Olli Rehn marks the one-year anniversary by writing in the Irish Examiner today – his article is here.
Month: November 2011
Minister Rabbitte for Energy sketches several reforms of household energy policy in today’s Irish Times. These are plans for the longer term.
There are a range of fuel allowances. Some are means-tested, some are not. None are needs-tested. Houses may be insulated at the exchequer’s expense, but the occupiers are still entitled to fuel allowances. Minister Rabbitte suggests that, in the future, fuel allowances will be directed towards colder homes. That is a welcome improvement.
There are grants for home energy efficiency improvement and micro-renewables. These grants are optimized for administrative convenience rather than emission or fuel poverty reduction. These grants also imperfectly address the core issue: The lack of access to capital to invest in home improvement. Minister Rabbitte suggests that, in the future, grants will be replaced with cheap loans. That is a welcome improvement.
Lack of information is another issue with household energy use. Minister Rabbitte suggest that, in the future, Building Energy Ratings will be mandatory. They are already, but this is not enforced and many prospective buyers/renters seem to be unaware of their legal right to a BER. Reinforcement of this regulation is a welcome improvement.
I had a close look at BERs in England. An English BER is about half the price of an Irish BER, and it contains much more information on heating costs and potential improvements.
Minister Rabbitte also suggests that houses with a poor BER will be taken off the market. I’m not sure that that is wise. It is rather tough on the current owners of such houses. It will also drive up rent particularly in the lower price segments.
UPDATE: 30.9% of houses have a BER of E, F or G.
Three good ideas, so, and one bad one. There is plenty of time to reconsider and refine.
Today, the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts in Durban, South Africa. Unlike the summit of 2009 in Copenhagen, expectations are low. The political attention is firmly fixed on the economy. The negotiators will thus make the same demands that were rejected by their counterparts at previous conferences.
Climategate 2.0 broke last week, too late to influence official positions. Besides, the new batch of emails show more of the same. The main new element is the role of the BBC.
Some 20,000 people are expected to travel to Durban. These events are expensive, definitely when compared to the expected result. Some Irish civil servants are rumored to travel in style. This is not at the expense of the Irish taxpayer. Travel to climate negotiations is covered by the development aid budget. As the aid budget is fixed, Irish travel to Durban comes at the expense of people in Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.
The low expectations for Durban are a blessing in disguise. I have argued that the current international climate regime is complete. The UNFCCC has standardized monitoring of emissions. The Kyoto Protocol / Marrakesh Accords has created international trading mechanisms for emission reduction credits. (Kyoto’s targets end in 2012 but the Protocol itself has no sunset clause.) The COPs have increasingly morphed into fora for pledge and review of domestic policies and targets. That is all that is needed, and all that is feasible (bar a transfer of sovereignty to the UN).
The negotiators in Durban should therefore focus on refining the existing mechanisms. That is quite boring stuff, so that hopefully the majority of the 20,000 in Durban will decide not to return to COP18 in Qatar or South Korea. UPDATE: It will be Qatar.
UPDATE: After pretending to be greener than Labour for a while, the Tories now argue that jobs are important too. This would put London on a collision course with Brussels. The UK will want to rid itself of the Large Combustion Plant Directive too.
UPDATE: Less than 72 hours after I predicted nothing much would happen in Durban, the EU changed its tune. Poland is not particularly keen on EU climate policy. They have the presidency. Talking tough, they at once please the greens and reduce the chance of success.
The lead editorial in today’s Sunday Times (not on the web) states
Many in Fine Gael believe it is almost impossible to judiciously — and fairly — cut €2.2 billion from spending if 70% of the total, in the shape of public-sector pay, is protected from further reduction.
Now I know that the Irish government is pretty hopeless at presenting its fiscal accounts but it’s really not too hard to find out the true figures on the shares of expenditure taken up by pay and other elements.
Go to page 49 of this document which we have to send to Brussels on a regular basis and which uses the perfectly sensible approach of reporting all of the government’s spending and revenue, rather than specific sub-components picked out according to some unintelligible criteria. The shares of public expenditure for major categories this year are as follows:
Pay and pensions = 25.5%
Social payments = 37.8%
Intermediate consumption = 11.4%
Interest payments = 8.4%
Capital formation = 6.4%
Other (including subsidies) = 10.5%
So not 70%. Closer to one-third of that figure. And, as I’ve dicussed before, when income taxes paid by public sector workers are factored in, the net cost is significantly less.
I have stated repeatedly that I think further cuts in public sector pay rates are required. However, it is hard to see how any reasonable debate on this issue can be had when so many of our media outlets hopelessly misrepresent the basic facts at hand.