Wild Europe to launch RECCS Report at COP29
The RECCS Report, Renewable Energy and Climate Change Strategy, commissioned by Wild Europe from Trinomics Consultants, is to be launched at the Baku climate conference starting on 11th November.
Some 45,000 delegates will be attending the conference, with key issues at stake including potential adoption of BECCS (Bioenergy with Climate Change and Storage), and the impact of withdrawal by the new US Trump regime from the Paris Agreement.
Wild Europe will be promoting two other key initiatives: closer links between fossil fuel and solid bioenergy campaign networks, and an international Shareholder Action Plan.
RECCS: better alternatives to commercial forest bioenergy
Over the last 10 years this power source has become the largest element of so-called ‘renewable’ energy in Europe – from where it is now expanding globally.
RECCS, the Renewable Energy and Climate Change Strategy, has been commissioned by Wild Europe from Trinomics Consultancy, energy advisors to the European Commission and national governments. It calls for reallocation of subsidies from forest bioenergy to costed alternatives, highlighting their massive benefits – economic as well as environmental
Wild Europe has played a key role in the RECCS development since its inception at our 2019 Bratislava Conference. But it is far more than a representation from climate and biodiversity campaigners.
Broad input has also been provided from economic, investment, enterprise and healthcare perspectives. As such it represents a call from a broad and growing coalition of interests.
Closer networking links to “End Carbon Fuels”
Wild Europe will also be seeking to promote closer partnerships at the COP, building on the telecoms it first organised in October 2021 to share experience and objectives between some 30 key forest bioenergy and fossil fuel campaign NGOs.
With presentations from Ville Niinisto MEP, then Rapporteur for LULUCF Reform (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) in the European Parliament, and Professor Mike Norton, Environmental Programme Director for the European Academy of Sciences Advisory Council, the aim was to secure great coordination between two networks with their similar objectives.
Five key aims included:
- For the bioenergy campaigners to learn from economic and financial lobbying expertise in the fossil fuel campaigns
- For fossil fuel campaigners to learn that just ending fossil fuel burning, whilst entirely laudable, can lead to more higher emission forest bioenergy burning
- To highlight the dangers of co-firing, creating so-called ‘abated coal by mixing it with wood. The resulting emission may be even higher than coal alone, but the process labelled ‘green’ and eligible for subsidy – thus prolonging use of coal
- To thus agree a joint campaign slogan “End Carbon Fuels”, widening the existing “End Fossil Fuels” banner
- To introduce RECCS to the fossil fuel campaign NGOs, offering an alternative renewable energy strategy that could apply costed substitutes for fossil fuels as well as forest bioenergy
It is hoped that further coordination between the two networks can be secured to mutual benefit.
Shareholder Action Plan
This involves extending existing arrangements whereby NGOs acquire shareholdings in key corporates involved in the forest bioenergy sector, thus gaining greater insight into their mode of operation and having opportunity to represent in the presence of other investors.
The process can quite positive, involving suggestions for business plan diversification away from higher risk solid bioenergy into a broader product of renewables and other alternative industrial process approaches that are both more climate friendly and offer a potentially higher rate of return on capital employed (ROCE), being much less dependent on subsidy and often inherently profitable by comparison.
Wild Europe is conducting a consultancy on a related issue. Could institution of Clean Energy Indices in international Stock Exchanges help facilitate the financing of this process, which also has potential to bring new issue business to those exchanges involving high growth enterprise? The benefits of the S&P Global Clean Energy Index to the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ can provide a useful example here.