From the EU Coal Countries: Any Excuse Is Fine If It Impedes the Progress of Clean Energy

Europe’s “Green Deal” is much like the American concept of the “Green New Deal,” with the exception of the fact that it might actually happen. Having said that, it is facing opposition, and from a predictable source.

The Green Deal is a proposal from the European Union’s brand new European Commission. The proposal lacks full detail at this point, but, if fleshed out and implemented, it would make the EU net-zero carbon by 2050. Yet certain European countries have deeply entrenched interests in coal, and this, as one might expect, means pushing back against clean energy. From GreenTech Media:

The Czech Republic’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has said the European Union should abandon its Green Deal and focus on fighting the spread of the coronavirus in an early sign of policy battles ahead. Announced in December, Europe’s Green New Deal seeks to invest €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion) on the road to making the EU economy net-zero carbon by 2050. This would include a huge offshore wind build-out, accelerated electrification of heat and transport, the development of large-scale carbon capture projects and hydrogen storage and infrastructure. But from the start, the plan came under heavy scrutiny from the coal-heavy Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, and the COVID-19 crisis appears to have opened a new avenue for attack. “Europe should forget about the Green Deal now and focus on the coronavirus instead,” Babiš told reporters on Monday.

The energy industry will always find a reason to enable itself to continue with business as usual. COVID-19 will be gone soon, but moneyed interests will never run out of justifications for continuing the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels–that is, until we demand otherwise.