Submitted by E.M. Williams on Tue, 25/11/2014 - 10:03
3 March 2014 – The Green Growth Platform held its second Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels. The Summit brought together EU Energy, Climate and Economics Ministers, EU Commission officials, Members of the European Parliament, business leaders, investors and renowned economists to discuss jobs, growth and competitiveness and recent analysis undertaken by the Green Growth Platform.
This event built on the first Green Growth Summit held in October 2013, which explored the potential economic opportunities offered by the 2030 energy and climate policy framework. It has become clear that one of the biggest challenges to an ambitious 2030 package is the largely inaccurate and incomplete picture that is becoming mainstreamed in the public and political narrative, linking energy and climate policies alone to rising energy prices and concerns over EU competitiveness. This ignores much of the wider context, including rises in wholesale oil and gas prices and Europe’s growing fossil fuel import dependency, the benefits to EU competitiveness and energy security that EU climate policies can deliver and the tools at our disposal to improve the cost-effectiveness of future EU energy and climate policies (internal energy market, innovation, early investment certainty etc.).
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Director, CLG and Executive Director, The Green Growth Platform summarised key next steps as the following:
- The Platform will go back with the messages heard during the summit and distil them into further activities or analysis needed. These will be added to the Platform’s short- and long-term work plan leading to Paris 2015;
- To continue to work under Advisory Council 1 on the macro-economics of jobs, growth and competitiveness and to report back to Ministers on the progress of discussions and possible recommendations on how to achieve a strong 2030 package whilst stimulating jobs, growth and competitiveness;
- To continue to work with the energy-intensive sectors to better understand their key concerns and ways forward with the hope of producing key solutions and possible recommendations;
- To now bring the power sector into the discussions due to its important role in decarbonisation, and the finance sector to address both public and private funding needs and creative financing options. Two roundtables will be organised over the coming months.
- To create an MEP Green Growth Group once the new European Parliament is in session.
