This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

At the start of next year, companies that make and buy energy-intensive commodities like steel and aluminum will enter the era of CBAM – the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

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The bill is the first such law to directly sanction fast-fashion companies for the consequences of their business models, which produce a non-stop conveyor belt of ephemeral clothing items destined for landfills. Globally, about 92 million tons of textile waste are produced each year. The fashion industry is the second-largest water consumer after agriculture and is responsible for about 10% of global emissions.  

France’s bill is a definitive sign of tides shifting, at least on the legislative stage. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the country’s minister for ecological transition, described the bill to journalists as “a strong signal sent to businesses and to consumers.” 

The law creates a better environment for alternatives to fast fashion, but halting the flow of cheap clothing into landfills still necessitates a mindset shift on the part of consumers, says Alyssa Gauk, a communications lead with the activist movement Fashion Revolution. “Competing with fast fashion will require us to reshape our relationship with clothing and consumption altogether,” she says in an email. That means buying far less than we do now, making what we do own last, and supporting local makers, she says.  

For big clothing brands, there is a business case for producing more sustainably. A 2024 study from Simon-Kucher, a global business consulting firm, found that about 85% of buyers care about sustainability when making purchases, with 54% of those willing to pay more for a sustainable product.  

But even if many people want to buy sustainably made clothing, most of what’s available is too expensive for average consumers. Until that gap closes, fast fashion can be too tempting to give up. 

The meaning of sustainability in fashion can be hard to pin down, too. Gauk says that we should be suspicious of brands that use terms like “eco-friendly” without being transparent about what they mean. Even using recycled materials isn’t always a better choice for the environment. “A brand may use organic cotton or recycled textiles, but if the production process runs on fossil fuels or energy-intensive methods, the overall impact remains unsustainable,” Gauk says. “And when an industry as massive as fashion relies on these energy-intensive systems, the environmental impact is amplified on a global scale.” 

While there are eco-certifications to look for that can provide some ease of mind when shopping, such as Oeko-Tex, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) or Fair Trade, experts suggest that if we stopped producing new clothes today, we’d have enough product to last decades. 

So what can we do with the clothes that exist now? France’s new bill is a legislative attempt to spur the necessary mindset shift among consumers while fostering a more competitive atmosphere to give smaller local clothing brands a leg up. The revenue from the added tax on ultra-fast fashion brands will go toward funding sustainable French brands. A blanket ban on ultra-fast fashion advertising includes promotions from influencers, who could face fines. Brands will be required to provide environmental data, such as carbon emissions and recyclability of products, to receive an eco-score. Those with poorer eco-scores will be taxed higher. 

Whether the bill will make a significant impact is yet to be determined, but its passing could make room for new ways to approach how we buy clothes. 

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine. 

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“The first half of the year shows fossil generation’s narrowing role in the power sector, and gains for renewables that are beyond temporary variations in conditions,” said Chris Rosslowe, senior data analyst at Ember, a think tank that assessed EU energy developments to measure progress on the clean transition.

Fossil fuels generated 17% less in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, Ember writes. Coal fell by a quarter and gas by 14, even as demand rebounded by 0.7% after two years of decline.

Meanwhile, “wind and solar overtook EU fossil generation for the first time.” Together, the two renewable sources generated 30% of the EU’s electricity in the first half of 2024, compared to 27% from fossil fuels.

“We are witnessing a historic shift and it is happening rapidly,” Rosslowe added. “If [EU] Member States can keep up momentum on wind and solar deployment, then freedom from fossil power reliance will truly start to come into view.”

The report found that “wind and solar were boosted by structural growth through capacity additions as well as favourable conditions.”

Strong winds “were prevalent during the first six months of 2024 in northern Europe, where most wind energy is generated,” Andrea Hahmann, a scientist at Denmark Technical University who co-wrote an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report chapter on energy systems, told The Guardian.

Ember also found that a warm winter meant less energy needed for heating, while higher-than-average rainfall helped boost hydropower after years of drought. Poor conditions for solar held back further growth in the sector.

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In addition to wind and solar, hydropower accounted for 21% of electricity generation, meaning that more than half of the energy mix came from low-carbon sources. Nuclear generation increased by 3.1%.

The report follows years of renewable energy growth in Europe, accelerated by the threats to fossil fuel access posed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. High energy prices in the war’s wake drove consumption down, with fossil fuels taking the hardest hit. This year, energy demand has started rising again, but fossil fuel demand has continued to fall, while new permitting reforms have buoyed the rise of renewables, reports Canary Media.

