The European Union has entered a new and crucial stage in energy policy. After the adoption of legally binding targets to address climate change, energy security and competitiveness, the 27 member states are now turning their attention to the implementation of these targets. However, with an unfinished internal market for gas and electricity and with member states continuing to focus on bilateral energy relationships with supplier countries, the EU is still at the very beginning of a common EU energy policy." "This report from the CEPS Task Force on Energy Policy for Europe contributes to the debate about an emerging 'first-generation' EU energy policy. It identifies those policy areas that are expected to benefit most from deeper EU integration, i.e. where the European 'added-value' is expected to be greatest, and formulates recommendations on how such integration could be achieved in practice. In particular, the report calls for the development of more and better energy policy indicators against which to assess member state energy policies to ensure policy coherence at the EU and member state level."--BOOK JACKET.
The aim of the paper is to identify and evaluate existing and potential EU energy supply risks on the basis of a sector-specific approach. Moving away from common generalisations on security of energy supply as well as from those studies that focus only on one sector, it brings together all types of fuel and analyses the risks related to each of them. The result is a comprehensive picture of the energy security challenges faced by the EU in the long-term. The paper can be seen as a tool to avoid overlapping, incoherence and contradictions in the process of assessing security of supply and aims to formulate a consistent and more unified European energy policy.
This paper analyzes the variety of different external aid initiatives and financing mechanisms of the European Commission addressing climate change and development objectives, such as those stemming from the 2004 EU Action Plan on Climate Change and Development, from the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA) and those under the Thematic Programme for Environment and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (ENRTP). The paper also outlines related Commission commitments with the European Investment Bank (EIB), the World Bank and the United Nations. While the European Commission has advanced a number of new initiatives, it seems that the complexity of responsibilities in the management of the current financing instruments requires organizational restructuring, a more transparent reporting mechanism and the development of better indicators to evaluate the impacts of those initiatives. Overall it appears that the Commission is just at the beginning of taking full account of climate change in development cooperation. Its contribution is rather limited in view of the financing needs related to climate change in developing countries, and innovative financing mechanisms should be sought together with member states and the private sector.
This study focuses on the financial resources needed to fight global climate change and the implications for the EU budget. The authors apply four different methodologies to estimate global financing requirements and attempt to determine the resources that will be needed at the EU level to meet the EU's climate change objectives. The study analyses current climate change spending of the EU budget, identifies shortcomings and indicates possibilities for correcting them. It also assesses the potential of the EU emissions trading scheme to raise additional resources to finance coordinated actions at the EU level aimed at fighting climate change. Finally, it provides three case studies of national public expenditure related to climate change in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Following the agreement made by Prime Minister David Cameron with the EU on 18-19 February 2016, the day for the referendum for the UK to remain in or leave the EU is set for 23 June 2016. This will be the most important decision taken by the British people in half a century, and whose consequences will live on for another half century. The first edition of this book, published in March 2015, laid the foundations for any objective assessment of the workings of the EU and the UK’s place in it. It was widely acclaimed and rated as “a myth-breaking exercise of the best kind”. This second edition adds a substantial new chapter following Cameron’s agreement with the EU and announcement of the referendum. It reviews both the ‘Plan A’, namely the status quo for the UK in the EU as amended by the new agreement, and three variants of a ‘Plan B’ for secession. The key point is that the ‘leave’ camp have not done their homework or ‘due diligence’ to specify the post-secession scenario, or how the British government would face up to the challenges that this would bring. The authors therefore do the ‘leave’ camp’s homework for them, setting out three Plan Bs more concretely and in more depth than the ‘leave’ camp have been able or wanted to do, or any other source has done. The book is therefore unique and essential reading for anyone concerned with the fateful choice that lies soon ahead.
In March 2009, CEPS formed a Task Force under the chairmanship of Anders Wijkman, former MEP, Vice Chairman of the Taellberg Foundation and Vice President of the Club of Rome, to examine the impacts of climate change and the extent to which the EU budget can effectively assist in addressing them. Based on the discussions among the Task Force members and independent analysis by the rapporteur, Jorge Núñez Ferrer, with contributions from Christian Egenhofer and Arno Behrens, this report recommends the fundamental reforms to the EU budget, which are necessary for the EU to achieve its objectives on climate change, along with helping it to lead the global effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions.--Publisher description.
