Bas Eickhout: Insights on EU up These Areas

Bas Eickhout: Insights on EU up these areas. The more areas connected to the super grid, the less fluctuations there will be. Spain’s energy agricultural and energy policy revolution has ground to a halt. The surplus electricity generated has nowhere to go, because the Iberian Peninsula is poorly connected to the rest of Europe. That is an example of infrastructure on which the EU has Bas Eickhout is Member of skimped.” the European Parliament, and

an expert on climate policy. Biofuels He further sits in the “The European Union is clearly capable of conducting a Parliament’s Committee on successful policy, as we have seen with biofuels. In this Agriculture and Rural case, however, the European Commission was too quick Development. In the fourth off the mark. Now all kinds of interests have started lecture in the series “Deeper throwing their market weight around. The biggest into Europe”, organised by lobbyists against a new biofuel policy are agriculture and the Green European Foundation together with the new biofuel industry. One problem with biofuels is the Bureau de Helling and the Dutch Green Party’s indirect agricultural land use they entail. Biofuel crops working group on Europe, he discussed both how he are cultivated in Europe, while farming for food see Europe’s role in energy policy, as well as the production moves elsewhere. This accelerates current trends in the EU’s Common Agricultural deforestation in those other countries. The European Policy. Parliament has been persuaded to take this indirect

agricultural land use into account from 2020 onwards in evaluating the sustainability of different biofuel sources. It remains to be seen whether this decision will survive Energy: “Once you’re mainstream, things the negotiations with the Council.” happen quickly” Geopolitics Climate policy “The reason Europe does so little about energy is that it “Climate policy is more than setting C02 reduction is seen as ‘foreign policy’, implying that Europe can do targets and leaving the rest to the market. There are little about it. The EU talks of renewable energy, but measures which can also help cut costs, such as energy meanwhile EU member states have signed some sixty saving. These measures should have been put into effect bilateral contracts for gas with Russia and North Africa. long ago.” But the market is too often counterproductive. The North European Gas Pipeline between Russia and “Consider home insulation. House buyers don’t invest in Germany, for example, is currently under construction.” insulation because they aren’t sure whether they will remain living there long enough to profit from it. Neither Geopolitical interests also play a part for new member do people invest in better insulation for rented homes, states like Poland. “Their climate policy means that they because it is the tenant who pays the electricity bill but become more dependent on Russian gas. The Polish the landlord who decides.” economy is currently powered by coal for ninety percent of its needs.” If they are compelled to opt for renewable And then we haven’t even started talking about energy, it will mean that importing Russian gas is better technologies that require substantial investments long for the climate. “Poland is looking into the possibilities of before they become profitable. “That is where one shale gas. Exploiting shale gas reserves causes serious country alone can conduct a successful policy. Solar problems for the local population. The legislation energy and land-based wind farms needed heavy package of the European Commission undertakes to investments well in advance. Several countries including refrain from legislating against shale gas extraction, in Germany took that route.” And now these renewable order to win the assent of the Polish government. The energy sources are competitive. omnipotence of the “European super- state” is rather disappointing: in its proposals, the Commission tries to The “energy revolution” has its drawbacks too. “In make small concessions to all the member states.” Germany, private energy consumers have had to foot the bill. Industry was spared in the interest of protecting “We hear a lot about the topic of ‘peak oil’.” But the jobs. That is an unfair sharing of the burden.” market is now finding new ways to extract oil, for example from tar sands. Tar sand oil extraction is The role of the EU in energy policy lies principally in the harmful to the landscape and the extraction process area of creating infrastructure. In winter, wind energy results in considerable CO2 emissions. Shell, like other generation is more productive in northern Europe, but in oil multinationals, is heading to the North Pole to summer the yields of solar power are higher in southern prospect for petroleum. They are a one- trick pony, and Europe. “That means you need a ‘super grid’ to connect they perform the same act in ever more vulnerable Bas Eickhout: Insights on EU agricultural and energy policy 2

