News
Madame President, Honourable Members,
First of all, I have to apologize for being late, it is because of the College, it finished now and I immediately came here.
I am really happy to discuss with you today which is I think a landmark for the European Green Deal: the Climate Law to turn Europe’s political climate ambitions into binding legislation...
The Commission has published two reports on more climate-friendly alternatives to the damaging F-gases used in split air-conditioning systems and in electrical switchgear.
The European Commission today presented its plan to reduce net EU greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. This level of ambition for the next decade will put the EU on a balanced pathway to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
EU law requires Member States to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions from forestry are balanced by at least an equivalent removal of CO2 from the atmosphere between 2021 and 2030. The draft delegated act relating to setting Forest Reference Levels for this purpose is now open for feedback.
The Commission adopted today the rules on the operation of the Modernisation Fund, an EU solidarity funding mechanism to support 10 EU Member States in their transition to climate neutrality by helping to modernise their energy systems and improve energy efficiency. The Member States to benefit by the Modernisation Fund are Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Today, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, the Canadian Minister for Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson and China’s Minister for Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu co-chaired the 4th session of the Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA). This year’s meeting took place in a virtual format. Against the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic, the meeting focused on aligning global recovery measures with the Paris Agreement, and improving resilience against future crises. Participants included Ministers from G20 countries and other key parties in the UN climate negotiations.
The Commission is launching today the first call for proposals under the Innovation Fund, one of the world’s largest programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies, financed by revenues from the auction of emission allowances from the EU’s Emissions Trading System. The Innovation Fund will finance breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage. It will provide a boost to the green recovery by creating local future-proof jobs, paving the way to climate neutrality and reinforcing European technological leadership on a global scale.
The average CO2 emissions of new light-duty vehicles registered in the EU28, Iceland and Norway in 2019 stayed well below the applicable targets, according to provisional data published by the European Environment Agency. However, average CO2 emissions of both new passenger cars and new vans increased compared to 2018. Manufacturers will have to significantly reduce emissions of their fleet to meet the stricter targets that apply from this year on.
The European Commission has published the first annual report on CO2 emissions from maritime transport. The report analyses the CO2 emissions and energy efficiency information of all the ships over 5,000 gross tonnage, which performed maritime transport activities related to the European Economic Area (EEA) in 2018. Emissions reported by 11,600 ships have added up to over 138 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in that year, representing 3.7% of total EU CO2 emissions according to the European Environment Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions data.