More than three-quarters of the drop in fossil fuel use was centred in five EU member states with the region’s largest power sectors, with significant cuts to coal-fired generation producing the continent’s largest drop in Germany. Italy cut back equally on coal and gas, while Spain, Belgium, and France mostly slashed gas consumption. And even member states that have traditionally relied heavily on fossil fuels followed the trend, like Poland, where coal’s share dropped from 80% of the energy mix in 2019 to 57% so far this year.

The EU’s shift to renewables is unlikely to reverse, the report added, since the gains were largely the result of an increase in installed additional capacity that is set to continue through the rest of 2024.

“It’s very likely that that is a kind of permanent shift in the EU’s electricity mix,” said report author Euan Graham, an electricity and data analyst at Ember.

This article was first published on The Energy Mix. Read the original story here.

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Germany has achieved major gains with its coal phase-out, an objective that was originally set for 2038 but has been moved forward to 2030. This, combined with the commitment to end nuclear power generation by 2022, has resulted in major government investment in renewables – boosted again with Germany’s recent decision to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

The new federal minister of climate action (and the vice-chancellor), Green Party member Robert Habeck, is currently revising the Renewable Energy Sources Act Law with an aim to significantly expand renewable energy production; solar capacity is slated to increase by more than threefold, and wind power will more than double by 2030. For the first time, the federal government is offering financial support for farmers willing to install solar panels on their land. The government is also raising solar subsidy rates and requiring all new industrial buildings to host solar panels. Meanwhile, Germany’s 16 federal states are being compelled to allocate 2% of their surface area to wind power installations. The government aspires to an 80% renewable grid by 2030, 100% by 2035.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate goals are inextricably tied to energy sovereignty, with Finance Minister Christian Lindner now referring to renewables as “Freiheitsenergie” (freedom energy). He has announced a $200-billion investment in industrial transformation that will expand the electric vehicle charging network (100,000 stations to be added annually), boost hydrogen technology and fill the fiscal hole that will result from the removal of the renewable energy surcharge (which has been added to consumers’ electricity bills since 2000).

Energy efficiency is also a key piece of the net-zero puzzle. Germany is working to reduce total energy consumption by 20 to 25% of current levels by 2030. A major focus here is on the country’s buildings, the majority of which were built before 1977, when thermal insulation requirements were introduced, and are still heated with oil or gas. Buildings currently account for 16% of Germany’s CO2 emissions.

In concert with the EU, which recently raised the standards of its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in a bid to achieve carbon neutrality in Europe’s building stock by 2050, Germany is further raising the bar on energy efficiency requirements for buildings in legislation expected to pass in 2023. An incentive program run through Germany’s state-owned development bank calibrates subsidies, grants and interest rates for building and renovation projects to their energy efficiency.

While Germany’s 2019 Earth Index score of 136% (which is consistent with the previous three-year trend) suggests that the country is well on its way to net-zero, the current government’s attitude is anything but complacent. At his first press conference as minister, Habeck summarized the country’s climate performance thus: “We’re not standing on the starting line here; we’re way behind.”
He says the pace of change has to accelerate by a factor of three in order to reach the 2030 targets; while emissions sunk by an average of 15 megatonnes per year between 2010 and 2020, annual reductions will have to reach at least 40 megatonnes in this decade.

The hitch: while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should accelerate Germany’s renewable energy plans, Habeck also announced the creation of strategic coal reserves in an effort to reduce Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. As well, the country is building two new port terminals for liquefied natural gas.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer. She lived in Berlin for 12 years, working for Canadian and German media.

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EU budget negotiations take years, and much of that time is used by various European leaders to posture for their national media about “not sending any more money to Brussels.” In the end there’s nearly always a marathon summit in Brussels to hammer out the details and journalists joke about whether it was a “three-shirt” or a “four-shirt” meeting.

This year, the final negotiations of the leaders’ phase went on for five days and four nights. The end result was a landmark recovery package totalling €1.82 trillion (C$2.83 trillion) from 2021 to 2027, with the largest pot of money ever dedicated to combatting climate change. A record-breaking 30% of the budget, or approximately €550 billion (C$857 billion), must be spent directly on climate action. In principle, the remainder of the budget “should be consistent with Paris Agreement objectives” and targeted at meeting the EU’s 2030 targets for emissions cuts (we’ll come back to what those might be). What’s more, countries that do not agree to a target of “net zero” by 2050 risk losing billions from the Just Transition Fund portion of the spending.

The big caveat is the lack of clarity of what constitutes “climate action,” but this money essentially turbocharges the policy goals laid out in the EU’s Green Deal.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union from July to December this year, this budget deal represents an important legacy-building moment on the EU stage as her long career comes to a close in 2021. Baking climate action into the recovery budget was the first of three major feats accomplished by the deal. The recovery package, known as Next Generation EU (NGEU), is to be funded by common European debt on an unprecedented scale. That’s the second big accomplishment. Common debt and common European taxation to pay that debt were unthinkable at the beginning of the year, but Chancellor Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron began pushing the idea in May as a response to the coronavirus economic downturn.