regions. If you don’t care about the environment, there is on the other hand, there is too much emphasis on how to plenty of petroleum. But the threat to the world climate produce in quantity rather than on how we go about imposes ever tighter restrictions. Today’s global oil producing. reserves are much greater than the climate can bear.” The Wageningen route “The market won’t solve the climate problem. The The proportion of the earth’s surface used for agriculture solution must come from policy. A crucial condition for has grown immensely in the last hundred years. But that is that our concerns become mainstream. Everyone there is not much room left. “From a production point of claims to care about renewable energy as long as it view,” Eickhout points out, “there is little scope for doesn’t cost them anything. But changes are going to further expansion in the European Union, the USA, India hurt, so they will call for political courage. It is the long or China. The largest capacity for agriculture is in the term that counts for the Greens. The Dutch cabinet hopes tropics. But exploiting that land clashes with green to one hundred percent of our energy to come from values such as protecting biodiversity and nature, as the renewable sources by 2050. The Greens must try to hold tropics play a major part in stabilising the global climate. them to our own ambitions. Germany is a good example So they are not the right place to expand the area devoted of how a country can achieve a lot. The whole political to agriculture. The clearance of forests for farming is one spectrum supports the energy revolution. Things can of the main destroyers of biodiversity. In EU countries, no happen quickly once you become mainstream, but the more than about 40 to 50 percent of the original Netherlands is still a fossil fuel country.” biodiversity remains. For the Netherlands the corresponding figure is only 10 to 20 percent. Let’s hope Agriculture: “It’s time to think critically about that this country isn’t taken as a model for the rest of the our patterns of consumption” world.”

“If you can’t expand the area of farmland but want to feed Bas Eickhout represents GroenLinks in the European a growing population,” Eickhout continued, “you have to Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural raise productivity. In Wageningen, they aim to raise the Development. Here he sheds light on current policy, yield per hectare. That can be done by increasing the use suggests an alternative and examines the political of artificial fertilisers. The outcome is a build-up of realities that stand between the dream and the deed. nitrogen in the oceans, which is very bad for marine “Our picture of what agriculture ought to be like is not biodiversity and for air quality. Is that a model we want to romanticised. We aim to follow a modern agricultural keep promoting? It’s a dead-end street. But not everyone policy, but one that is different from the well-trodden in Brussels agrees with me; most politicians are satisfied technological route favoured by Wageningen1.” The with ‘business as usual’.” second part of his intervention in the “Deeper into

Europe” lecture therefore focused on agriculture policy. An agricultural policy based on green ideals

We could solve problem partly by innovation, although Agricultural policy ought to play a central part in how we Eickhout believes the time is ripe to think critically about produce our food and simultaneously protect natural our patterns of consumption. The Netherlands ranks first resources such as the soil. This calls for a green in the world for the quantity of animal products interpretation of the EU agricultural strategy. The consumed – not the United States as you might expect. Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is widely scorned as a This is due to our consumption of dairy produce. The idea piece of megalomania, but Bas Eickhout defends it. “I’ll that “milk is good for you” has been thoroughly drummed wager that if the CAP didn’t exist we would end up into the Dutch; after all, the dairy farming sector needed spending even more money on agriculture in the EU. The to grow. But the Americans are front runners when it CAP forbids member states to subsidise their own comes to meat consumption. China too has been catching agriculture, which would run counter to EU policy. All up in the last ten years. “The Chinese middle class is internal competition is channelled through the CAP, growing, and they want to eat meat. China has no room to which thereby saves money.” expand its area of farmland, so it has to import animal

feed from tropical countries like Brazil.” Forty percent of the EU budget goes to agriculture. It sounds a lot, but the Dutch government alone spends Europe must become more self-sufficient in animal feed. twice as much as the whole EU budget. We would be glad The European Union has striven to become self- to reduce that expenditure, but it would mean leaving sustaining in food production since World War II. This agriculture at the mercy of the market. Eickhout’s policy has so far been very successful. But the EU still criticism is that if agriculture is liberalised any further, depends on imports for 80% of the feedstuff for its farm there is one thing certain: large-scale agriculture will animals. If those imports were to stall, the livestock predominate even more than now. In the present policy, sector would be in serious trouble.

