Carbon's last stand: EU strategy, EIB action and a voice of reason.

When Gran Canaria’s President needs to ask the European Investment Bank to stay within its strategic aims, what’s going on?

Soon after the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Redexis proudly announced a loan of €125 million from the EIB for constructing new gas infrastructure on Spain's remote region of the Canary Islands, the President of the Island Council of Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, asks what he should never have needed to ask. Without pretence, pretty pictures, or hiding behind circumstances, without waving around jobs and investment numbers, all he asks is: Could you please act according to your own strategy?
 
The situation, as Antonio Morales points out in his letter to the EIB President copying EU Commission and Parliament, is as follows:

1. The EIB granted a loan of €125 million (public funds) to finance large scale expansion of the gas infrastructure in the Canary Islands, even while the bank’s strategic aims include boosting Europe's growth and employment potential and supporting measures to mitigate climate change.
2. Even though the Canary Islands have extraordinary conditions for renewable energy, currently 92.3% of electricity of the entire archipelago (2017) is produced by burning hydrocarbons (diesel) which, together with road, sea and air traffic (17 million tourists, 2017) results in one of the highest levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Europe. Islands endowed with exceptional biodiversity, enormous potential for renewable resources and highly exposed to the effects of global warming, are placed by the EIB, against their own will and the EIB’s strategic aims, in the role of a continuing climate burden.
3. Introducing gas as a primary energy source will slow or halt renewable developments, which over time ‑without any doubt whatsoever‑ will prevent the Canary Islands from achieving the mitigation targets imposed by the European Union itself and by the United Nations.
4. It is suggested (by Román Escolano, VP of the EIB) that the agreement fits within the framework of the Junker Plan to boost job creation, growth and competitiveness in areas of energy, environment and climate change, but is in fact diametrically opposed to the fundamental principles of the plan.
   
5. The European Union’s energy policy for the islands of remote regions prioritises clean energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, the opposite of what the EIB currently seems to be pursuing with its European public funds.
   
6. While several countries and major cities of continental Europe are closing gas distribution plants and networks in response to their commitments to reduce polluting emissions, it is difficult to explain and understand that opposite policies are encouraged in the Canary Islands.
   
7. Redexis suggests the gas would deliver emissions of 70% of CO2, 80% of GHG, 15% of particles, 50% of nitrogen oxides and 10% of sulfur oxides compared with other hydrocarbons, so they label it “benign”. To arrive even at these not particularly benign “benefits” they fail to consider emissions generated during extraction, processing, transport and distribution of the gas.
8. The National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC), a Spanish public body, has rejected (7/9/17) the viability of the regasification plant in Tenerife.
9. The investment totaling 500 million euros merely for delivering the gas to dozens of island municipalities, will in the end be borne by Canarian citizens through decades of debt, with any future operational deficit also charged to contractual users of the gas in first instance and non-users in second instance, from experience with the Castor Platform (Castellón/Tarragona, Spain).
10. The profitability of the operation depends on the volume of consumers who voluntarily contract gas for their homes or companies; an uncertain but substantial number of users today rejects this energy model in the Canary Islands for economic, security and environmental reasons.
11. Last December the World Bank committed to stop financing hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation as of 2019; should not the European Investment Bank follow a similar path and focus energy investments on sustainable, clean and renewable sources while rejecting support for polluting fuels (which are projected to decline)?
12. The exercise explicitly contravenes international agreements for the mitigation of GHG emissions, affecting both present and future social, territorial, economic and environmental interests of the Canary Islands and the European Union.
    
    

Why does Antonio Morales, President of the Island Government of Gran Canaria, need to remind the EIB president of something he should be intimately familiar with: that strategic aims mean something? Can’t the powerful do their own well-paid jobs without constant reminders?
 
The strategies of both the EU (including in the form of the Juncker Plan) and of the EIB are clear: decarbonise Europe, invest in low carbon infrastructure, in autonomy of remote regions, in renewables. Yet while in some European countries the gas grid is being disconnected for just this reason, the EIB “invests” in carbon emissions in a region where solar, wind and geothermal could each provide enough low carbon energy for all!
 
The motive for the gas companies is clear: installing infrastructure now, paid for by the public, creates a commitment to carbon fuels for decades to come, while taking up public funds which will then be unavailable for decarbonisation.
 
After three decades of struggle to convert global energy systems and save the climate and the world as we know it, these situations remain common: well-connected and well-funded carbon peddlers like Redexis persuade otherwise reasonable people to disregard their professional aims, integrity and the common good.
 
The inhabitants of the Canaries and of Europe deserve better than such a relentless struggle – surely once strategic aims are agreed, one may expect their pursuit by those in charge? But in the interim it is up to “activists” like Antonio Morales and his team, and other groups and individuals like you and me, to keep our leaders straight. Please help by sharing this far and wide – the Canarians need the world to be aware of their struggles.
 
Erik Dalhuijsen
 
>>Spanish petition at change.org<<
>>Se amplia el frente contra la penetración del gas en las ciudades canarias, eldiario.es<<
>>Morales envía una carta a Bruselas para que el Banco Europeo de Inversiones retire su financiación al gas en Canarias, eldiario.es <<
>>La trampa del aire propanado, Canarias7.es