Paling of the sky...

Paris. A city of fancy croissants and galleries, museums and waiters with amazing moustaches that I will never be able to emulate. And now it's home to the birthplace of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement first came into force at the Paris Climate Conference, also known as the COP21, in December 2015 when 195 countries signed the first ever legally binding climate action plan. This plan has one overarching vision, which is to limit global warming to under 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, with a further ambition of capping the increase at 1.5°C. On behalf of the EU Member States, Vice-President of the European Commission Miguel Arias Cañete attended the United National General Assembly in September 2016 to signal that the EU was ready to commit to the deal that was on the table. 28 countries with their widely varying industries and their associated challenges all coming together with the rest of the world to show that we are prepared to tackle the obstacles that, if left untouched, will hurt our children and our children's children. As I write this, 148 of the 195 countries who originally signed up to the deal have ratified it in their own national legislation. So who are these countries who haven't? They're countries such as the 'Democratic' Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya and South Sudan. All countries that, it's fair to say, have a fairly complex and ever-changing political landscape, to say the least. Though saying that, the ' Democratic' People's Republic of Korea was in the first wave of signatories and countries to ratify the deal - that's North Korea to you and I... I suppose when you have one family leading a country and a Government that lives in fear, choosing whether to sign up to a deal like this is a fairly quick process.

I'm sure you've all heard the news that President Trump has declared that the USA will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. How can it be that an isolated, ultra-nationalist state such as North Korea is prepared to pull their weight when one of the richest countries in the world is not? I find myself constantly changing my mind on Trump - on the one hand, he comes across as a maverick who is trying to install his own personal view on the world, whilst on the other hand I have to admire him for consistently sticking to his campaign pledges... repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obama care), withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and pulling back on re-opening diplomatic ties with Cuba are all commitments that he is trying to stick to. No matter where you stand on his politics, this is a politician who is solely following-through on the campaign pledges on which he was elected. How many politicians and elected leaders can we say that about? Just look at Theresa May who is already signaling that she will have to pull back on some of her manifesto commitments in order to reach an agreement with the Democratic Union Party to maintain the Conservative grip on power.

I do love a good conspiracy story, so I will suggest one of my own. There was one key country that I didn't list earlier that has signed the Paris Agreement but has not yet ratified it in their own legislation - Russia. With all the talk of Trump-Putin links, could this be a sign of Trump trying to find points of consensus with the Russians? Perhaps a chance for these two giants to speak out in defiance of outside influence in favour of preferring national rule? Well perhaps this was the original plan, but unfortunately I have to debunk my own conspiracy theory here as only 2 hours before Trump announced his intention for the USA to withdraw from the agreement from the somewhat ironic setting of the White House rose garden Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman and reportedly close friend of Putin, subtly issued a press release stating that Russia would indeed ratify the Paris Agreement as it "would be less effective without the participation of major countries". Was this a massive two-fingers up to the USA and a chance to distance themselves from all the talk of USA-Russia plotting, or was it merely a coincidence that two of the largest countries in the world announced their intentions concerning the Paris Agreement within 120 minutes of each other? I'll let you be the judge of that.

In Brussels I've met the likes of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, the Head of the Energy Union, and Vice-President Cañete, Head of the European Commission's Energy Directorate, a handful of times, as well as countless MEPs who are either Rapporteurs or Shadow Rapporteurs for legislation that is going through the European Parliament. As a side note, a Rapporteur is responsible for a certain topic on behalf of a committee in the European Parliament. Each political group in the Parliament may then have a Shadow Rapporteur to negotiate the topic with the Rapporteur to ensure that their own party views are at least taken into consideration - it's essentially a negotiation as per most national government votes for new legislation. Meeting these individuals has allowed me to get an insight into the sausage factory that is European politics - two weeks ago, I was at a dinner at the European Parliament where Sean Kelly, an Irish MEP and Shadow Rapporteur on the Energy Efficiency Directive which aims to address energy wastage in areas such as poorly insulated commercial and residential buildings, stated that he supported the drive for efficiency but not if it cost businesses financially or risked job loses. This raises an interesting point - who should be financially responsible for addressing climate change? Should we leave it to Governments and large businesses, or should it also involve work from the bottom up? Governments don't produce CO2 emissions directly, though it can be said that the policies they create have an indirect impact on what aviation, industry etc pump into the atmosphere. Should home owners be forced to pay for better insulation or should the Government pay for it? Either way, public money is used, either through personal funds or through grants that are funded by tax payers money. My view is that we all have a part to play, but how many households can afford to pay the c. £8,000 needed to fully insulate a semi-detached house or the c. £7,000 needed to install solar panels on the roof?

De-carbonising the electricity sector through the further uptake of renewable energy solutions is important, but the CO2 emissions that can be saved in electricity production are small potatoes compared to the improvements that can be made to heating & transport. Positive steps have been made, such as all trains in the Netherlands now being powered by wind energy through what is known as a virtual power purchase agreement - this is where an electricity consumers, such as the Dutch train companies, essentially buy the electricity they consume from a renewable energy producer but in reality that renewable energy never actually gets to the networks on which the trains are run - they're merely offsetting the CO2 they produce. The same can be said about electric vehicles. Championed as the future of environmentally friendly transport, few stop to think about where the electricity that charges these cars is coming from... with an average of only 18% of renewable energy in the EU energy mix it means that 82% of that lovely electricity that is charging those new electric vehicles is coming from polluting energy production sources such as coal and gas. So whilst the Carbon monoxide emissions from unleaded and diesel fuel is being saved, until more renewable energy is in the national grids the roll-out of electric vehicles is largely just increasing the production of CO2 from the energy suppliers.

So what's the way forward? Just within the EU the picture varies widely - France, with around 60GW of installed energy production capacity gets nearly 70% of this from nuclear, a largely environmentally friendly production method in terms of CO2 production, and only 0.2% from coal. Whereas Germany, largely seen as a forward thinking country on climate change projects still gets around 15% of its energy production needs from lignite, which is also known as dirty coal... a fuel source that is both extremely inefficient in terms of production capability and almost twice as polluting as hard coal. Hard coal is the sort of coal that used to power the UK and once made Wales a worldwide energy fuel-source supplier. However, these two are miles ahead of some Central European Member States such as Poland which gets 84% of its production needs from a mix of hard coal and lignite - a move here to more environmentally friendly production methods will take some time due to the power of the coal unions and the nationalist government campaigning against the move from coal to renewable energy production due to the concern over job loses.

The answer comes partially from Governments sticking to the commitments made in the Paris Agreement, but also through us all finding ways of contributing that match the size of our wallets. Otherwise it won't be us that see the damage, but our descendants in the years to come. I'll leave the final message to those loveable dolphins from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, " So long and thanks for all the fish. So sad that it should come to this. We tried to warn you all, but oh dear... You may not share our intellect, which may explain your disrespect, for all the natural wonders that grow around you...".