Climate Targets: EU Chief Urges Increasing 2030 Emissions-Reducing Target to 55%
The European Union’s executive proposed toughening the bloc’s targets for fighting climate change in a move to cut industrial pollution and spur a green economic recovery.
The 27-nation EU should tighten its emissions-cutting goal to at least 55% by 2030, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. The current objective, agreed just six years ago, is a cut of 40% from 1990 levels.
“I recognize that this increase from 40% to 55% is too much for some, and not enough for others,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Brussels during her first state-of-the-union speech. “But our impact assessment clearly shows that our economy and industry can manage this.”
Von der Leyen has spent 10 months in crisis-management mode as a result of the coronavirus pandemic while pressing ahead with plans for a green overhaul of the European economy, a digital-investment drive and more global free trade.
In addition to the pandemic, von der Leyen’s commission has faced jolts as a result of Turkey’s muscle-flexing over energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, the poisoning in Russia of an opposition leader, Chinese curbs on autonomy in Hong Kong and a U.K. pledge to rewrite part of the hard-fought Brexit accord.
The pandemic has handed the 61-year-old von der Leyen a chance to accelerate her plans to make her European Green Deal the engine of economic recovery as governments mobilize unprecedented amounts of public money for the rebuilding effort.
More than a third of the bloc’s 750-billion-euro ($890 billion) economic-rescue package is to be spent on Green Deal-related actions, von der Leyen said. And when the commission taps financial markets to finance the plan, it wants to raise 225 billion euros through green bonds.
Read the rest of the article here via Bloomberg.com: https://bloom.bg/3ms3MSo
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm
QUICKTAKE ON SOCIAL:
Follow QuickTake on Twitter: twitter.com/quicktake
Like QuickTake on Facebook: facebook.com/quicktake
Follow QuickTake on Instagram: instagram.com/quicktake
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2FJ0oQZ
Email us at [email protected]
QuickTake by Bloomberg is a global news network delivering up-to-the-minute analysis on the biggest news, trends and ideas for a new generation of leaders.
source
