E3G 10 th Anniversary Speech

Transcription

1 E3G 10 th Anniversary Speech Nick Mabey, E3G CEO Natural Sciences Museum Brussels, 3 December 2014 Thank you for coming it is wonderful to see so many familiar faces here at such a great venue. I have been put under some pressure to come up with dinosaur jokes given the backdrop. I was on the verge of admitting failure when we got the good news from Germany about the government s plan to reduce power sector emissions. So tonight we can hopefully say that the dinosaurs around us represent the death of German coal power. I am not going to speak for too long. Tonight is about friends and conversation not long speeches. But we wanted to mark 10 years of E3G s existence and we thought the best way to do this was by having a party for those who have made the last 10 years possible. We soon realised that one party would not be enough to meet all our friends and collaborators. That was not too hard decision to make. So we decided to hold events in London, Berlin and Brussels. The London and Berlin events were great successes and I hope this one is too. I have two tasks this evening. Firstly, to give a little bit of E3G s history and thank the many people in Brussels who have worked with E3G over the years. Secondly, to outline some of our thinking on the next stage of E3G s journey. Manon Dufour will then outline how we see E3G s work in Brussels evolving.

2 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 2 From the beginning E3G was conceived as a European project. E3G was born from conversations between the three founders of E3G myself, John Ashton and Tom Burke - in the early 2000 s when we were working in the UK government. We - like many others saw rapid globalisation and rising growth were driving resource and environmental pressures which threatened to undermine the foundations of security and prosperity for everyone. We also saw that the response from existing national and international institutions was inadequate, and based on outdated 20 th century and in some cases 18 th Century statecraft and diplomacy. The fundamental operating system of how politics and institutions respond to these new challenges needed to change. We even wrote a Chatham House pamphlet outlining these dilemmas called the The End of Foreign Policy? This gap was clear even at the height of post-cold war optimism about the potential for global cooperation. A time with strong and active global leaders and a UK government fully committed to being at the Heart of Europe. Yes it was that long ago. We then saw the election of George W Bush, the dot-com recession and 9/11 which made the environment for responding to these challenges far harder. It hasn t got any easier since then. We founded E3G because we believed that if we don t solve the political dilemma of sustainable development we risk unravelling the post-war progress on democracy, development, human rights and peace. The result would be a world where raw power successfully pushes back against the rule of law. E3G s mission is at its heart an attempt to preserve these values in a world of 10 billion people living on a finite planet. E3G was established as a European organisation and we saw Europe as a pathfinder for global sustainable development. Not because Europe is uniquely enlightened, but because Europe has learnt the hard lessons from bloody conflict on the need to put limits on power and gain the benefits of pooling sovereignty. E3G established its first offices in London in 2004 and Berlin in It was from here that we ran our first major project Europe in the World. Europe in the World was an attempt to engage politicians and thought leaders across and outside the EU. We wanted to find out what they thought Europe needed to do if it was to preserve its prosperity and security in this new global landscape.

3 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 3 What we found will be of no surprise to most of you here. We found a Europe which realised that it needed to change to preserve its values, but which lacked the confidence to make these changes. We saw that European citizens supported an active leadership role for Europe, but were already beginning to feel alienated by elites and seduced by the easy certainties of populism. In Europe in the World we outlined some key choices we thought Europe could make to give it relevance in the world and agency to its citizens: from redefining prosperity, to delivering energy and climate security and building a strategic relationship with China, to democratising the European budget process. For the last ten years E3G has been working to put the choices we outlined in Europe in the World in front of decision makers, and in building the political coalitions needed to deliver them as real outcomes. It hasn t gone exactly as we planned, but more progress has been made than many thought possible at the time. Europe in the World exemplifies E3G s aspirations for its work in Europe. It was a project funded by the Italian government, led from Berlin, researched in London by a team of French, Romanian, British and Turkish analysts, with a final pamphlet written by an Irishman and an Englishman and which was published in multiple European languages including Russian and Turkish. I must thank the Centre especially Paul Adamson and Martin Porter for their help in navigating Brussels those early years. E3G has had an office in Brussels since However, from the beginning we have tried to be as active in Member States on shaping their European policy as we are inside the Brussels institutions. So while we were working intensively on CCS and coal policy in the 2020 package from our Brussels office, we were also running our EU-China programme from Stockholm, EU climate diplomacy work from Berlin, and climate and energy security activity from London. E3G continues to operate as a European network engaging in European policy at all levels. Our European work has been supported by a number of funders, but most strongly by the generosity of the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and its contributing donors. This started with the Children s Investment Fund Foundation funding E3G to help broker and deliver the EU-China CCS demonstration programme NZEC. And expanded to support our first Brussels based programme on coal and CCS demonstration driven over the years by Jesse Scott, Mark Johnston, Sanjeev Kumar and Kavita Alhuwalia.

