Effects of an EU 55% GHG reduction target

In December 2019 the European Commission published the Green Deal, an ambitious strategy to tackle the current climate and environmental challenges. The Green Deal increases the EU’s climate ambition for 2030 and 2050 and lays out the path towards the transformative policies that will be necessary to meet these goals. One of the key ambitions in the Green Deal is to increase the EU’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target for 2030 from the current goal of at least 40% to 50% or 55%, compared with 1990 levels. It also includes a roadmap with a wide range of policy initiatives and actions needed to achieve this goal. Many of these will require changes to current directives and regulations or the initiation of new EU-level legislation.

This report, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, provides an overview of the main EU level policy changes that are currently expected, and an assessment of their potential impact on Dutch climate policies. The scope of this study is all energy and climate-related policies except the Effort Sharing Regulation, the LULUCF Regulation and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

The impact of the Green Deal
The actions and plans outlined in the Green Deal cover a broad range of topics. Many are related to current EU directives and regulations, which could be strengthened or expanded to speed up decarbonisation in the various sectors. In this study, we assessed the following directives:

• Renewable Energy Directive recast (RED II)
• Energy Efficiency Directive (EED)
• Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD)
• Energy Taxation Directive (ETD)
• CO2 emission standards for cars and vans
• CO2 emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles
• Fuel Quality Directive (FQD)
• Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive (AFID)
• Ecodesign Directive.