The call, made in a letter seen by EurActiv, was sent to Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Energy Commissioner G\u00fcnther Oettinger on 23 December 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must offer a robust, long-term framework supporting renewable energy sources, regardless of various views on the operational modalities,\u201d the ministers say. \u201cA target for renewable energy will strengthen European competitiveness and lead to more jobs and growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
A clean energy goal is \u201ccrucial\u201d to providing the certainty that industry needs for cost-effective investments, the ministers argue.<\/p>\n
The missive\u2019s signatories include the new German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel, the French ecology minister, Philippe Martin, and the Italian environment minister, Andrea Orlando.<\/p>\n
On 22 January, a blockbuster EU climate and energy package is due to be unveiled, comprising new legislative proposals on subjects from shale gas and tar sands to structural carbon market reform and industrial competitiveness.<\/p>\n
But the centrepiece of the package will be proposals for 2030 climate and energy goals that could expand upon the \u201820-20-20 targets\u2019 of 20% emissions cuts, efficiency gains, and renewable energy market share by the decade\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
The ministerial letter is part of an intense lobby battle over this with the UK and other EU states, such as Poland, taking stances against clean energy goals,\u00a0despite what the Commission says would be a jobs shortfall<\/a>.<\/p>\n In\u00a0a key Brussels speech last year<\/a>, the British energy minister, Ed Davey, called a renewables target \u201cinflexible and unnecessary.\u201d It would, he said, stymie Whitehall\u2019s energy options for gas, nuclear, and experimental technologies such as carbon capture and storage.<\/p>\n Brussels \u2018horse trade\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Since then, the \u2018GHG cuts only\u2019 position has appeared to gain traction – and EU presidential support – in what Brussels sources say is a developing \u201chorse trade\u201d over the package.<\/p>\n Hedegaard\u00a0had quietly backed<\/a>\u00a0a renewable energy target but did not mention the issue at all in\u00a0a comment piece published yesterday<\/a>\u00a0[6 January] calling for \u2018bold climate action\u2019.<\/p>\n In this context, the EU ministers stepped into the vacant advocacy space for renewable targets, arguing that they would ease Europe\u2019s reliance on expensive fossil fuel imports, allow grid expansions and be a driver for jobs and growth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot afford to miss this opportunity,\u201d concludes their missive, which also counts ministers from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal among its number.<\/p>\n The letter seems designed to chime with current EU thinking on the 2030 issue, as outlined in a leaked impact assessment into the economic effects of various climate policy scenarios, which EurActiv has read.<\/p>\n Impact assessment<\/strong><\/p>\n A \u2018reference scenario\u2019 in the report finds that a greenhouse gas reduction target of 40% would create 645,000 new jobs by 2030.<\/p>\n But if that emissions-cutting goal were meshed with a 30% renewable energy target and \u201cambitious, explicit\u201d energy efficiency policies, the study says it \u201cwould generate 1.25 million additional jobs in a 2030 perspective, compared to the reference scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps most intriguingly, the report also finds that increasing taxes on energy resource use and reducing it on labour could have a \u201cbeneficial impact on growth and employment,\u201d the current catchwords of EU policy-making.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore a tax shift from labour towards CO2<\/sub>\u00a0tax (in the non-ETS sectors) may reduce the cost of the climate policy,\u201d the study says, \u201cand even result in positive GDP and employment effects on the aggregate level.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ministers from eight EU states …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5627],"supplier":[2317],"class_list":["post-18741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-energy","supplier-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18741"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=18741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}