European Union governments may be allowed to grant more state aid to projects that help the bloc achieve its climate goals, Europe\u2019s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday (22 September), calling such an incentive a \u201cgreen bonus\u201d.<\/p>\n
In contrast, polluting factories or power plants may be rebuffed when they seek state aid, she said.<\/p>\n
Vestager\u2019s comments underscore the European Commission\u2019s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, both to fuel an economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement.<\/p>\n
She said one example that might qualify for a green bonus could be state funded building projects that use recycled materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could think of giving a sort of \u2018green bonus\u2019, which allows governments to use more state aid for projects that make a genuine contribution to our green goals,\u201d she told an event organised by European Parliament liberal group Renew Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could also look at how to build on the success of competitive tenders in keeping renewable energy costs down, by seeing if we could extend that approach to other areas,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Conversely, \u201cwe might refuse to approve aid that would harm the environment, or would keep polluting factories or power plants operating,\u201d Vestager said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The European Commission also plans to kick off a consultation in the coming weeks on how competition rules and sustainability policies work together, culminating in a conference early next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time has come to launch a European debate on how EU competition policy can best support the Green Deal,\u201d Vestager said, adding however that competition policy \u201cis not going to take the place of environmental laws or green investment\u201d.<\/p>\n
As a green policy tool, competition policy works best \u201cwhen it works hand in hand with regulations that make companies bear the cost of the harm that they do,\u201d Vestager explained. \u201cThe question is rather if we can do more, to apply our rules in ways that better support the Green Deal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
European Union governments may be allowed to grant more state aid to projects that help the bloc achieve its climate goals, Europe\u2019s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday (22 September), calling such an incentive a \u201cgreen bonus\u201d. In contrast, polluting factories or power plants may be rebuffed when they seek state aid, she said. […]<\/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":[5571],"tags":[13087,16496,17550],"supplier":[2317,5585,4182],"class_list":["post-79298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-climate","tag-greendeal","tag-greengoals","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-union","supplier-reuters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79298","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=79298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79298"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=79298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}