CAN Europe, the Coalition for Energy Savings and the European Renewable Energy Council wrote the following letter to Ministers on Europe’s needs for an ambitious Climate and Energy Policy.
Joint call for mutually reinforcing and binding energy savings, renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction targets
Dear Ministers for the Environment,
Dear Ministers for Energy,
Europe needs an ambitious Climate and Energy Policy to ensure competitiveness and sustainable growth.
During the upcoming informal Environment and Energy Ministers meeting you will be discussing views on the 2030 climate and energy policy framework. The
Coalition for Energy Savings , the European Renewable Energy Council and the Climate Action Network Europe, representing key energy savings, renewable energy and climate change mitigation stakeholders in Europe are jointly calling on you to ensure that the 2030 policy framework is built on mutually reinforcing and binding energy savings, renewable energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
Such a combined and coherent approach will allow us to learn from the current 2020 framework, and its failure to set a binding energy savings target, in order to provide Europe with a vision for the transition to a sustainable energy system based on renewable energy and energy savings, which boosts competitiveness, sustainable growth and employment. At the same time it can safeguard EU technological and market leadership. Such a framework with binding targets will allow the EU once again to play a leading role in the forthcoming international climate negotiations while becoming more resilient to world energy trends. The EU is urgently required to assume a key role given that climate change impacts are becoming increasingly visible and costly, while climate action falls far short of what is needed.
The EU needs a strong 2030 climate and energy policy framework not despite but because of the economic, social and environmental crisis. Huge cost-effective energy savings potentials are not realised and the development of renewable energy is slowing down.
Europe’s competitiveness is significantly driven by improvements of its energy productivity, energy savings and turning to renewable sources. Both reduce the costs of long-term decarbonisation, help mitigate the impacts of high energy prices on Europe’s economy and ensure that the EU maintains its first-mover advantage to compete for technology leadership in tomorrow’s markets.
We need to focus on tapping our truly indigenous energy resources: renewable energy and energy savings, which will increase energy productivity and will reduce our massive €423 bn energy trade deficit allowing this instead to be reinvested in Europe. There it will create new jobs and industrial leadership. Reducing energy consumption and shifting supply to renewable sources will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a safe and sustainable manner.
The three targets should be developed in relation one to the other. Ambitious and effort shared energy savings and renewable energy targets need to be factored in when defining the EU`s economy-wide greenhouse gas target. The three sectors stand together. And so should the targets.
Download Joint Letter: Impact Assessment For The 2030 Climate and Energy Framework Nov 31 2013
