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Germany’s Scholz seals deal to end Merkel era

Posted on by dishanth
Germany’s Scholz seals deal to end Merkel era

Olaf Scholz will head a three-party coalition with broad plans for Germany’s transition to a green economy, under a deal to end 16 years of government led by Angela Merkel.

Almost two months after his Social Democrat party won federal elections, he will go into power with the Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats.

Climate protection forms a big part of the coalition deal.

The parties aim to phase out coal use by 2030, eight years ahead of schedule.

They will also seek to use 2% of German territory for wind power and focus on hydrogen-based energy too. By 2030, the parties want 80% of electricity to be sourced from renewable energy and 15 million electric cars to be on German roads.

There are also plans to legalise the sale of cannabis in licensed premises, with controls on the quality and distribution of the drug.

Germany is Europe’s biggest economy, so decisions taken by the new government will have a big effect on its neighbours.

In a news conference, Mr Scholz, 63, said “sovereignty of Europe is a cornerstone of our foreign policy”. He highlighted Germany’s friendship with France and partnership with the US.

He spoke of daring to make greater progress in a coalition “on equal terms”. He also pointed out that the three parties’ wider memberships still had to approve what has been labelled a “traffic-light” coalition, because of the parties’ red, yellow and green colours.

 

Olaf Scholz has served as vice chancellor since 2018 but is set to take over from Angela Merkel in the second week of December

 

He will only take over as chancellor from Mrs Merkel after a vote in the Bundestag, expected between 6 and 9 December.

Mr Scholz will enter office during a difficult period of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Germany one of several European countries where infections have skyrocketed to record levels in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, he said the coalition would ramp up vaccinations and consider making jabs compulsory for health staff and other essential worker.

“The situation is bleak,” Mr Scholz said. “The coronavirus is still not vanquished.”

 

‘Biggest challenge of our time’

The Social Democrats won the 26 September vote, ahead of Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat alliance, which saw its worst-ever election result. The Greens achieved their best-ever result, under candidate Annalena Baerbock, who spoke of an ambitious alliance aiming to start a paradigm shift to transform the economy.

Describing the climate crisis as the biggest challenge of our time she said: “We can transform our economy so it becomes climate neutral. We have an agreement where climate neutrality is a common denominator.”

Ms Baerbock is expected to become foreign minister in the new government, while her Greens co-leader Robert Habeck gets the role of vice-chancellor as well as overseeing energy transition.

The new finance minister is set to be Christian Lindner, the Free Democrat leader whose party has a wide following of young voters. “The younger generation has given us this job to overcome the status quo of recent years,” he said.

 

What are their plans?

Making Germany climate neutral by 2045 is a big focus of the deal, entitled “Daring more progress”. Phasing out coal will take place “ideally” by 2030, and solar energy will become compulsory on the roofs of new commercial buildings and the general rule for new private homes. The 16 states will have to provide 2% of their area for wind power. The goal to phase out cars with internal combustion engines remains the EU’s target of 2035.

Minimum wages will rise to €12 (£10) an hour and another 400,000 new apartments will be built every year, a quarter of which will be social housing, to tackle Germany’s housing crisis.

The voting age will be lowered from 18 to 16, with plans to reform electoral law to bring an end to ever-increasing numbers of MPs. The new Bundestag has 735 seats. Changing the voting age for European elections requires a simple parliamentary majority, but for federal elections it would need two-thirds support.

Immigrants will be able to apply for German citizenship after five years. They will also be allowed dual citizenship under the coalition’s plans. This would transform the lives of millions of immigrants, many of who remain foreign nationals despite having lived in Germany for decades.

A Covid crisis team will be set up at the chancellery to focus on the pandemic. Mr Scholz said vaccination was the way out of the pandemic and in some care settings involving vulnerable people it should be made compulsory. Mr Scholz said the coalition had agreed to invest €1bn in bonuses for health workers.

On foreign policy, the parties said they wanted “to raise Europe’s strategic sovereignty”, which effectively means more independence on energy, security and other international issues. However, Germany’s relationship with the US and its membership of the Nato alliance will remain central to its security.

Germany’s no-new-debt rule was lifted during the pandemic as more funds were needed to address the crisis. But by 2023, the coalition says it wants to bring back the debt brake which is enshrined in Germany’s constitution.

A ban on doctors advertising that they carry out abortions will be lifted, to enable public information to be provided about the method without fear of prosecution.

 

 

Source BBC

Hitting global climate target could create 8 million energy jobs

Posted on by dishanth
Hitting global climate target could create 8 million energy jobs

If some politicians are to be believed, taking sweeping action to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement would be calamitous for jobs in the energy sector. But a study suggests that honouring the global climate target would, in fact, increase net jobs by about 8 million by 2050.

The study – in which researchers created a global dataset of the footprint of energy jobs in 50 countries including major fossil fuel-producing economies – found that currently an estimated 18 million people work in the energy industries, which is likely to increase to 26 million if climate targets are met.

Previous research suggests that pro-climate polices could increase net energy jobs by 20 million or more, but that work relied only on empirical data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and generalised the results for the rest of the world using a multiplier. But the data varies dramatically across regions, driven by differences in technology and rates of unionisation, among other factors. For instance, extracting 1m tonnes of coal in India takes 725 workers, versus 73 in the US.

