EU 2020 climate target: 20% reduction requires five-fold increase in impact of CO2 policies

Policy evaluation

This study evaluated and quantified the impact of environmental policies on the emissions of the six Kyoto greenhouse gases in the EU-27 between 1990 en 2005. Next this quantification was compared with the required policy impact increase halfway through the 1990-2020 period in order to reach the new 2020 targets.

This study reveals two policy-relevant indicators for the EU. Firstly, environmental policies had a 7 % impact on emission trends between 1990 and 2005. Secondly, to meet the EU’s 2020 climate target, this impact must increase by a factor between three (all greenhouse gases) to almost five (CO₂) in the 2005-2020 period (see Figure 1).

This required increase in policy impact is by no means evident from the 1990-2005 monitoring data and the 2005-2020 linear-pathway-to-target line. By explicitly filtering out the effect of environmental policies better insight is acquired into the true challenges for the EU’s climate policies.

Policy package

The long-awaited legislation package for energy and climate in Europe will be presented early 2008. The package will contain important requirements to attain EU’s 2020 climate goal: a 20 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 compared tot 1990.

Uncertainties

The uncertainty analysis illustrates that the ex-post quantitative policy evaluations, as applied here, may require additional in-depth research, documentation and methodological consensus before a stronger role for this type of analysis in the policy cycle can be achieved. This paper can be a starting point for such additional work. Despite the uncertainties, the main results from this study can serve as a strong signal to policy makers that the impact of EU CO₂ policies must increase by a factor of almost five in order to achieve the EU’s 2020 climate policy target.