Mott's Blog

     While the European Governments are pushing for ever higher renewable energy quotas, the total rate of renewable energy investment in Europe has flattened out.     "Experts said that investors did not have confidence in European policymakers’ support systems for renewables." EuroActive (2015). "Low-carbon energy" investment in Europe in 2015 dropped by more than half. The Guardian , March 23, 2016. European countries are in transition to support for renewable energy by reverse auctions. Renewable Energy Policy Network, " Global Stats Report: Renewable Energy 2016 ." Auctions in practice have always been problematic, producing an unpredictable amount of capacity due to limited bids and/or limited build-outs by winning bids. See Mott, " The European Commission's Mismanagementof State Aid Rules for Renewable Energy, " PowerGen Europe 2015. A group monitoring the achievement of the Eu 2020 RES targets noted when the guidelines on suppor...

Poland has brought a lawsuit to try to get the EU to make the emissions policies subject to the unanimous consent provisions of the European Treaty. No one outside of Poland gives this lawsuit much chance. The new Polish Government also has pushed for loopholes in the climate provisions for EU CO2 reductions by 2030. The creative use of the forestry provisions threatened to allow Member States to create paper credits for CO2 reduction that basically scammed the system. The use of planting trees to create credits under the Kyoto Protocol was widely criticized by the Left. LINK . New EU earlier proposals have also drawn criticism:  "But Kyoto’s accounting rules and its use of a ‘business as usual’ baseline have left it open to abuse. By overstating their “business as usual” logging, governments can scoop up millions of euros worth of carbon credits by simply not hitting their timber-felling targets." EuroActiv.com. Studies have also shown that, for Poland, the cost of ...

The Polish coal sector uses an astounding 70% of all of the water annually used in Poland, according to a new report.   Massive amounts of water are used for cooling at coal-fired energy plants. So when there is a period of low water levels in our rivers and lakes, as we have experienced for the last two summers, there is a huge risk of power outages. Polish electricity is "down" about ten times more each year than Germany (where Polish politicians love to assert that the system is unreliable). The level of water consumption by energy in Poland is five times the average level in Europe and ten times the global number. Id . This is a very unsustainable situation: "Water absorption coal-based energy is one of its biggest drawbacks. In terms of the abundance of water, we are in the European Union on the fifth place from the end, before the Czech Republic, Denmark, Cyprus and Malta. Moreover, Poland has one of the lowest of renewable water resources in the world per ...

The last two governments in Poland have echoed a nationalistic theme on energy policy to the effect that Poland should be free to make its own choices on its energy mix. Coal is historically the overwhelmingly dominant source of power and should remain so as a national prerogative. If all of our neighbors want to have green energy as a big part of their mix, that is their choice, but not Poland's.  This is basically and fundamentally flawed logic. A new NGO study by HEAL , however, brings all of this rhetoric into focus: Poland does not own the atmosphere and has no legal, moral and philosophical right to poison its neighbors. If the shoe was on the other foot and Poland's neighbors were doing this to Poland, we can imagine the outrage of the more nationalistic Polish political voices. Unfortunately, the Polish power plants excel in emissions to the whole of Europe, causing each year more than 5,800 premature deaths, including 4690 overseas. The deterioration of health ca...