EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard on Wednesday presented a paper making the case for moving towards a unilateral 30% cut in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But she failed to stand behind it, bowing to pressure from France and Germany.
The EU’s climate chief unveiled a new communication arguing that increasing the EU’s 2020 climate goal to a 30% emission reduction from 1990 levels would be both affordable and technically feasible.
The European Commission estimates that as a result of the economic downturn, the cost of meeting the current 20% target has dropped to €48bn per year until 2020, down from an initial estimate of €70 billion when the package was agreed.
Consequently, making the extra effort to reach 30% would now cost just€11bn more than what EU governments signed up to two years ago, it argued.
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One day earlier, in a keynote speech to the Brussels Economic Forum on Tuesday in Brussels, Hedegaard said that tackling the financial and economic crisis should not prevent the European Union from moving ahead on climate change and energy security issues.
“If we leave climate change to the coming decades, we will just repeat the mistake that led to the financial crisis,” the commissioner told participants. “We need to look for the opportunities for Europe, and green technologies playing a key role in sustainable economic growth in Europe is compelling.”
