Writing for The Spectator's Coffee House blog, Matthew Sinclair looks at what European climate policy is actually achieving.
The Government takes a lot of stick for blaming the weather when there are queues at airports or lacklustre growth figures. Now the European Union isblaming a ‘colder winter’, as well as ‘economic recovery in many countries’, for emissions in 2010 being 111 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent higher – about 2.4 per cent –than they were in 2009. They are insistent that 'the increase could have been even higher without the fast expansion of renewable energy.'