E3G

Confidence in a low-carbon economy: John Ashton interview

By Chris Littlecott

You seem optimistic about Europe’s ability to accomplish the transition to a low-carbon economy.

I am being quite measured in what I say. Nobody should suggest that it’s easy to build a low-carbon economy. Big political questions will need to be resolved. We’re talking about at least three fundamental changes within the structure of the economy: the way we produce and consume energy; the way we achieve mobility; and the way we use land. Such deep economic restructuring will give rise to enormous distributional challenges.

There will be a lot of arguments where one interest group says: “You’re asking us to bear too much of the pain, and you should put more of the pain onto other sectors.” The bigger question, however, is: What is the distribution of effort between tax payers, consumers and shareholders.
I’m not trying to be optimistic or pessimistic, just simply pointing out what we have to do.

Does it worry you that the EU’s newest members could very likely put up a lot of resistance to such changes?

Yes, that is a concern. I know that, among the more sceptical voices in the EU on the package that came out from the European Council, many were from Central and Eastern countries [CEE].

A note of humility here: My knowledge of these countries is very limited, so I hesitate to pontificate in these circumstances. These countries are undergoing very far-reaching transitions, with political consequences which need to be dealt with and absorbed. If you say to a society which is already making a difficult transition: “Here’s another transition you have to make!” it causes some anxiety and it’s hard to build support.

On the other hand, Europe has shown another very good capacity: to invest in the conditions that make transitions easier for countries. We need to build a proposition for the transition to low carbon that is politically attractive to all European member states. We cannot simply say “this is what we, the richer European economies, are going to do” and expect everybody else to join in. We have to say how we reach an equitable spread of both burden and opportunity across the continent. We have to ensure that the richer countries invest in the capacity of poorer countries to close that gap as quickly as possible.
Cohesion is something that Europe has been pretty good at. We need to build the low-carbon idea into how we address those issues. Next year, there will be a review of the European budget, and part of that will look at structural funds. It’s an obvious question: How do you apply structural funds in a way that will deliver jobs, growth, rising living standards and faster transition to low carbon – particularly to those countries most in need of structural funds? That’s a very relevant question in terms of what we can do collectively to make it easier for CEE countries to be part of this transition.