products are covered by specific rules. The Commission, therefore, also presented a work plan for ecodesign and energy labels until 2024 on Wednesday. According to the plan, new rules for smartphones and tablets are to be adopted by the end of 2022. In addition to energy efficiency, this will also address aspects of material efficiency: durability, reparability, and recycling.
“The right to repair will finally become a reality with this proposal, when, for example, the replacement of the battery finally becomes a reality,” said Green Party MEP Michael Bloss. “At the same time, manufacturers must finally explain why they simply burn intact goods when they are returned. This clandestine waste of resources is unacceptable and must be banned. But the Commission proposal misses this clear demarcation.”
For information and communications technology products, the Commission is working on a study that will look at overall energy consumption – including data transmission, connectivity, and user behavior. The authority is also looking at firmware and software. For energy smart appliances, on the other hand, there is to be voluntary regulation by the industry to ensure the interoperability of the devices.
In the fourth quarter, the Commission also intends to implement the announced specifications for photovoltaic modules. It is still being examined whether there should also be limit values for the CO2 footprint. The most promising candidates for new energy specifications are also radiators – with the necessary switch to heat pumps, a large-scale replacement of heat exchangers is also to be expected.
Existing regulations for 46 product groups such as servers are also to be revised by 2025. New regulations for space heaters alone are expected to save 50 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year and 40 TWh for water pumps.
In addition to information on energy labels, the Commission wants to strengthen other consumer rights and take action against greenwashing and planned obsolescence – the deliberate rendering of products unusable after a certain period of time, even though there is no serious wear and tear. In the future, unfair business practices are to include:
In the future, retailers will also be required to inform their customers about manufacturers’ guarantees on the durability of products that extend beyond two years. There will also be information requirements on the reparability of products, for example, in the form of a separate indicator.
An amendment to the Construction Products Regulation will make it easier to recycle construction materials in the future. A digital product passport and a database for construction products will also be introduced. According to the Commission, buildings are responsible for half of the resources consumed in the EU and for 30 percent of the waste generated.
“For almost 10 years, the system of technical regulation and standardization of construction products has proven to be a catalyst for competitiveness and innovation. Unfortunately, this system has been faltering for some years. I therefore welcome the fact that today, with the published revision of the Construction Products Regulation, the Commission intends to clear the backlog of harmonized standards in the construction products sector that has prevailed for several years and to close existing legal gaps,” said Christian Doleschal, a member of the CSU.
“However, I am critical of the fact that the Commission is now also regulating all sustainability requirements for construction products in one and the same regulation, which regulates the safe use of construction products. This not only creates more bureaucracy and overregulation, but also slows down innovation,” the MEP said.
The Commission also wants to regulate the eco-design of textiles. It also wants to tackle the problem of microplastics. “In three years, according to European law, all member states must collect textiles separately from household waste,” explained SPD MEP Delara Burkhardt. “The textile strategy can only be successful and offer added value if the social dimension is also considered. It must set environmental standards in the textile supply chain, which at the same time also makes workers’ rights mandatory.”
DMA, DSA, and AI Regulation have one thing in common: Their effectiveness is questionable without enforcement. How this is to be done in concrete terms is one of the thorny questions, that is answered differently in each of the legislative acts. Particularly under the impression of deficits in the decentrally organized enforcement of the GDPR by national authorities, Parliament, Council, and Commission have pushed ahead with the search for alternative models. One of the lessons of the GDPR: If nation states have a strong vested interest in a weak supervisory authority, European consistency of enforcement is hard to guarantee. However, this would be a massive problem for the effectiveness of the DSA, DMA, and AI Act.
This is why an unusual event occurred in the discussion about the Digital Services Act: France, which otherwise so often pays attention to national sovereignty, proposed that the Commission should supervise online platforms with lower hurdles than originally planned. The goal: National supervisory authorities – called Digital Services Coordinators in the DSA – should not be able to creatively interpret the European legal framework for important companies under any circumstances to give locational advantages to the country where the company or its main European representative is based. In the case of the GDPR, it had become apparent that such behavior can only be recaptured by long and circuitous routes, if at all.
