I must admit that I pinched this column’s running title from an opinion penned by Simon de Cesare on behalf of the Malta Business Bureau last June. Back then, the world was still at grips with the first pandemic onslaught, although the general outlook was perhaps rosier that it currently is, given that the pandemic had somewhat lost steam at the time.
The European Commission was confident enough to table the Green Deal at the end of 2019, when the European economy was deemed resilient enough following the 2008 global recession and an average annual EU economic growth of two to three per cent. Little did the same commission anticipate the sheer economic devastation unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the European bloc economy expected to shrink by seven per cent in 2020 alone.
Besides the pandemic, the Green Deal needs to be resilient enough to withstand scepticism from the European bloc itself, with central and eastern European nations, so dependent on the combustion of coal, getting cold feet as well as other European capitals dependent on energy-hungry steel plants, truck fleets and building stock. The Green Deal features an adequate contingency to counter such concerns in the form of a ‘Joint Transition Mechanism’, shored up by a €100-billion fund, to assist workers laid off from redundant coal mines and steel factories, for instance.
The commission peddles the Green Deal as an attempt to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. Truth be told, greenhouse emissions across the continent have plummeted by a quarter since 1990 but this is nowhere close to achieving the ambitious 2050 target, such that ‘disruptive change’ (as aptly put by Politico) is needed over the coming decades to reach the mark.
But there is more to the Green Deal than just environmental aspirations – the economic ones too, stupid. For instance, the EU does not wish to be left out in the cold in the green technological shift, with China hogging the solar panel and electric vehicle markets and making steady progress within the offshore wind energy market.
The Green Deal is not cast in stone, or, rather, in law, yet, but it is slowly triggering a legislative flurry, with the centrepiece being the proposed European Climate Law, which is currently the subject of much haggling between European leaders and which should see the light of day sometime in 2021.
Such a law is hauling a litany of other related legislations behind it, including those on methane pollution, agriculture, hydrogen, offshore wind energy, the circular economy and energy-efficient buildings, to ensure that the Green Deal is a comprehensive framework, not a fragmented collation of silos.
The €1 trillion Green Deal price tag incorporates an estimated 25 per cent (€279 billion) which should originate from the private sector, willing to take the plunge and invest in ‘dicey’ emerging green technologies through loans issued by the European Investment Bank, which has pledged to curtail its support for fossil fuel- driven projects in the future.
The EU does not wish to be left out in the cold in the green technological shift- Alan Deidun
Good investments pay themselves back, so the commission predicts the overall impact on GDP will be minimal. Also, none of this factors in the economic costs of inaction of climate change, which are devastating. Sea level rise alone could be costing Europe from €135 billion to €145 billion per year by the 2050s, rising to from €450 billion to €650 billion by the 2080s.
The ubiquitous ‘what’s in it for me?’ cliché inevitably crops up at some stage.
Without the human dimension, macro-policies such as the Green Deal fail to fire the public’s imagination, thus remaining mothballed as a statement of intent and hollow buzzwords. One practical way through which the Green Deal approach can be implemented locally is in the ‘green shipping’ sector, through the onshore power supply scheme.
More popularly known as the shore-to-ship scheme and announced by Transport Malta last winter, it ticks all the right Green Deal boxes, given that it has the potential to curb greenhouse emissions, to improve the quality of life of European citizens (Maltese ones inhabiting the Grand Harbour curtilage and beyond, in this case) and to generate new employment and other economic spin-offs.
The project, expected to come on stream by 2023, necessitates an investment of approximately €50 million (60 per cent of which originating from the European Commission), with an anticipated Maltese government investment approaching €18 million and will basically entail the switching off of engines by cruise liners and RO-RO vessels berthed in the numerous creeks of the Grand Harbour.
In 2019 alone, 5,213 berthing hours were clocked by this vessel typology, resulting in the generation of copious volumes of greenhouse gases, despite low-sulphur-content fuel (0.1 per cent) being combusted by berthed vessels in the current scenario. The adoption of such an initiative is consistent with the EU’s Alternative Fuels Directive, which envisages its introduction in all European TEN-T ports by 2025. The success of the OPS initiative is also contingent on the favourable disposition of cruise liner and RO-RO vessel operators.
Tidings from the sector are encouraging. For instance, it is estimated that almost half of the global cruise liner fleet is already geared to be hooked to the OPS or is currently being retrofitted for such a purpose. Some of the leading cruising industry actors which operate vessels in the Mediterranean (and with Malta featuring prominently in their itineraries), including Princess Cruises, MSC and AIDA, have already committed to making their vessels compatible with the OPS scheme.
Many Green Deal naysayers point at the lack of substance and detail characterising this initiative so far. As nicely put by Politico, when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the ‘New Deal’ in his bid to lift his country out of the Great Depression in 1929, he did not actually have a plan. The plan assumed flesh and bone with the journey, through the assimilation of some great visionaries and thinkers along the way. The Green Deal is a 30-year-long plan that must withstand the test of time if we are all to survive the interesting times on the horizon.