Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks has issued the following statement on the European Council Conclusions on the 2030 Climate and Energy Policy Framework:
“The decisions are a positive and important signal for international climate action. They mean that in Europe we are the first to be able to present a contribution to the planned climate agreement in Paris in 2015. With a CO2 reduction of 40 percent by 2030 compared with 1990, Europe is setting itself an extremely ambitious climate target in a worldwide comparison. Now other major countries must follow suit. If this succeeds and the Paris conference is a success, Europe will be prepared to do even more. The decision on the 40 percent target contains the wording “at least”, which is a crucial point.
Now it is important to implement these decisions quickly. In the Environment Council we will advocate fleshing out the adopted framework with concrete legislative projects as a matter of urgency. The commitment by the heads of state and government to a well-functioning, reformed emissions trading system is an important basis. This does not mean the swift reform of emissions trading before 2021 is no longer an issue. As before, we support the introduction of a market stability reserve and the transfer of backloading volumes to this reserve in 2017 rather than in 2021. For climate action to be a success it is crucial to set a price for CO2 emissions as soon as possible in order to steer investments in the right direction.”