Focus on Arts and Ecology

Dear all,

One email to tell you that on Tuesday next week, November 7th, Friends of the Earth Europe will release a new scientific study which will provide an answer to the following questions: "Can the EU's turn towards gas be a solution to respect the climate Paris Agreement objectives?" and "Can gas be this transition fuel often touted by its proponents?" - These questions have been answered by a team of climate change scientists from the Manchester and Uppsala Universities and here are some of the main findings:

• At current levels of emissions, the EU will use up its 2°C carbon budget in just nine years.
• The Paris 2°C and equity commitments, buttressed with the IPCC’s carbon budgets, demand a minimum reduction in EU energy-only carbon emissions of around 95% by 2035 - This means no substantial role beyond 2035 for fossil fuels – including natural gas – in an EU energy system compatible with staying below 2°C.
• Methane emissions are at dangerously high levels, as high as the ‘’top end of IPCC scenarios’’.
• Recent empirical studies of fossil fuel producing areas have found official methane emissions levels reported by governments to be large underestimates: On average official inventories would be between 50 and 60% below actual levels of emission.
  
• Methane emissions from man-made sources, including gas leaks, are likely to add 0.6°C of global warming.
• The transportation of Liquefied Natural Gas increases its climate change impact of by an average of 20% and up to 134%.

The authors end their analysis with the following conclusions:
"There is categorically no role for bringing additional fossil fuel reserves, including gas, into production. This conclusion is not significantly affected by the prospect of carbon capture and storage, where the limitations on deployment rates and likely upstream methane emissions substantially restrict its potential, even with a conservative reading of the Paris 2°C commitment, a rejection of 1.5°C and a weak interpretation of equity."
"Considering both carbon dioxide and methane emissions, an urgent programme to phase out existing natural gas and other fossil fuel use across the EU is an imperative of any scientifically informed and equity-based policies designed to deliver on the Paris Agreement."

These findings seriously call into question the heavy (political and financial) support given by European leaders to switch from oil and coal to gas, in the name of the fight against climate change. While the extraction of new sources of gas (such as shale gas) and the construction of new gas projects (like the Southern Gas Corridor, Nordstream II, MidCat and many new LNG terminals) are regularly presented as an important contribution to the energy transition, they appear to only contribute to create a new fossil fuel lock-in jeopardizing our last chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change. It does not come as a surprise to us, but we now have some scientifically credible grounds to say it. Some useful and strong evidence that gas is not a bridge to a clean energy future. It is a dead-end.

The study will be published on Tuesday November 7th, together with an executive summary translated in FR, DE, ES, HR, HU, FI, SL, LV and with a FoE briefing also available in all these languages.
The lead author, Kevin Anderson, will be touring in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels and Bonn next week - We will notably participate to an important COP side-event on the matter, on November 9th between 16.15 and 18.45 (more here: https://www.facebook.com/events/121433145289207/)


We will circulate all these documents on Tuesday morning, together with many shareables for social media. I hope you will find these useful and interesting.

All the best,

--
Antoine Simon
Economic Justice Programme
Extractive Industries Campaigner
Friends of the Earth Europe
Rue d'Edimbourg 26, 1050 Brussels
TEL: +32 2 893 1018
Mobile: +32 486 685 664
antoine.simon@foeeurope.org
Skype: antoine.foee
www.foeeurope.org
www.facebook.com/FoEEurope
www.twitter.com/foeeurope