Transforming the linear economy, which has remained the dominant model since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, into a circular one is by no means an easy task. Such a radical change entails a major transformation of our current production and consumption patterns, which in turn will have a significant impact on the economy, the environment and society. Understanding these impacts is crucial for researchers as well as for policy-makers engaged in designing future policies in the field. This requires developing an in-depth knowledge of the concept of the circular economy, its processes and their expected effects on sectors and value chains. This paper reviews the growing literature on the circular economy with the aim of improving our understanding of the concept as well as its various dimensions and expected impacts. On the basis of this review, it attempts to map the processes involved and their application in different sectors. The paper suggests that research on the circular economy is currently fragmented across various disciplines and there are often different perspectives and interpretations of the concept and the related aspects that need to be assessed. This fragmentation is also evident in the available studies that adopt different approaches in calculating the impacts, which makes efforts at comparing the results from different sources very challenging. Finally, this paper suggests that there is limited information on the indirect effects on the economy (e.g. impacts on the value chain or changes in consumption spending patterns) as well as the social impacts of the circular economy transition.
This paper aims to rethink the concept of the 'circular economy' through the prism of its relevance to its many stakeholders, ranging from public and private actors and mature and emerging industries to cities and regions, SMEs and multi‐sectoral corporations. The paper presents a schematic framework, which breaks down the circular economy into eight fundamental building blocks and shows how they are interconnected in relation to the multiplicity of involved actors. The framework is used to develop recommendations addressed to European policy‐makers on how best to support the transition towards a circular economy in the EU.
The 'circular economy' is gaining momentum as a concept in both academic and policy circles, while circular business models have been linked to significant economic benefits. This paper identifies key barriers and enablers to adopting circular economy business practices, using input from a literature review, discussions held in the context of the GreenEcoNet project and an analysis of two SME circular business models.
Regional Energy Policy Cooperation has now gained political traction in the EU as a tool to advance the EU's energy objectives. Cooperation and coordination is meant to facilitate the convergence of markets and policies, so while the creation of one EU Internal Energy Market remains the goal, regional cooperation is the tool with which to achieve that goal. Cooperation could become the stepping-stone towards the completion of the Internal Energy Market within the European 2030 climate and energy framework and beyond. The Energy Union concept recognises the importance of regional integration. For South East Europe, regional energy policy cooperation is seen as a means to address region-specific challenges such as security of supply, energy imports dependence, affordability, but also to build trust. South East Europe's hitherto untapped or underutilised potential for renewable energy, hydro--also for storage--and the huge potential for energy efficiency improvements offer a great opportunity to solve the region's challenges.
As part of the "Clean Energy for All Europeans" package, the European Commission has proposed a Regulation on risk-preparedness in the electricity sector that aims to improve cooperation among member states in preventing, preparing for and managing electricity crises. To reap the benefits of improved cooperation compared with the current diverging national approaches, the proposal foresees, inter alia, national risk-preparedness plans, a number of principles for crisis management and ex post crisis evaluation. This Policy Insight analyses the proposal and confronts it with a case study about a recent crisis in South East Europe (in January 2017). Among other conclusions, the findings suggest that the Regulation's provisions for clear rules and national/regional procedures for crisis management and for evaluating crisis management ex post (i.e. whether the rules were followed) are appropriate, but they may need strengthening.
Eco-innovation has been identified as one of the key drivers of change that need to be harnessed for a sustainable future. Given the complexity of eco-innovation as a concept, there are various challenges to measuring its progress. This paper briefly explores the evolution of the concept of eco-innovation and emphasises its role in the EU 2020 strategy. It then provides an overview of the different measurement approaches and challenges associated with identifying and using indicators for measuring progress in eco-innovation. Within this context, the paper describes the added value and key features of the www.measuring-progress.eu web tool, which aims to improve the way in which policy-makers and others involved in the policy process can access, understand and use indicators for green economy and eco-innovation. The web tool was developed on the basis of a systematic overview by the NETGREEN research team of the large and fragmented body of work in the field of green economy indicators. The paper concludes with a number of messages for policy-makers in the field of the green economy. Main policy messages: Results obtained from using composite indicators to gauge eco-innovation performance should be interpreted with caution and treated as indicative of overall eco-innovation performance. While efforts to improve data quality and to create more comprehensive eco-innovation indicators should continue, existing databases in the field should to be used more extensively. The alignment of eco-innovation indicators with other green economy indicators can provide a more holistic perspective on the sustainability performance of the EU and contribute to a more substantive discussion about the direction of eco-innovation and other sustainability measures.
Electricity trading can bring down the costs of the EU's transition to a competitive low-carbon economy, in particular by facilitating the integration of renewable energy from variable sources. Yet insufficient grid infrastructure and regulatory obstacles prevent the trading potential from being fully realised in northern Europe. While many interconnector projects are under development, various barriers are precluding the grid rollout from taking place on time. The European Commission's energy infrastructure package is an important step forward to overcome these barriers. But the scale and urgency of the infrastructure challenge call for significant further progress.
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