Denmark Ends Green Incentives: Electric Car Sales Collapse
The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy. Once considered one of the world-leaders in the take-up of electric vehicles, Denmark’s sales of electric vehicles have slumped dramatically in the first quarter of 2017 as the government scales back EV incentives.
Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). The figures suggest clean-energy vehicles still aren’t attractive enough to compete without some form of subsidy. —Bloomberg, 2 June 2017
The United States has refused to sign a Group of Seven pledge that calls the Paris climate accord the “irreversible” global tool to address climate change. The G7 environment ministers issued a final communique Monday after their two-day meeting, the first since the United States announced it was withdrawing from the Paris climate pact. —Associated Press, 11 June 2017
Martin Wolf does not seem to be aware that Trump’s decision was based on a triple democratic mandate. Like the Kyoto protocol, the Paris accord was pushed through against the declared will of America’s elected representatives. Now it faces the same fate as the Kyoto protocol, which ended in failure for similar reasons. –Benny Peiser, Financial Times, 11 June 2017
In London, Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a non-partisan think-tank on energy and climate, said it was, “hard to imagine a case for any kind of aid where the receiving government is exporting power while their own people go without.” But he said “prioritising green energy schemes” was also a problem. “Donors and NGOs may feel good installing millions of solar panels across Asia and Africa, but they ignore the fact that renewable energy is unable to provide much-needed electricity when the sun isn’t shining.” Foreign aid should not be used, he said, “to generate costly and unreliable electricity in countries where hundreds of millions need the exact opposite: cheap and reliable power.” —The Zimbabwean, 11 June 2017
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