1 Wageningen University is known both in the Netherlands and At the same time, the environmental damage caused by internationally for its focus on agricultural sciences. Bas Eickhout: Insights on EU agricultural and energy policy 3

all the imported feedstuff products is ignored. Eickhout years. “We had a chance to make it greener and to set it criticised: “We are exporting our environmental burden. on a new course. It was the first time the European As a result we don’t even notice that our level of meat Parliament had a share in the law-making. We wasted consumption harms the environment. It cannot be that opportunity. The composition of a specialist allowed to continue unchecked.” committee matters a lot. In the agriculture committee, I was especially disappointed with the social democrats. Resource depletion When the social democrats and the Christian democrats The present agricultural system is on the whole collaborate, they hold a majority of 70 percent. A Green unsustainable. “We must extract fewer resources from MEP can’t do much about that.” the earth and do more to promote a closed nutrient cycle. Eickhout considers the new agricultural policy utterly Farmers should use crop rotation to avoid depleting the feeble when it comes to greening: the recent policy soil, by alternating with crops that boost soil nutrient contains few measures to bolster it. The most serious levels.” shortcoming is that farmers are required to “diversify” rather than implement crop rotation. But diversification Among mineral resources, phosphorus is one of the most says nothing: most farmers do it already. The Dutch serious problems. It is a crucial ingredient of artificial farmers’ business-as-usual attitude is rewarded. But now fertiliser, along with nitrogen and potassium. that a presumed greening takes place, the coffers for “Phosphorus is a constituent of DNA, so any organism rural development, from which farmers are rewarded for that engages in cell division – and that includes you and environmental services such as water storage, are me – needs phosphorus.” empty. That is why the Greens ended up voting against the new agricultural policy. Phosphorus is obtained by mineral mining. Recent projections indicate that peak phosphorus output is likely The main reason for not reforming agricultural policy to be reached in the near future. This is a widely does not lie with the European Parliament, however, but underestimated problem with a serious geopolitical with the Council. “Dutch prime-Minister Rutte tabled component. Europe’s main source of phosphorus is three demands during negotiations for the last budget: Morocco, which mines the phosphate rock in the less money for Brussels, a reduction of one billion euros politically unstable Western Sahara. in the Dutch contribution and less spending on agriculture – although the last demand received little Not even twenty percent of the extracted phosphorus emphasis in Brussels. The first two goals were achieved, ends up in our tissues. Most of it is lost at various points and the conservative Dutch daily De Telegraaf was proud along the production chain, with a large proportion of Rutte. But the outcome was actually as follows: the making its way into the ocean. Artificial fertilisers are North-Western countries placed a cap on the EU budget, used for the cultivation of fodder crops, and the animals the Southern countries (notably France) won guarantees convert much of that into manure. We eat the animal for the non-green agricultural budget, and the East products, and then we ourselves flush a large proportion European countries blocked reduction of the Structural of our phosphorus intake through the sewers into the Funds. That is an unhealthy combination of north- sea. Our consumption of animal products is an important western frugality with southern and eastern point of discussion because it represents the most conservatism.” The money had to come from inefficient possible use of nutrients. Innovation is somewhere, and it was innovation that carried the can. essential here. “A lot of phosphorus goes into our The funding for Neelie Kroes’s digital programme was sewers. We could recover it but that would entail a cut from nine billion to one billion.” different structure for our sewer systems. This is not an easy topic to get onto the agenda, and the market is not going to solve it.”

This article was written by Bas Eickhout. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors’ alone.

They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Green European Foundation.

CompromisesGreen European in Brussels Foundation asbl The new1, rue EU du Fort agricultural Elisabeth , policy 1463 Luxembourg has been, in Bas Eickhout’s view, the worst disappointment of the last five Brussels Office: 15 rue d’Arlon, 1050 Brussels, Belgium Phone: +32 2 234 65 70 - Fax: +32 2 234 65 79 E - mail: [email protected] - Web: www.gef.eu