The latest analysis, published in the journal One Earth, combined such employment factors across a global dataset (including key fossil fuel, non-OECD economies such as Russia, India and China) with an integrated assessment model, which combines climate and economic estimates to predict the costs of climate change.

“This dataset makes the analysis more grounded in … reality, rather than using a multiplier,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr Sandeep Pai, who led the analysis as part of his PhD at the institute for resources, environment and sustainability at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Under the target scenario of global temperatures being held well below 2C of pre-industrial levels, of the total jobs in the energy sector in 2050, 84% would be in the renewables sector, 11% in fossil fuels, and 5% in nuclear, the analysis found. Although fossil-fuel extraction jobs – which constitute the lion’s share (80%) of current fossil fuel jobs – will decline steeply, those losses should be offset by gains in solar and wind manufacturing jobs that countries could compete for, the researchers estimated.

However, while most countries will experience a net job increase, China and fossil fuel-exporting countries such as Canada, Australia and Mexico could have net losses.

Undoubtedly, there will be winners and losers. The winners will be people who take these jobs in the renewable sector, and there are the health benefits of fresh air and cleaner cities – but there will also be people, companies and governments who lose out, said Pai.

“That’s why … we want to work towards a ‘just’ transition, make sure nobody’s left behind,” he said. “The point is that unless politics and social context of different countries align, I think this technological transition will not happen soon.”

Johannes Emmerling, an environmental economist at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment in Italy, another author of the study, acknowledged that the analysis did not account for the gaps in skills.

People working in the fossil fuel industry do not necessarily have the expertise or the experience to carry out jobs in the renewable sector, but given that there are few estimates of jobs as the world aims to forge a greener future, the focus was on firming up estimates, he said, adding that skills were the next avenue of research.

 

 

By 

Source The Guardian

Invest in green jobs in parts of Britain worst hit by pandemic, report urges

Posted on by dishanth
Invest in green jobs in parts of Britain worst hit by pandemic, report urges

Green Alliance says 16,000 jobs could be created in areas facing most severe employment challenges.

Some of the areas of Britain worst hit by the jobs crisis brought on by the pandemic are also those with the highest potential for green job creation, a report says.

About 16,000 new jobs could be created in restoring nature and planting trees in areas where unemployment is set to soar when the government’s furlough schemes end, according to the report from the Green Alliance thinktank. These include urban areas where people have little access to green space, as well as coastal areas and “red wall” areas that were Labour strongholds in the north of England.

Sam Alvis, the head of green renewal at Green Alliance, said the government should invest in nature-based jobs as lockdowns are eased, using money from the £4.8bn fund earmarked for “levelling up”.

Research suggests that for every £1 invested in peatland, local areas receive about £4.60 in economic benefits, while similar investment in woodland areas and salt marshes produces returns of £2.80 and £1.30 respectively.

The future parks accelerator, a project to promote green spaces, has calculated that investing £5.5bn in greening urban areas in the UK would produce £20bn in economic benefits. However, nature restoration is almost entirely missing from the levelling-up fund.

Alvis said: “The opportunity is there for the chancellor of the exchequer to create a legacy of new, high-quality jobs across Britain. Supporting innovation in green jobs will put nature at the heart of the government’s levelling-up agenda and help local communities build back better and greener.”

The report’s authors examined the fifth of parliamentary constituencies in Britain with the most severe employment challenges. They found many in the north of England were close to peatlands that could be restored to carbon sinks, helping the UK to meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors also mapped the potential for some widely available “nature-based solutions” to the climate crisis, including tree-planting, restoration of degraded landscapes and the restoration of marine ecosystems, across Britain. Two-thirds of the land most suitable for tree-planting was found to be in constituencies with “worse than average labour market challenges”. The government is falling behind on tree-planting targets.

Darren Moorcroft, the chief executive of the Woodland Trust charity, said: “Increasing native tree cover is a key part of the levelling-up agenda, shaping places people will want to live, visit and invest in. This will help increase employment opportunities as well as leading to happier, healthier communities.”

Many of the coastal constituencies where seagrass could be grown are areas of high job need, with a higher proportion of people on furlough and a lower-than-average increase in employment expected when the pandemic eases. Seagrass is an underwater flowering plant that can act as a carbon sink and nurtures young fish and other vital parts of the marine ecosystem, but which is under threat around the UK coast as 90% of seagrass meadows have been destroyed by overfishing and neglect.

In urban areas, thousands of jobs could be generated by investing in parks and green spaces for health and leisure. A growing body of research suggests that access to green areas has multiple benefits for people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. Improving such areas in neighbourhoods currently without green space could create 10,800 jobs in areas with the worst post-pandemic jobs prospects, the report says.

Patrick Begg, the director of natural resources at the National Trust, said the pandemic and lockdowns had revealed the benefits of access to green space. “A greener recovery which increases access to nature is within our reach, [offering] massive social and environmental benefits as well as economic growth,” he said. “By investing in projects that make a greener recovery a priority, the government could generate green jobs for the communities that need them most.”

The potential jobs identified in the report range from entry-level roles in “shovel-ready” projects to graduate positions, for instance in research and development into nature restoration projects. Entry-level jobs can also help in the development of highly transferable skills such as machine operation, the report says.

 

 

Source The Guardian