In America stimulus payments to fossil fuels companies amount to $58 billion, yet only spent $25 billion on renewable energy projects.
Some countries include Australia Canada, and France have attached strings to bailouts which require carbon reduction.
Despite 17% carbon dioxide reductions during the shutdown, the rebound has been almost as fast, with carbon emissions only lying 5% below last year’s level.
In the EU they are working hard try to make sure this doesn’t happen, with France have been set aside £13 billion and Germany £35 billion. Despite the the self-inflicted damage that the British are having to pay for due to brexit they have also set aside 3 billion pounds.
Time will tell whether these recovery subsidies will continue or whether governments around the world live up to their promises and stop giving large amounts of money to support fossil fuel companies. Many fossil fuel projects would fail without government support, and if governments made sure that they amount of money they were saving on fossil fuel commitments were invested sensibly in to clean energy we alternate the country would continue quite happily.
Currently roughly speaking you pay $1 per watt to install solar energy. Even if we do that straight switch to pounds, that is one £1000000 per gigawatt. Of course once installed that is 1 gigawatt every time that the sun shines, at a rate of perhaps 8 gigawatt hours per day. If governments around Europe in the world spent similar amounts of money on supporting and building solar and wind farms instead of fossil fuel projects we could likely green the grid in the space of very few years.
What I’m trying to say is that the government’s insistence on working with fossil fuel companies to get the economy going again does not make sense.while in the short-term this may get a few jobs back in the long term these jobs are not going to exist. Green jobs on the other hand are quite different, let’s hope that governments continue their push towards clean energy and stop investing in the past.
UK government has pledged to stop funding fossil fuel projects abroad, having spent 3.5 billion pounds since the Paris climate change deal. They have promised to stop this,but what if rather than simply stopping these funds demanding that they go into clean green power generation? 3.5 billion could buy a significant area of solar panels or wind turbines and if intelligently invested could make sure that the right form is used in the right area so it’s not damage the local environment.
This is an area where everyone can make a difference. You can bet fossil fuel companies have sent their people in to lobby the government for subsidies to get back to business. If as citizens of those countries if enough of us write to our representatives, they will hear that things are changing. The financial balence has changed, already clean green industries are better for jobs, cheaper and better for people who live around them. We must not allow the fossil fuel representatives be the only one lobbying the governments of the west.
