PLEA Network

20 August 2015, The Guardian, BP lobbied against EU support for clean energy to favour gas, documents reveal. BP was part of oil and gas lobby that successfully undermined EU renewable energy targets and subsidies in favour of gas as a climate fix in 2011. The fossil fuel giant BP helped spur a concerted industry push to curb EU policy support for renewable energies such as wind and solar in favour of gas, the Guardian has learned. The European commission last year outlawed most subsidies for clean energy from 2017, and ended nationally-binding renewable targets after 2020, despite opposition from environmentalists and clean energy firms. The policy decisions were however requested by BP, Shell, Statoil and Total, and by trade associations representing a plethora of oil and gas majors. “It is clear that the fossil fuel companies worked strongly together to get rid of the binding renewable targets and ensure there would be no binding efficiency targets either,” Wendel Trio, the director of Climate Action Network Europe told the Guardian. In October 2011, the Dutch oil and gas firm Shell first proposed that a sole greenhouse gas target take the place of policies that also supported renewables. Shell argued this would allow gas to cut coal-fired emissions, using the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) as a policy lever. Papers obtained by the Guardian in an access to documents request show that just four weeks later, BP also asked Barroso to discuss a similar idea with Jean-François Cirelli, the president of its Eurogas trade association. Read more here