When Franciszek
Zastawnik was a young
boy, the beating heart
of his village in Rozbark,
near Bytom in Poland, was the coal
mine. The children’s lives centred on
the mine, their fathers working there as
had their fathers before them. Miners
were well paid and their families could
live well, so there was no question in
Mr Zastawnik’s mind about his own
career: he too went down the mine,
and worked in that role for thirty years.
Today, however, the writing is on the
wall for fossil fuels. The devastating
climate impacts of coal, oil and gas
are well known. Investors and banks
are pulling out of traditional energy
assets. The EU has pledged to get
climate neutral by 2050 – NGOs like
WWF say this should be reached even
earlier, by 2040, to stand a chance of
fighting climate change.
Coal mines and coal-fired power
plants across Europe – including those
in Bytom – are closing down. For Mr
Zastawnik, this presents an opportunity.
“Underground mining has no
future. But there is an army of
people here [...] 30,000 people with
technical knowledge. [...] When there
is money from the European Union for
green energy, it is necessary to use it.”
This opportunity is at the heart of a
debate currently preoccupying decision
makers. The EU institutions – the
European Commission, Council and
Parliament – are negotiating the rules
for the EU 'Just Transition Fund',
whose aim is to support high carbon
regions in Europe as they move to
a diversified, climate-neutral and
sustainable economy.
The amount of money proposed, €17.5
billion, is not enormous: the new
EU recovery and resilience facility,
for example, is €672 billion. Yet how
the Just Transition Fund is used, and
what it is allowed to finance, is hugely
important.
One reason is because of what it
sets a 'just transition' out to be. If the
EU allows fossil gas projects to be
supported through the Fund – which
is the most contentious issue being
fought over – it would imply that the
EU considers fossil fuels compatible
with a socially fair transition to net zero
greenhouse gas emissions. For WWF,
this would be a falsehood: no fossil fuel
can be part of a climate neutral Europe
so it makes no sense to invest in them
when viable alternatives abound.
What's more, decisions on what will be
excluded from – and eligible for – the
Just Transition Fund will have a wider
impact. They are likely to be applied
to the other tools the EU will use to
support just transition: the 'InvestEU'
guarantee and a public loan arm,
together expected to leverage up to
€65 billion. So including fossil fuels in
one would risk their being included in
all three branches.
Finally, the Just Transition Fund will
impact future investment choices in
Europe's regions. It will contain a rulebook
for the just transition plans that
local authorities across Europe will
need to draw up to obtain funding. So
establishing a rule-book that ensures
plans are compatible with EU climate
targets is crucial. In WWF's view they
should also adhere to the principle
to 'Do No Signifi cant Harm', which EU
Council President Charles Michel wants
to see applied to the whole EU budget
and recovery package – a position
supported by WWF.
For WWF, the best way to implement
the 'do no harm' principle is through
the EU's forthcoming system
for classifying which sectors are
sustainable, the taxonomy.
While excluding fossil fuels from
the Just Transition Fund may seem
obvious, the gas lobby has been hard at
work to get its hands on a piece of the
pie, and some of its efforts have paid
off. While the EU Council – made up of
Member State governments – excluded gas from the Fund, the Parliament
– made up of directly elected MEPs –
failed to do so.
Undermining their official declaration
of a 'climate emergency' earlier this
year, MEPs adopted a position which
would allow the Just Transition Fund
to support new fossil gas projects,
despite the fact that these would
both undermine a just transition and
effective climate action.
A group of MEPs is actively supporting
the gas industry’s claims that gas is
a 'bridge' fuel to climate neutrality.
A group of 51 MEPs recently wrote a
letter calling for gas to be included
as 'sustainable' in the EU Taxonomy
itself.
Their arguments are fallacious. Gas is
clearly a polluting fuel which makes
no contribution to achieving climate
neutrality but rather undermines it.
No new gas is needed to meet EU
energy demand. Not only do the EU
Council, Commission and Committee
of the Regions officially oppose fossil
fuels in the Just Transition Fund,
but also groups of organisationsrepresenting civil society and
the electrification sector have all
expressed the need to exclude coal,
oil and gas and increase renewables
and energy efficiency instead in
recent letters.
What’s more, if the point of the Just
Transition Fund is to ensure a socially
fair transition, why use it to finance a
sector which does not really provide
many jobs? Compared to gas,
renewable energy investments are
highly job intensive, and what’s more
those jobs are in a sustainable sector
with a bright future.
Currently, 50% of the money in the
Just Transition Fund proposal will
only be granted if that Member State
commits to an EU target of climate
neutrality by 2050 – all countries
except Poland have already said
they’ll implement it. This is good,
but far from enough. Funding should
be far more strongly conditional on
higher ambition, so that countries
planning to do more to 2030 are
supported to make the transition.
But so far the opposite is true: a
recent report found that nearlytwo-thirds of the Fund will go to
the five EU countries which do not
plan to phase-out coal – the most
heavily polluting fossil fuel – and to
two others who have set phase out
dates long after 2030! This must be
corrected.
Getting the Just Transition Fund right
means excluding fossil fuels, and
rewarding climate ambition. It also
means ensuring that communities
have a clear role – together with civil
society, local governments and trade
unions – in deciding how money is
spent, as supported by a statement signed by over 60 mayors from European coal regions.
Getting the Just Transition Fund right
will send a clear signal about the EU's
stated commitments to leave noone
behind in the transition and to
address the climate emergency. It will
set up clean, green investments at
local and national levels for the years
to come. It will set a precedent for
other, bigger pots of EU money.
Getting it right will show former mining
communities like that of Mr Zastawnik
that they are not alone. That the skills
honed over generations will be put
to good use for future decent jobs
in sustainable sectors. It will enable
the EU to move as whole to climate neutrality,
leaving no-one behind.
