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The EU has launched a crucial debate about its future climate and energy policy.
Current targets on energy production and usage are set to 2020
but what factors are driving the debate on new targets beyond that date?
The EU is at the crossroads.
Does the EU continue its 20-20-20 method of setting targets,
20% reduction of emissions, 20% increase energy in efficiency,
20% share of renewables, and sets further targets for 2030, 3 separate targets
or does it figure out something else?
As of now, there is no framework proposed by the commission by the EU,
but there has been some road-mapping exercises that have
looked ahead as far as 2050.
And this road-mapping exercises shown very clearly
that if we want to get down there cost-effectively,
it's more cost-effective it's cheaper in effect to do that gradually..
The interesting thing is that we are actually on that trajectory now,
if we look at the emissions we have had in the past few years including from
before the financial crisis,
if we want to continue that trajectory we need just 2% per year
to reach, to stable of 2 degrees.
Europe is at the very important stage of its energy and climate policy.
Lots of the assumptions we had did not materialize.
We have to make a re-think, I think we should have focused that on 2030 target setting.
The best way forward would be to have a single CO2 target, driving CO2 abatement,
driving innovation in the most cost effective way.
Therefore, in order for them to be credible
we have to reform the European trading system on CO2,
get back to re-boost the CO2 price that gives the right price signal.
It's very important that we remain economically competitive
so I think we should be based on market based mechanisms
and also our legislation should be technology neutral.
There is good economic reasons why we should be trying to save energy.
We import most of our fossil fuels, and the dependence of the European Union on import
is growing.
And it is likely to continue to grow through to 2030.
Now that dependence on others is a vulnerability.
Of course we see rightly so that Europe is focusing on competitiveness at the moment.
That should not mean that we should forget about climate policy,
it will start to haunt us later, it will be more costly later.
In all of these discussions we have people often overlook.
What happens if we don't reduce our emissions?
What happens if do go over 2 degrees and more of warming?
Then our economy is really in trouble.
There will be industries that are required to change
their production techniques and make investments
in order to reduce their emissions.
But there are also industries that can grow, that can be nurtured.
At the European level I think we are ambitious,
but the global economical and financial crisis warn us
that it is not only environment, there's also competitiveness,
it is also social welfare we are responsible for, so
I would like to see more ambitions on the global level and
I am looking forward to global climate change in the year 2050.
I hope it will be ambitious one.
We asked our CommentVisions debate audience
whether they think the framework for the EU's post-2020 climate
and energy policy is a path to sustainable growth
Have your say on the progress of EU post-2020 climate and energy policy
at commentvisions.com, on LinkedIn and via twitter.