THE CARBON WAR

264
The Winning of The Carbon War
Bay Area, California, 23 rd –25 th October 2015
I am killing time, waiting to visit America’s most successful solar installation
company, sitting in a Starbucks in San Mateo. The air conditioning is on sub
zero and Joe Cocker is oh lording on the sound system.
Anywaaaay.
I attack my jet lag with a supercharged flat white and check the internet
for the news of the day.
A draft climate treaty has been completed in Bonn and forwarded to Paris.
“We now have a Party-owned text that is balanced and complete”, Christiana
Figueres tells the press. Negotiators seem to have put a fractious opening day
of the final pre-summit negotiations, just a few days ago, behind them.
France is playing a solid game. President Hollande has been engaging every
French ambassador in a global drive for a climate deal, it turns out. Every one
of them has been educated in climate change, so they can speak with authority
to all comers. And no doubt twist arms where necessary.
In the USA, as many as 25 states are set to challenge President Obama’s
emissions plan, which is to be published today. The conflict will likely end up
in the Supreme Court, the New York Times reports. But the incumbency can
expect little succour from their lawyers. The brawling in court will inevitably
be protracted. Meanwhile, many states and companies, including some of
those that are suing the administration, have already started drafting plans to
comply with the rules.
Writing seems to be appearing on walls in the utility world on both sides
of the Atlantic. In Europe, Italian utility Enel has joined E.ON and GDF Suez in
U-turning away from fossil fuel dependency. The fossil fuel phase-out must be
by 2050, it now says. It has even joined forces with former enemy Greenpeace
to make the case. Enel will retire 13 gigawatts of fossil fuel power by 2020 for
starters.
Abysmal results can be expected in the tar sands this quarter, analysts
report. In the shale belt, Bloomberg is marvelling at the early write-downs in
the current earnings reporting season: $6.5 billion.
In the UK, the solar redundancies continue to roll out. The company
I am visiting today, Solarcity, has closed its UK subsidiary, blaming the British
government’s assault on subsidies.
Meanwhile the Hinkley Point tragedy forges on. The new nuclear station
gets a go-ahead during a visit to the UK by Chinese President Xi Jinping.