Europe blinks in commitment to a green transition

Concerns grow over political, economic costs

LONDON — Europe made big, bold promises to slash carbon emissions to slow global warming, but now the bill is coming due, and governments are starting to blink at the political and economic costs needed to power the great transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.

Once far-off goals are getting more real, as Europe wrestles with how to tell Germans which cars they can drive, Italians which stoves are acceptable, Polish miners why they must abandon coal, and Britons why they can't keep exploiting their massive oil and gas reserves.

Britain and the European Union have pledged to go “net zero” by 2050, with steep cuts by 2030. But across Europe, where this summer has brought brutal heat waves and raging fires in the Mediterranean region, a backlash is simmering against some of the world’s most ambitious green targets.

Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Scotland to announce his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.

This got Sunak's private mansion in the Yorkshire countryside draped in “oil-black fabric” by Greenpeace activists who warned that his plan to “max out” fossil fuel reserves could destroy Britain’s chance of meeting its emissions commitments and risk tipping the climate into a danger zone.

Sunak’s gambit to commit to more domestic drilling was inspired in part by the results of a one-off parliamentary election in the London suburbs for the seat that former prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned when he quit the House of Commons. There, voters signaled they were opposed to the pollution charges ordered up by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, to limit the number of petrol cars allowed into the central city.

The EU, too, has been fighting about cars.

Last fall, the 27-nation bloc reached a world-leading agreement to effectively end the sale of nonelectric cars by 2035. But this year, a group of countries sought to water down the rules.

The regulations have remained largely intact, though Germany secured an exception for conventional vehicles that would run on carbon-neutral e-fuels. Such fuels are not yet economically viable for mass use.

But the push suggested the rising discontent among auto industry executives and workers across the continent over a total switch to electric vehicles, and the end of cars using internal combustion engines — whose production is linked to tens of thousands of jobs in Germany, Italy, and beyond.

Italy and other EU nations are also taking aim at “Euro 7” regulations that, by 2025, are meant to tighten vehicle exhaust emissions. But analysts say that rolling back already agreed-upon EU rules remains a long shot.