Many pundits have described this as something of a “Hamiltonian moment” – after the American president who drove the U.S. federal government takeover of individual states’ debts. Taxation is a power that is jealously guarded by member states, and not even the financial crash of 2008 could convince them to give the European Commission the ability to collect taxes (aside from long-standing customs duties and sugar levies). The EU benefits from a strong AAA rating and may even be able to borrow at negative interest rates, with repayment scheduled for 2028 to 2058. It’s not hard to see the inspiration for the motto used by the German presidency of the Council of the EU: “Together for Europe’s recovery.” This historic Franco-German “meeting of minds” was instrumental in paving the way for the leaders’ political agreement in July.

The third big accomplishment is the creation of 21st-century “sin taxes” to pay for the borrowing. A tax on non-recycled plastics will be proposed next year, as will a carbon border tax. Also in the mix is a digital levy that will likely target Google, Facebook, Amazon Web Services and Apple – all of which are tech companies with a history of declaring income creatively. In theory, these taxes should simultaneously help to meet policy goals of reducing plastic waste and emissions while also raising funds to pay back the debt.

If the German presidency had ended after just three weeks, you could do worse than getting a budget deal hailed for its “wisdom and maturity” by the Dalai Lama.

However, as important as the leaders’ deal was, it is not the end of the story. The deal was a political agreement on a broad package. It still needs to be enacted through EU legislation, and here EU leaders have no formal role to play.

As a result, the overriding focus of the German presidency from now until the end of the year will be to shepherd all the various pieces of Green Deal– and NGEU-related legislation through the Council of the EU (whose 27 EU member states take collective decisions) and the European Parliament.

It’s a daunting list of initiatives, and there is no glamour or glory in “shepherding” – a cuddly euphemism that generally means constant meetings, impact assessments, consultations, negotiations and proposals, all building toward a messy compromise that most parties will be able to live with.

The Green Deal component of those priorities that will benefit from €390 billion in grants and €360 billion in loans are:

• the European Climate Pact;
• the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy;
• the Renovation Wave initiative;
• an offshore renewable energy strategy;
• the 8th Environment Action Programme;
• a chemicals strategy for sustainability;
• the Strategy for a Sustainable and Smart Mobility;
• the ReFuelEU Aviation initiative (sustainable aviation fuels); and
• the FuelEU Maritime initiative for green European maritime space.

Most importantly, the EU is gearing up for the next big battle – this time over a new set of targets for emissions cuts by 2030 (from a 1990 base). The current target of 40% was set back in 2014 (pre-Paris Agreement), but as part of the budget agreement the 27 EU leaders also agreed to set new 2030 targets by the end of this year.

Because Germany holds the rotating presidency it will be up to German environment minister Svenja Schulze to first agree to a common position with the 26 other environment ministers and negotiate with the European Parliament, which will almost certainly push for a more ambitious target.

As with the five-day budget talks, there is a small group of countries that will need to be cajoled, threatened, charmed and, ultimately, promised money to get them to agree to increased ambitions.

The case for increasing the 40% target is easy. In fact, a 2019 report outlined that the EU will likely hit 50% cuts under a “business-as-usual” approach thanks largely to planned coal phase-outs in the power sector.

A more recent report laid out the economic and technical feasibility of reducing emissions by 55%. And the Green Deal, released in December, included language about increasing the 2030 ambition to “at least 50% and towards 55%.”

But also in the mix is the European Parliament, where a Swedish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is pushing for cuts of 65% by the end of the decade. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a majority to support such ambition, but things have been developing so quickly in the last few months it certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility. NGOs such as Greenpeace and Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe have been vocal in supporting the 65% target and are lobbying MEPs to adopt the higher figure.

Reaching agreement on 65% will be tough. But Germany’s Schulze told Politico, “We need very, very tough negotiations … not to fulfill the Paris Agreement, not delivering, that’s a global signal the EU shouldn’t give … It’s not an option. The Paris Agreement is clear, we need to deliver [higher ambition] in 2020 … that’s the challenge for the German presidency.”

Peter Vis spent 30 years working at the EU Commission, including five years as Head of Cabinet for the Climate Change Commissioner, and is clear on the scale of the challenge and why 2030 is such a tight deadline. “Since 1990 the EU’s emissions have reduced by about 23%, possibly more by the end of this year in view of the effects of the coronavirus. Between 2020 and 2030 we [would] have to increase emissions cuts by another 30% in just 10 years.”

Because the EU’s legislative process takes years, it’s unlikely the bloc will see a big increase in annual reductions until mid-decade. That leaves just five years to make up the shortfall between 50% and 55% in cuts.

