What’s the situation?
In the Parliament: The rapporteurs in the Environment and Energy Committees, Claude Turmes (LU) and Michele Rivasi (FR) published their joint draft report on the Governance regulation on 17 May. The report calls upon the EU to:
• Reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 at the latest and set a clear pathway to achieve this. This will require increasing the EU’s 2030 climate target, currently set to at least 40% emission reductions.
• Shift to a 100% renewable and fully energy efficient economy by 2050 at the latest, which includes ramping up the 2030 renewable energy and energy efficiency targets to 45 and 40 percent, respectively on the basis of national binding targets.
By calling upon the EU to embrace the zero-carbon transition and scale up climate action to be more consistent with the Paris Agreement, the report not only form a good basis to start the Parliament’s discussion on the Governance Regulations but also helps to create momentum to push for more ambition in the other sectorial climate and energy files currently being discussed by EU decision makers. Moving on from here it is important to ensure we keep as much as possible of the ambitious parts of the report, by getting other members and groups in the European Parliament to protect and support them.
In the Council: Member States’ energy experts have started to discuss the file more intensively, but no changes have been made to the Commission’s proposal yet. Focus in the last couple of meetings have been on the energy efficiency related issues .This will likely also be the focus of the upcoming Energy Council, where countries are expected to reach an agreement on the Energy Efficiency Directive. Still, only a few countries (Germany, Sweden) call for an ambitious regulation, while a large majority remain passively against. Pressure in the coming weeks on key countries that should defend ambition, such as France will be crucial to ensure discussions don’t take off on the wrong track.
What happens in June?
• All other linguistic versions of the Parliament report should be ready by 7 June.
• There will be a debate in the joint Environment and Energy Committees about the report 22 June
• The deadline for Amendments to the report is 27 June
• There is an Energy Council where most likely the energy efficiency related issues of the file will be discussed 26 June
By Caroline Westblom
