EU countries pool for a “reliable policy” towards 2040 climate targets

A group of eleven Member States is asking the European Commission to look into a voluntary EU Green Loan Standard to “help leverage the banking market and steer investments into renewables and energy savings, as well as support financing the renovation wave”.

Its use “can be incentivised similar to the EU Green Bond Standard”, the group who poses as “friends of renewables” stressed in an informal letter released for the Environment EU Council who took place in Luxemburg. The initiative should be set “without prejudice to the future Mid-Term Financial Framework” and is designed “not lead to additional regulatory burden but rather support the voluntary uptake of green loans”, the text reads.

The proposal is part of a more broad call to speed up investments into renewable energies and sustainable energy infrastructure as they are “key to reaching the climate and energy targets, ensuring affordable energy prices and preserving energy security”. Ministers of Austria, Greece, Denmark, Germany, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Portugal focused in particulate to the climate targets for 2040 that the European Commission is committed to propose by the end of 2024.

“In order to achieve this target, we need to create a reliable policy framework post-2030 also for the energy sector, building on the 2030 framework and its full implementation”. EU legislation should be adapted through “a revision of the governance regulation covering the post-2030 framework as well as a revision of the Renewable Energy Directive III covering post-2030”.

More importantly the friends for renewables urge the EU Executive to table a targeted proposal for a directive on the Acceleration of Permitting and Energy Infrastructure. “We are not yet on track with the necessary speed for reaching the 2030 targets, fast and efficient planning and permitting for renewable energy and grid projects must become the norm, not the exception”, the document reads.

Brussels should also engage in the constituting an EU framework that supports and incentivizes “the required renewable investments, including large-scale offshore infrastructure projects with crossborder effects”. The idea is to set up “a voluntary, fair and balanced cost-benefit sharing mechanism that is based on objective criteria”, the eleven Ministers stated in the non-paper.

The preparations for the COP29 on climate changes largely dominated the debate among Ministers in Luxemburg. The meeting dragged on until late evening to find a compromise on the priorities that the EU Council will stand up for in the United Nations Conference taking place from 11^th to 22^nd November. Many countries such as France, Czech Republic and Poland worked hard to include an explicit reference to nuclear energy as part of the solutions to take in account for green transition.

The text resulted in a call for Parties “to contribute to global efforts to accelerate zero-and low-emission technologies in line with paragraph 28 of the GST”. This part of the First Global Stocktake concluded in Dubai in 2023 mentions the acceleration on zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage” among the pathways and approaches to consider in the context of the Paris Agreement.