London, UK. 15th Mar, 2019. School climate strike March 15th 2019, London, Parliament Square: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg inspired UK students to protest climate change no-action, by walking out of schools. Students are calling for the government to take action on global warming. Photo: Thomas Krych | The World Daily
How effective are the European Union’s climate and environment strategies?
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | JULY 17th 2020
Recently, the European Union has been coming under fire from many critics and academics for its distinct lack of effort towards green policies and environmental defence policies. According to one of its own draft strategies, it has absolutely no plans for clamping down on climate-warming methane emissions.
Much has come out about the EU’s future plans for environmental preservations, and in that short time, much scepticism about the effectiveness of these plans. The imposition of carbon dioxide taxes for imports of energy intensive goods, for instance, has been criticised for not doing enough to equally target suppliers of the fuel as vigorously as it could, particularly in its soon to be revealed methane strategy.
The draft methane strategy, still subject to potential change before it is yet fully published, states that a legislation will be proposed by the European Commission, which would firmly require that gas firms get around to better monitoring and reporting on their rates of methane emissions. What the draft fails to include is set standards for imported gas.
“Setting clear product standard requirements on all gas sold in the EU’s internal market is essentially a global climate opportunity with significant potential to curb global methane emissions from oil and gas quickly,” said the global energy policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Poppy Kalesi.
The draft strategy’s notable omission of these imported emissions may serve as a great risk to completely undermining the EU’s climate policy, seeing as methane is far more potent and harmful than carbon dioxide once it reaches the atmosphere, campaigners warn.
Back in May, the United States lobby groups, EDF and the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Florence School of Regulation research centre, as well as several European oil companies had all written a letter to the European Commission regarding “a methane intensity-based performance standard applied to the upstream segment of the supply chains from 2025.”
