EU Energy Strategy Aims To Curb Carbon Emissions

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 11, 2007 | Mary Jacoby and William Echikson

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

BRUSSELS -- The European Union unveiled an ambitious blueprint for combating global warming and boosting energy efficiency, but key elements of the plan face strong opposition from business interests and could require major battles to get them implemented.

The European Commission yesterday published a long-awaited proposal for the bloc's first common energy strategy, a version of which will be discussed at a summit of the EU's 27 national leaders in March. "Europe must lead the world into a new -- or maybe one should say post-industrial -- revolution: the development of a low-carbon economy," said commission President José Manuel Barroso.

Parts of the draft face high hurdles, however. Business groups expressed alarm at the commission's proposals to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which is believed to contribute to global warming, 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The Continent's top business lobby, Unice, warned against any binding targets that would force European industries to pay more for energy than their U.S. and Asian rivals. At the same time, environmentalists said the 20% target is too low.

Meanwhile, France and Germany are likely to block a proposal to boost competition by breaking up European energy companies that control both the supply and distribution networks for oil, gas or electricity -- such as Electricité de France and Germany's E.ON AG. Acknowledging that threat, the commission's proposals also suggest a less drastic option that would submit such vertically integrated companies to greater regulation.

Still, commission officials insisted any opposition won't derail efforts to shake up European energy markets. Energy security, and the need to reduce demand for fossil fuels, has risen to the top of the EU agenda in response to continuing concerns about its predominant supplier of gas and oil, Russia.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

BTTT!

[sergeantdave]

Citizens in Great Britain may soon be hit by a blitz of top secret green taxes to combat the socialist bogeyman called global warming, reports the Daily Mail.

Under this proposal, the government would grab billions of pounds of extra revenue by not telling motorists when gas prices go down. So everytime petro prices drop, the tax on petro would automatically rise. So rather than drivers seeing that extra savings in their pocket, the government would keep the price high and grab the extra money for itself.

Then there’s talk of raising the annual road tax from a maximum of £210 to £5,000 in order to “combat car use and ownership.”

And a “pay per mile” tax could be added.

Next, Brits could see a washing machine tax, a dishwasher tax, a dryer tax, a lightbulb tax and an air travel tax.

Finally, the Tories plan to install “spies” in dustbins to impose a “rubbish tax” on households that throw away non-recyclable refuse.

The grand total of new taxes for a family of four would be an additional £1,163 per year.

[hermgem]

Plans and strategies to do what?
They signed Kyoto and voluntarily set targets to be met by 2012.
They attacked the US as being anti global warming.
Now they cough up new plans.
Reality is that those 2012 targets will not be met as these Europeans are hopelessly behind.
Need new propaganda, just talk about new targets.

[alloysteel]

Carbon-based fuels are going to be the primary source of energy for most of the next century, and for some time beyond that. The secret is being ABLE to use these products of carbon combustion, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. It turns out, carbon monoxide is an excellent fuel in its own right, being subject to further combustion in the presence of oxygen, yielding up additional heat (the whole purpose of using carbon-based fuels in the first place) plus the final product, carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is a pretty useful compound in and of itself, because without it, most plant life would become net CONSUMERS of oxygen, and emit carbon dioxide anyway. And if the carbon dioxide in the air is not turned into carbohydrates (cellulose, starch and sugar compounds), a number of extremely useful products cease to be renewed on an on-going basis.

The carbon cycle already exists. Use it, do not try to legislate it out of existence. Plants grow, and young plants grow so much more vigorously than old plants. That means, that mature plants are to be harvested, and replacements grown from cuttings or seed are planted in their old place. Cutting forests is in fact a very GOOD thing for the environment, removing the mature trees and replacing them with young rapidly-growing saplings. The growing plant has a huge demand for carbon dioxide, and all this talk of "sequestering" carbon dioxide is really meaningless. The carbon dioxide is automatically sequestered, as cellulose, starch and sugar, with a by-product that human beings find to be very useful, free oxygen.

Originally, the earth HAD no free oxygen. The atmosphere was almost exclusively methane, sulfur dioxide, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ammonia. Only after a form of life had arisen, that could convert this water, ammonia, and carbon dioxide into sufficiently sophisticated amino acids to form protein material, could the first simple steps of releasing oxygen and nitrogen take place.

The original life forms here on earth lived under what are considered oxygen-free conditions, and relied on a much lower level of chemical interaction, converting various oxides, ammonia and water into more methane, hydrogen sulfide, and some amount of free nitrogen. The presence of oxygen as a free compound was very destructive to this form of life, and when there was a growing amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and dissolved in the upper layers of water, these anaerobic bacteria were driven deep into ocean depths and into other environments that were relatively inhospitable to the bacteria and other life-forms that had adapted to using oxygen as an energy source.

You see, oxygen is actually the atmospheric pollutant, not carbon dioxide. But to try to scrub oxygen out of the atmosphere, would not be beneficial to most of the creatures living on this planet. This goes for baby seals, as much as it does for human beings. Few people get that enthusiastic about algae, which probably could survive pretty well in a low-oxygen atmosphere.