On the second day of this year’s UN climate summit in Bonn, Poland won the second place of the shameful Fossil of the Day Award. The dubious award was handed down to Poland, the host of the next UN climate summit in 2018, for working day and night to turn the EU’s carbon market into potentially the largest coal subsidy scheme in history.
Read more: Poland wins Fossil of the Day Award at the Bonn climate summit
Health, environment and climate groups are calling on the European Union to hasten the move away from coal and other fossil fuels and towards clean renewable energy. As ‘Europe Beyond Coal’ launches, Brussels-based groups have set the EU five challenges to help Europe become coal-free by 2030.
Read more: Challenge to EU leaders: Time to move Europe Beyond Coal
Today the European Parliament’s Environment Committee voted on its opinion on the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive for the period 2021 – 2030.
The European Parliament reacts to the European Commission’s “Reflection paper on the Future of EU finances”. Tomorrow, delegates will adopt their position on the 2018 EU budget (1).
While the latter calls for the EU budget to become compliant with the Paris Agreement, the first omits any acknowledgement of the future EU budget’s role in tackling climate change.
Read more: European Parliament lacks consistency on EU budget’s climate stance
Today EU Environment Ministers have reached an agreement on the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR), which is meant to be one of the EU’s key tools to implement the Paris Agreement.
Diluted to the point of being almost meaningless, the new law as agreed by the ministers would fail to provide a serious constraint for carbon pollution from transport, agriculture, waste and buildings. Thus, it would have an extremely limited impact on the climate.
Read more: EU governments show lack of commitment to Paris Agreement