CAN Europe made a submission on the European Commission’s Green Paper Consultation on a 2030 Climate and Energy Framework.
The current EU framework is not ambitious enough. The 2020 targets are not in line with a cost-effective trajectory towards the upper end of the 80%-95% emission reduction target in 2050, as indicated in the European Commission’s Roadmap for moving to a competitive low carbon economy in 2050.
In order to bridge the gap between the 2020 framework and the upper range of the 2050 decarbonisation objective, the EU must design an ambitious, coherent and comprehensive post-2020 package to cost-effectively deliver on its long-term objectives while maintaining its global leadership on climate action and technology development, as well as improving its current 2020 climate and energy targets and policies.
Globally, Europe’s climate and energy package is its strongest card in shaping global ambition to control climate risk, bearing in mind that global decisions made in 2015 will determine whether 2°C is still within reach globally or whether Europe will be forced to live with increasingly unpredictable and costly variations in climate, and higher levels of instability and poverty in neighbouring regions. Europe, as all other big emitters, needs to step up and reduce much further its emissions, as the reality of climate change demands to do so. In the current economic context, we can find sustainable solutions for both the financial and the climate crises, as climate action offers opportunities to improve security of energy supply and to guarantee a competitive EU economy.
Download: EU Commission Consultation: 2030 green paper on Climate and Energy framework (June 2013)