“The reductions needed to meet a 55% target will be unprecedented. The costs of these measures will have to be borne by businesses and households, so this doesn’t make for easy politics. There will be some opportunities and benefits too, so it’s not all negative, but it’s going to be tough. Really tough if we’re really serious,” said Vis, a senior advisor at Rud Pedersen Public Affairs in Brussels.

If the EU manages to agree on a target of 55% by the end of the year, it will have agreed perhaps to the most ambitious target for reducing CO2 levels and the most ambitious spending plan to achieve them, all within a six-month period.

Adrian Hiel is a Canadian dad, husband and writer who has spent the last 16 years in Brussels imbibing more Tintin, Gueuze and political dysfunction than he ever thought possible.

With the support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Canada.

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The European Union is well out in front on this issue, recently unveiling a €1 trillion ($1.57 trillion Canadian) plan to reach carbon neutrality, create more sustainable and resilient communities and create a “circular economy” with less waste of both resources and energy. Half of this spending is expected to come directly from the EU budget; the the rest will come from member state contributions, financing from the European Investment Bank and investments by the private sector. EU President Ursula von der Leyen has described the plan to slash carbon emissions by more than 50% by 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 as Europe’s “man on the moon moment.” Except that instead of a quest for geopolitical bragging rights, this moonshot is about planetary survival right here at home.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden also seems to have grasped both the need and the opportunity around bold climate action, significantly upping his game with a US$2 trillion ($2.6 trillion Canadian) four-year plan that includes achieving a zero-emissions power sector by 2035.

So where’s Canada? Still talking the good talk, with the Liberal government promising a binding carbon-neutral national mandate for 2050, but still not walking the walk. In its 2019 budget, the federal government committed less than $64 billion to all infrastructure development over the next four years. The government also earmarked $435 million to help Canadians switch to electric vehicles and invited the auto industry to “access” its $800 million Strategic Innovation Fund. Then there is $1 billion dedicated to helping municipalities and the institutional sector improve energy efficiency and $35 million for a Just Transition Fund for workers in coal mining communities. So Canada has, at best, just cracked the $1.5 billion mark, while its peers are planning to spend trillions.

Sure Canada is a smaller country with a population roughly 10% that of the U.S. and about 8% of the EU’s. But to match the level of ambition in the EU and Biden plans, we should be spending in the hundreds of billions, not just billions in the single digits. We are currently off by orders of magnitude when it comes to what it will take to both rebound our economy and address the climate crisis. Even if we just compare the EU’s direct budget spending plan – roughly $617 billion directly from EU and member budgets – Canada is still lagging significantly.

This matters not just because we desperately need to get our climate house in order, but also because weak ambition could be very costly. The EU has made it clear that it plans to tax goods entering its massive market from climate laggards and has additionally hinted at restrictions on agricultural products that are not sustainably produced. Of course, what is also at stake is leadership in new services and industries, whether it is innovative “bundled project” financing for building retrofits, artificial intelligence for buildings and transport, or the manufacturing of electric cars.

Canada recently joined the “3% Club,” a group of countries, companies and institutions committed to achieving 3% annual increases in energy efficiency. That would be a big step up for a country that has been averaging an unimpressive 1% annual improvement in energy efficiency over the past 15 years. Even more importantly, the commitment came with no specific mechanisms or budget attached, including no commitment to the sort of national building retrofit program that is central to both the Biden and EU plans.

And while Canada’s commitment to help workers affected by its coal phase-out plan is laudable, it is again almost laughably small compared to EU and Biden commitments. The EU, for example, is earmarking €100 billion to a Just Transition Fund for vulnerable sectors, while the Biden plan commits 40% of its infrastructure and energy spending to disadvantaged communities.

In this regard, the Biden plan is simply recognizing the stark realities revealed by the COVID crisis and the linkages between poor air quality and other pollution, poverty and poor health outcomes. Climate change, of course, is only going to exacerbate the impact on vulnerable communities, with hotter weather promising to stir up an even thicker stew of pollutants.

And that’s the real message behind the EU and Biden plans: these initiatives do not represent some sort of wild spending spree – they are exactly what is needed if we want to see our economies grow rather than shrink. The EU plan, for example, reflects projections that warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius could trigger GDP losses of 2 to 8%, with southern countries hit the hardest by flooding, droughts and heat-related mortality. On the other hand, the EU estimates that carbon neutrality will boost GDP by 2% and create millions of jobs. There is an important lesson in this for Canada, where warming is happening at twice the global average rate.

This is a case where modest Canadian incrementalism simply isn’t going to cut it. We need to be bold. And green.

Rick Smith is the executive director of the Broadbent Institute.

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