Energy and Climate Committee gives new impetus to ambitious target setting for the Energy Community

The 6^th Energy and Climate Committee (ECC) meeting brought together more than 100 participants, including Ministers of the Contracting Parties and leadership from the energy and climate departments at the European Commission, to reaffirm political commitment for the adoption of 2030 energy and climate targets. The European Commission’s study on extending EU energy and climate modelling capacity to the Contracting Parties is expected to provide robust results supporting ambitious target setting for energy efficiency, renewable energy shares and greenhouse gas emission reduction at the next Ministerial Council in autumn 2021, together with the adoption of relevant legislative elements of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package.

The study’s scope, timeline and purpose were extensively discussed among national experts and the European Commission during the next day’s Technical Working Group meeting, which clarified the applied modelling suite, the data collection process and the methodology for setting the baseline and policy variants. A dedicated session focused on the importance of institutionalizing modelling capacity in the Energy Community Contracting Parties.

The ECC, chaired by Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, and Connie Hedegaard, former EU Commissioner for Climate Action, took stock of the Contracting Parties' efforts for the development of their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) and the process of updating Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC2) ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.  

The meeting was also the occasion to launch political dialogue with Contracting Parties on the Decarbonisation Roadmap for the Energy Community until 2030 and beyond, an initiative proposed by the European Commission at the 2020 Ministerial Council. The Roadmap will complement ongoing national decarbonisation efforts in the Energy Community by putting a greater emphasis on the pathway to setting a solid measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) system and in perspective also a meaningful carbon pricing mechanism with dedicated legislation.