4 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 4 In this work we collaborated closely with many people, companies and organisations including Avril Doyle MEP, Chris Davies MEP, Climate Change Capital, Alstom, Shell and the ZEP Platform. The NER300 CCS programme may not have delivered all that we hoped, but I think it still sets the standard for strategic technology support at EU-level. A special thanks must also go to Bellona who not only work very closely with us on CCS, but also hosted the E3G office in Brussels for many years. E3G has expanded its work through the ECF funded 2050 Roadmap process - in close partnership with organisations such as RAP, Client Earth and WWF. E3G now works on a wide range of clean energy issues in Brussels including energy efficiency, clean energy finance, European grids and energy market reform. Across all these areas we aim to ensure the risks of rapid transition to a zero carbon European power system are well managed and there is a level-playing field for renewables, demand-side and storage solutions. We have been lucky to built strong partnerships with Brussels based organisations working in these areas including EU-ASE, Coalition for Energy Savings, Friends of the SuperGrid and Europacable. Despite the negative voices, we think Europe is entering a very exciting phase in its low carbon transformation. Deployment of new renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies is creating new business models and destroying old ones. Technology is accelerating the integration of energy markets between countries - and between gas, electricity and transport - requiring new approaches to market regulation and policy. E3G will be working to ensure that the Energy Union reflects this new changing environment, and fully exploits the potential of smart, efficient and renewable energy to provide affordable and secure energy to all European citizens and businesses. This market transformation will also keep European businesses as global leaders in the low carbon economy, opening-up more export opportunities in one of the fast growing of all global markets. This is potential is shown by the Eon announcement to focus on its high growth clean energy business. Delivering these changes will require more European investment. E3G is working to put low carbon and efficient investment at the heart of the Juncker investment package. We also believe that the logic of decarbonisation and climate risk needs to be woven into the EU Capital Market Union so our future investment markets are sufficient, stable and sustainable in the long term.

5 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 5 Though the bulk of E3G s visible presence in Brussels is focused on European internal policies, we also have track record of significant activity on European international diplomacy. Our EU-China programme has been less visible to many in Brussels, but has involved intensive work over the years with the Commission and the External Action Service. Supported by a consortium of European governments we worked with EU and Chinese partners to develop recommendations on how to harness EU-China economic and energy interdependency to accelerate the global low carbon economy. The Chinese government followed-up the report s main recommendation to establish Low Carbon Zones to pioneer the low carbon economy. In 2010 China established of five regional and seven city Low Carbon Zones covering over 300 million people. The last few years have shown what a powerful force the EU-China economic dynamic can be in driving clean energy solutions. We hope the new High Representative will continue to make EU-China collaboration on energy and climate change a priority. However, despite many past successes we cannot honestly say that European climate diplomacy is currently in a healthy state. The Paris agenda is being mainly shaped by the US- China relationship. The EU has yet to follow its - frankly disappointing 2030 energy and climate package with a clear strategy for global influence. Many senior European policy makers seem to doubt Europe s ability to shape global climate negotiations and this declinist view of European influence extends far beyond the usual suspects. We believe that this view is not just wrong, it is positively dangerous for the sustainable security and prosperity of Europeans. As a major economy Europe is vital in what it does in demonstrating deep decarbonisation. Europe also needs to be important for what it says politically. E3G will redouble its efforts to help European diplomacy maximise its influence in a more multi-polar but less multilateral world. We have always worked closely with DG CLIMA and must thank Artur Runge-Metzger and Jos Delbeke for their support, openness and leadership over the years. However, without the support from the EU Leaders and foreign services DG CLIMA and the External Action Service do not have the capacity to proactively shape global climate politics. The build up to Paris 2015 climate Summit will be a real test for the relevance of European diplomacy, not just for climate, but for showing it is still prepared to invest in shaping global diplomatic outcomes. We always saw E3G as adding to the ecosystem of sustainable development organisations; a symbiote not a competitor species. All of E3G s work is done through partnerships. We therefore particularly value our continuing collaborations with a range of Brussels-based organisations, including CAN Europe, the EEB, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF, HBF and many others.

6 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 6 E3G is looking to continue expanding its collaboration and work in Brussels in the coming years, and hope to bring new voices into the debate on climate risk, low carbon finance and industrial opportunity. E3G is beginning to work with many of these groups and Manon Dufour - who leads our Brussels office - will explain some of our forward plans. The debates over the 2030 Package were notable for the absence of many potentially powerful voices. We didn t hear as much from the low carbon industries of the future as we did from those defending their existing dirty assets. We didn t see consumer-focused companies like Nestle, Unilever and Ikea - whose business models are fundamentally impacted by climate change - match their activities on the global climate stage in the EU corridors. Cities are the source of the vast majority of EU growth, and are in the frontline of managing climate risk and implementing low carbon solutions. But their voice seems to carry less political weight than the refinery sector. Agriculture, winemaking, fisheries and tourism are climate vulnerable but invisible in energy debates. Finally, the European public consistently says it wants to see more action on climate change even in Poland but if it looks at Brussels it would think nobody is listening. If Europe is to complete its transformation to a net zero carbon economy by 2050 as a part of a strategy to keep climate risk below the 2C threshold then the voice of the climate takers will have to become louder than that of the fossil fuel companies the climate makers across the capitals of Europe and in Brussels. Which brings me to the last point I want to make about E3G s future work. E3G will also work with others to keep the UK inside the EU, because without this Europe is much less likely to pursue a global vocation. I have heard some in Europe welcome the idea of a Brexit. I think this is wrong headed and delusional. We believe that without the UK Europe would permanently lose its ability to shape global politics. This will be as bad for continental Europeans as it will be for the UK. But the Scottish referendum shows that it is far from certain that the UK will stay. If the argument for the EU is left to big business to make on economic grounds then the UK will leave. Europe must be a project of the heart not just of the head if it is going to compete with nationalist populism. This debate goes to heart of the environment movement as a political force. If UK environmentalists cannot rouse themselves to defend the European Union which has been essential for their mission then in our view they do not deserve to be considered politically relevant. Over the last decade E3G has built strong networks with political actors across Europe, US and China and among climate, energy, finance, diplomacy and security policy makers and activists.

7 E3G 10th Anniversary Speech 7 These relationships work because they rest on a sense of common purpose. E3G is always completely clear about its objectives. This transparency underpins the trust which is needed to tunnel through organisational cultures and boundaries, to align agendas and to create the transformational solutions we all need. Thank you to all our partners past and present for working with us, and being open to collaboration when we were still the new kid on the block. Now we are entering our teenage years we look forward to another decade of collaboration with all of you. Nick Mabey 3 December 2014 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.