Shell lobbied to undermine EU renewable targets

Protests against the Polar Pioneer, an oil rigleased by Royal Dutch Shell Plc that is bound forthe Arctic, at a rally in Seattle, on Sunday.

Shell successfully lobbied to undermine European renewable energy targets ahead of a key agreement on emissions cuts reached in October last year, newly released documents reveal.

At the time of the deal, European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, said: “This package is very good news for our fight against climate change.” He added: “No player in the world is as ambitious as the EU.” But it now appears that a key part of the agreement — which was championed by the U.K. government — was proposed by a Shell lobbyist as early as October 2011.

40 per cent cuts target

At the 2014 meeting, heads of government agreed a 40 per cent overall target for the bloc’s emissions cuts, but in the run up to the deal there had been disagreement between member states about how best to achieve that. The U.K. and others had resisted binding targets for individual member states on energy efficiency and renewable energy and these did not make it into the final agreement. Proponents of renewable energy say this was a key missed opportunity to give a strong signal to investors that the EU was serious about clean energy.

Now, documents released to TheGuardian under Freedom Of Information laws show that as far back as October 2011, Shell had begun lobbying Mr. Barroso, who was succeeded by Jean-Claude Juncker last November, to scrap the bloc’s existing formula for linking carbon-cutting goals with binding renewable energy laws.

Market-led strategy

Shell argued that a market-led strategy of gas expansion would save Europe €500bn (£358bn) in its transition to a low carbon energy system, compared to an approach centred on renewables.

Participants in the 2030 negotiations confirm that Shell was the first lobbyist to push for a single target in Brussels, and its heft gave the idea momentum. The firm’s ‘single target’ idea gathered traction, particularly among supporters of nuclear power and shale gas, and was agreed as an official position in discussions between the U.K. Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change in mid-2013.

Britain spearheaded the idea, with support from other countries in inter-state Green Growth Group meetings that year, before successfully getting a variant of the idea into the final agreement last October.

The bloc agreed that by 2030, every country would cut its emissions by 40 per cent, measured against 1990 levels, and that although the EU as a whole would commit to a 27 per cent share for renewables in the energy mix, that target was not binding on individual member states. But the clean energy industry says that this is not enough to give investors the long-term certainty that they need. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015