Tag: 2020 targets

The European Parliament’s environment committee on Tuesday (7 May) called for the installation of electric speed limiters for vans to prevent their accelerating beyond an agreed 120kph cap. But MEPs rejected reducing the 2020 target for van CO₂ emissions to 118g per km.

EXCLUSIVE / Five weeks after voting down the ‘backloading’ (or withholding) of allowances to raise carbon prices, the European Parliament’s industry committee is proposing two far-more ambitious structural measures. 

Fears are growing in Brussels that climate policy could become a political football in any referendum on EU membership, following British Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration of intent yesterday (23 January) to hold an in/out poll.

The European Union put down the last piece of the bloc's 2020 climate and energy policy puzzle by adopting an Energy Efficiency Directive. The directive is a game-changer for energy companies, which are now required to achieve 1.5% energy savings every year among their final clients. The EU law is also expected to trigger the largest revamp of Europe's existing building stock to date and set new standards for public procurement and energy audits.

EXCLUSIVE: Poland’s use of a veto to block EU climate goals for 2050 has no legal basis, according to internal legal documents from the Council of the European Union, obtained by EurActiv.

Leaders from Europe’s Outermost Regions have expressed their dissatisfaction with the Commission's new strategy which slashes their funding in half.

The European Commission has drawn up a list of 14 industrial sectors that will be eligible for special state aid to compensate for the increased cost of electricity due to the European Emission Trading System (ETS), according to a draft paper seen by EurActiv.

Britain launched on Thursday a £20 million (€24 million) contest to support up to two pilot wave energy projects, as the government hopes to scale up the clean technology to power more homes and businesses and curb carbon emissions.

The EU’s emissions reduction target for 2020 could be facing an unlikely but grave obstacle, according to a growing number of scientists, EU officials and NGOs: the contribution of biomass to the EU’s renewable energy objectives for 2020.

Offshore wind cost reduction, natural gas and energy efficiency are some of the solutions that the EU could use in order to achieve its ambitious targets and boost its competitiveness in the energy arena, writes Anders Eldrup, chief executive of Dong Energy

Greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels such as palm oil, soybean and rapeseed are higher than those for fossil fuels when the effects of Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) are counted, according to leaked EU data seen by EurActiv.

Raising the European Union's 2020 emission reduction target from 20% to 30% would be much less costly than was assumed in 2008, and the effort could be shared fairly among governments, according to a draft EU document.

The EU’s chances of meeting its objective of cutting energy consumption 20% by 2020 are only just better than even, the EU's top energy official has told EurActiv.

Renovating Europe’s buildings for deep efficiency in two stages would result in 71% energy savings across Europe by 2050 and create 800,000 clean energy jobs - at less than two thirds the price of one-off deep renovations, a new report says.

The European Commission's top energy official has criticised EU member sates for holding a double language on the bloc's target to cut energy use by 20% by the end of the decade.

A lobbying row has broken out as the European Parliament decisively rejected yesterday (5 July) increasing the EU's 2020 CO2 emissions reduction target from 20% to 30%, on 1990 levels

EU member states have been granted an opt-out from efficiency plans that would force energy companies to make savings among final customers of 1.5% a year.

EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has warmly praised a British government decision to halve its 1990 greenhouse gas emission level within 14 years – if the EU takes similar action. 

Energy companies will need to make savings among final customers of 1.5% a year under a new regime of audits, inventories and savings obligations outlined in a draft directive seen by EurActiv.