Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

We strongly support EU action to tackle climate change and to help deliver the EU’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees. We remain committed to an increase in the EU climate target for 2020 to 30% and are pushing strongly for urgent structural reform of the EU emissions trading system (ETS) to ensure it continues to incentivise investment in low carbon.

But we should also learn the lessons from 2008 package—the EU climate deal for 2020 was not sufficiently ambitious, and the renewables target was the product of a time when renewables badly needed a catalyst. The EU has moved on since then; we need to see a new deal on greenhouse gas targets that is ambitious, but which has flexibility to let countries follow their most cost-effective decarbonisation approach.

We believe that the best way to deliver our low-carbon goal is through a binding GHG target and a strong EU emissions trading system, with flexibility for member states to pursue a wide range of options to decarbonise in the least cost way. While we strongly support renewables to 2020 and beyond, we do not believe a binding EU renewables target would be cost-effective, fit well with our electricity market reforms which incentivise low-carbon generation in a technology-neutral way, or be in line with the Government’s commitment to sector-neutral and least-cost emissions reduction. We support EU action where appropriate to enable increased levels of renewables, such as a renewed focus on research and development under the strategic energy technologies plan and ongoing work to complete the single energy market.

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