But above all, the personnel capacities for direct supervision by the Commission are limited, which is why Vice-President Margrethe Vestager surprisingly raised the issue on the fringes of the third DSA trilogue: Wouldn’t it be a good idea to make the supervised pay for their own supervision? After all, there are already precedents for this – for example, in environmental law, where the so-called polluter pays principle is widely applied. And in banking supervision, too, the supervised parties share in the costs.
A proposal by the Green Group in the EP on the DSA, Amendment 2075, had presupposed the introduction of an independent European supervisory authority, which would have been refinanced via the polluter pays principle. An “annual supervisory fee for very large online platforms” should have been effective here in addition to the budget provided by the EU. But there was no majority in the European Parliament for this. Yet there is already a model in the EU’s digital legislation.
The model of the eIDAS Regulation would be radical: There, Article 20 contains a provision whereby so-called qualified trust service providers must be audited by special conformity assessment bodies at the latest every two years at the expense of the providers. The supervisory authorities can also initiate a special audit at any time. Here, too, the audit costs must be borne by the service providers. The requirements of the eIDAS Regulation could easily be transferred to the DSA.
But would that be desirable? “When regulators profit from fines or their actions against companies, that always creates problems,” says Ben Wagner of Delft University of Technology. The specialist in digital governance mechanisms sees an independent European enforcement authority as a better solution than enforcement directly by the Commission. He is critical of the polluter pays principle: “It would be better to have a clean, proper funding of the authority, staggered according to the actual effort.”
Bitkom does not think much at all of ideas like polluter pays. “Usually, in the case of competition authorities, the state or the community of states bears the costs of enforcing the law and is the recipient of the fine payments in the case of rule violations,” says the head of trust and security, Rebekka Weiß. “We see no reason why this should be done differently in the case of DSA oversight.”
Commission sources said that a mixed model is being considered: Commission funds would be used to provide a basic level of personnel. The levies of the companies concerned would be used for this purpose, on a case-by-case basis or for a limited period of time, the use of seconded national experts as well as external support.
He thinks a supervisory fee is an interesting idea in principle, if it would also drive a much-needed expansion of supervisory capacity at national and EU level, says Julian Jaursch, platform regulation expert at the German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. “It could also provide funding for external experts who should be involved in consultations and supervisory decisions.”
However, the use of external forces could also bring new problems, for example if law firms were to work for regulators and regulated parties with a time lag or even only separated by Chinese walls – and the market for specialized legal and technical experts is obviously empty. Ben Wagner of TU Delft has doubts that the trilogue parties are getting the size of the task right: “The Commission lacks both resources and independence. All the players are not aware, in my opinion, of what a huge effort this is.”
Julian Jaursch also sees a problem here, and calls for a more fundamental discussion among the negotiators due to the polluter pays idea: “If a supervision fee is now suddenly up for debate towards the end of the DSA negotiation, the previously planned supervision structure should also be reconsidered and a specialized, independent EU platform supervision considered instead.” If supervision is financially dependent on the companies, independence must be guaranteed even more strongly.
At the latest, if not only the Commission for its responsibilities, but also the member states were to partially refinance their DSA supervision via supervisory fees, an effect already known from the GDPR could otherwise occur: a kind of non-regulatory competition of the member state supervisory authorities. This is because companies could relocate their headquarters in Europe at any time if the supervision does not suit them. One way to get around the problem is suggested by Julian Jaursch: “If the EU really wanted to innovate, it would not only make large platforms contribute to the costs of EU supervision, but set up an independent fund with a possible fee.”
