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Don’t Tell Mr Barroso That!
All the big oil companies claim to be aware of global warming and all claim to be fighting it in their own ways. It is good publicity for them. The truth, of course, is that all oil companies want to see their businesses prosper and unfortunately if we were to do anything to reduce emissions their businesses would fail, or else reduce in size quite considerably. It should therefore come as no surprise that Shell have been lobbying the European Union very aggressively and it seems persuasively to reduce renewable energy targets. This was part of the negotiations which led to an EU wide climate agreement in October 2014 which the then European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, said was “real progress” in the fight against climate change.
Mr Barroso loved to puff up the importance of the EU and himself, and it seems now that the chaps at Shell were the authors of the renewable energy targets more than the European Union’s own functionaries. That “real progress” also had the pious and non-binding hope of a EU cut in emissions of 40%, sometime, maybe, perhaps.
The irony is that binding targets for renewable energy are unlikely to make a difference to climate change; the real requirement is to reduce emissions and increasing renewable energy may or may not reduce emissions. Much renewable energy (such as using ethanol from corn and burning wood in power stations) actually increases emissions, so increasing those forms of renewable energy may actually increase emissions, but don’t tell Mr Barroso that.
Filed under: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, climate change, energy, global warming Tagged: binding targets for renewable energy, emissions, EU climate agreement, european union, Jose Manuel Barroso, renewable energy, Shell, targtes 
Source: https://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/dont-tell-mr-barroso-that/
