Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
The EU Legal Frameworks
Energy and environment today are the subjects of a number of initiatives and pro-
grams by the European Union (EU). Climate change has become the main pillar
of EU policies aimed at accelerating the transition towards sustainable develop-
ment, a future with low emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). The development of
multidisciplinary and multidimensional strategies by the community institutions to
face climate change has occurred and is still evolving within a particularly complex
system. This chapter provides an analysis on current EU policies, with targets up to
2050, and prior agreements that led to the current ones. The analysis starts from the
recent agreement called “roadmap for moving to a competitive low-carbon econo-
my in 2050” promoted by the EU, and focus on the 2030 framework for climate and
energy policies presented on January 2014 by the European Commission (EC
2014
)
as an intermediate step to achieve the goal of longer term to 2050. The chapter then
proceeds backwards, illustrating the main agreements that have led the EU to the
current situation, that are the 2020 climate and energy package and the implementa-
tion of the Kyoto Protocol at EU level. Finally, it provides a description of trends in
carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions at global and European levels.
1.1
Road Map for Moving to a Competitive Low-Carbon
Economy in 2050
The evolution of the energy and environmental policy of the EU is an ongoing
process for the changes related to energy and environmental markets. The European
Commission has recently presented as part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the flagship
initiative “A resource-efficient Europe” (European Commission
2011a
); it proposes
a series of long-term strategic plans in areas such as transport, energy, and climate
change. The Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth in-
cludes five main objectives that define the goals that the EU should achieve by
2020. One of these concerns the climate and energy: the member states have com-
mitted themselves to reducing GHG emissions by 20 %, to reach a 20 % share of
