The European Union has long been committed to unilateral efforts to tackle climate change. For the last 20 years, Europe has felt a duty to set an example through radical climate policy-making at home. The EU's unilateral climate policy poses an existential threat to Europe's industrial base. Europe’s climate policy has burdened families and businesses with astronomical costs while shifting its heavy industry and its CO2 emissions to other parts of the world. The EU’s climate fail demonstrates beyond doubt that its unilateralism has been a complete fiasco. The lessons should be clear enough: don’t make the same mistake or you will suffer the same consequences. --Benny Peiser,
Testimony to the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, 2 December 2014
The EU’s unilateral climate policy is absurd: first consumers are forced to pay ever increasing subsidies for costly wind and solar energy; secondly they are asked to subsidize nuclear energy too; then, thirdly, they are forced to pay increasingly uneconomic coal and gas plants to back up power needed by intermittent wind and solar energy; fourthly, consumers are additionally hit by multi-billion subsidies that become necessary to upgrade the national grids; fifthly, the cost of power is made even more expensive by adding a unilateral Emissions Trading Scheme. Finally, because Europe has created such a foolish scheme that is crippling its heavy industries, consumers are forced to pay even more billions in subsidizing almost the entire manufacturing sector. -- Benny Peiser,
Testimony to the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, 2 December 2014
We face a systemic industrial massacre. We need a new energy policy. We have to stop pretending, because we can't sacrifice Europe's industry for climate goals that are not realistic, and are not being enforced worldwide.--Antonio Tajani,
EU Industry Commissioner, 8 September 2013
