Lacking leadership on energy and climate policy (Coloumn Whse Star 27 Jan. 2016)
Liz Hanson’s letter in the Jan. 11 Star about her participation in a popular program of the German Foreign Office, the Climate and Energy Policy in Germany – Study Tour left out the policy part – the Renewable Energy Sources Act from 1999 (EEG).
It starts to look like evasion.
Renewable economies and energy security have been ignored or diminished to sentiment by the Yukon New Democratic Party (YNDP) caucus and executive in almost every way that mattered since the party convention of April 2011 delivered a clear mandate.
The membership had resolved for the YNDP to “… in government, or opposition, engage in a dynamic exploration and development of a comprehensive Yukon Green Energy Act.”
Yet, the word “energy” did not make it into the five platform priorities of the YNDP during the 2011 territorial election. That created the opportunity for the Yukon Party, campaigning on fossil energy, to exploit the vacuum.
In five years’ time, the YNDP caucus never made an attempt to table renewable energy source legislation. It never mentioned nor discussed it in public; never asked a single pertaining question in the legislature.
The late Herman Scheer, once a longtime social democratic MP of the German parliament, is recognized as the architect of the EEG and the energy transition (Energiewende) which Renewable Energy Sources Legislation gave birth to.
If not Ms. Hanson’s, he has other readers’ attention on where failure comes from.
In his landmark book Energy Autonomy, Scheer explains: “… EUROSOLAR had warned in its campaign ‘our air is not for sale’; that carbon trading slowed down the transition to emissions-free energy supply rather than speeding it up.”
Independently of economist Scheer, the author of All Electric America, the engineer S. David Freeman, after a life of heading and reforming power utilities toward renewables, had come to the same conclusion.
Carbon taxes, with revenue-neutral pretense or otherwise, and carbon trading both are structurally, intentionally and, through experiences, such as in B.C., the enemy of renewables, in other ways also.
One is an accelerated depletion for fuel purposes of vital petrochemical manufacturing resources, which is irresponsible.
Fossil combustion for the purpose of heat and much of transportation is being competitively replaced step by step, but alternative manufacturing resources are not there anytime soon.
Put a price on carbon, as if there was none.
By ways of deceptive marketing psychology and greenwashing slogans, adopting the cigarette industry model, subsidies, misinformation and polluter rights are expanded on behalf of outdated fossil energy cartels.
Indeed, the counterproductive carbon pricing dogma prevented renewable policy initiative and unbiased listening in the minds of some, even before they would become government.
Expect the drama to continue of popular economics/ecology-based common sense against rigid, elite managerialism during the NDP convention on April 30 leading up to another territorial election.
“Over the course of our tour, we repeatedly heard about the importance of civil society in pressing governments and energy corporations to make the move towards a renewable energy future.”
It is the exact opposite of what my contacts in German solar projects tell me, and goes against the core of zero emission development.
Exxon, Shell, Big Coal and other combustive cartels lobby hard for legislating carbon pricing mechanisms and against renewable source acts to unnaturally limit the clean electron to cosmetic levels.
The fossil actors have and desire no relevant role in the renewable transition, a fact that is not caused but recognized by renewable energy source legislations. Steam trains and rail lines were not built by coach makers, and so it is now.
“Back home, I hope to connect with Yukon College’s Northern Research Centre to follow up on some proposals for ongoing exchange between Yukon and Germany.”
Talking to the Yukon Research Centre people and drawing from their excellent renewable technologies archives is always interesting.
In the context of energy policy, the letter continues being misleading to the public because policy is so far not the expertise and agenda of the centre, what really is Ms. Hanson’s, MLA Jim Tredger’s and their MLA colleagues’ job.
Like many politicians’ statements, Ms. Hanson’s letter has conflated policy with technology; she is hiding behind an anecdotal approach. More global thinking and local postponing in the Copenhagen and Paris fashion is not what Yukoners want.
It is out of touch with energy markets, industrial, civic and climate realities.
Technologies always improve, but much of the renewable set has been turnkey-viable for years and decades.
Not understanding energy policy and energy security is trouble.
The second part of this two-part commentary, to be published tomorrow, shows it in more detail and where the thinking has derailed, but also leads to some practical corrections and perspectives.
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