Perhaps you’ll consider expanding your ideas in a short paper. Such an analysis is particularly timely, given claims made by the renewable crowd about how renewables are contributing to EU greenhouse gas reductions–exemplifying how they would transform North America. These are false claims, which are now made at the highest levels of government.

Europe, with its failed cap-and-trade schemes and over 60,000 huge wind turbines and sundry solar operations that have not produced meaningful carbon offsets, should serve as an example of what not to do here. It’s not just failed policy; it’s also failed technology, as Kent Hawkins and others are showing.

Between 1997 and 2004, based on US Department of Energy data cited earlier, the US CO2 output rose by about 6.6%, less than one percent annually and about one fourth the rate of US economic growth in that period.

In contrast the “core” EU countries, those that were members before the fall of Communism showed an increase in CO2 output of 11.3%, about 1.5% per year, and almost three quarters of their rates of economic growth. Only the inclusion of the former communist countries, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, make the EU look like a good world citizen.

. . . . it is no surprise that the collapse of the communist model would lead to lower energy use in those countries once EU technology and investment became available to these countries. The difference is stark. The EU, including the former Eastern European countries, saw its CO2 emissions rise just 4.2% from 1997 to 2004. CO2 production in all of the new EU members was distinctly negative over that period (-6.4%). Among the “core” EU members, only Denmark produced less CO2 in 2004 than in 1997.”

In fact, between 2000 and 2004 every EU member, except Ireland and Cyprus increased CO2 output per person, most at higher rates than the US.

As for Andrew’s comment about no countries in the EU experiencing a decline in carbon emissions since 1990, with the exception of the Soviet Union and Russia (because of the economic drift that resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet Union), he’s likely correct–all things considered.

In the production of electricity, Denmark experienced a 6% reduction in the use of fossil fuels, made possible almost solely because of increased importation of Scandinavian hydro. Germany has cut its fossil fuel use in electricity production by about 3%. However, it also cut its nuclear generation by 7% while substantially increasing use of biofuels. It’s therefore not clear whether Germany has actually reduced emissions of greenhouse gasses in its overall production of electricity. Spain, of course, continues to spew CO2.

When most factors are accounted for–electricity, transportation, heating, along with a few others–the EU nations are indeed likely to have increased their carbon emissions, while few have even come close to meeting their Kyoto quotas.

The conference produced the Charter of Palermo, calling for the EU to take immediate steps to protect the European landscape from such development and urging delegates to Copenhagen not to plunge willy nilly into support for technologies that “are not the right solution” to the problem.