While the DMA has already been negotiated, with the Commission to counter the largest players with about 80 posts, the issue could play a greater role again today in the fourth DSA trilogue. However, the plea for a corresponding regulation on the part of the Commission has come rather late, according to parliamentary circles. However, it is primarily the member states and the Commission that want to adopt the DSA as quickly as possible. In the case of the AI Regulation, on the other hand, there is still plenty of time to debate the design and load distribution, despite all the haste.
The United States recently announced an immediate ban on imports of Russian oil and gas, while the United Kingdom and the European Union pledged to curb them more gradually. The rationale is clear: punish Russia, reduce its leverage, and restore peace to Ukraine. But wrong choices now – specifically, continuing to favor fossil fuels over renewable energy – could lock in a far less peaceful future.
Some Western countries have let themselves become overly reliant on Russian oil and gas in recent years, so the decision to cut back was not easy. But the bigger, tougher decision facing Western governments is how to reduce their overall dependence on fossil fuels. Simply replacing one dirty energy source with another would leave the growing dangers of climate change to be dealt with later – if at all.
Given the pressure of the current Ukraine crisis, such shortsightedness would be understandable. Western governments must close the energy gap created by stopping Russian fossil-fuel imports, while minimizing the damage to national economies. For now, they have the public with them. But if energy costs rise too high, or shortages become too disruptive, the resulting economic havoc could erode public support
Any alternative energy sources must therefore come onstream quickly and provide affordable, reliable supplies. And they should not create new geopolitical entanglements that might cause problems later.
At the recent annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas, Big Oil CEOs and their lobbyists were quick to propose boosting oil and gas production, removing output caps, easing regulations, and reversing policies aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Several energy analysts and economists have echoed this line.
But with climate change fast becoming a leading driver of insecurity worldwide, doubling down on fossil fuels would be a tragic mistake – a choice that could make the world a more violent place in the coming decades.
The 2021 Production Gap Report highlighted the disconnect between current fossil-fuel production plans and climate pledges. Under current policies, global warming is on track to reach a catastrophic 2.7° Celsius this century. We need to be rapidly closing down wells and mines and shrinking production, not adding more capacity.
Climate change is already making the world more dangerous and less stable. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – dubbed “an atlas of human suffering” by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres – offered a stark assessment of the huge economic and human costs of even the early effects of climate change that we are experiencing now. It paints a picture of a future that we must avoid.
A survey of headlines over the past 12 months reveals record floods, storms, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts. All of these weather events are becoming more frequent, extreme, and deadly as a result of climate change, and all of them can increase the likelihood of conflict and instability. Today, 80% of UN peacekeepers are deployed in countries regarded as most exposed to climate change. Likewise, a recent study found that a 1°C increase in temperature was associated with a 54% increase in the frequency of conflicts in parts of Africa where nomadic herders and sedentary farmers compete for dwindling supplies of water and fertile land.
As the IPCC report rightly points out, the consequences of climate change most quickly destabilize places where tensions are already high and government structures are already weakened or corrupt. As research for the forthcoming Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Environment of Peace report shows, armed extremist groups like al-Shabaab, the Islamic State, and Boko Haram have thrived in regions that are suffering the worst effects of climate change. They find recruits and supporters among people whose lives and livelihoods have become increasingly precarious because of floods and droughts.
In our globalized, networked world, the repercussions of local climate impacts can quickly spread, through supply-chain shocks, spillover conflicts, and mass migrations. And, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, the rules-based order is alarmingly fragile, leaving ordinary people to face the terrible consequences.
The West’s rejection of Russian oil and gas creates an opportunity to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. Energy efficiencies and other demand reductions can do part of the job. As for the rest, renewable alternatives like solar and wind power make economic sense. They are far quicker and safer to install than nuclear plants or most of the fossil-fuel alternatives being discussed. And they don’t expose people to the spikes and dips of global fuel markets.
The logic points in only one direction. The world will achieve true energy security – and have a chance of building a more peaceful, livable, and affordable future – only if we leave fossil fuels behind.
The authors are all members of the expert panel advising the Environment of Peace initiative at SIPRI.
In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2022.
