EU countries have reallocated €3.8 billion of EU structural funds away from climate action to enable a rapid response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, the European Commission hopes that the incoming fresh cash will reverse that trend.
Average temperatures are rising more and more in the Zagreb region, while snow cover is decreasing year after year. However, Jagoda Munić, Director of Friends of the Earth Europe says that “Croatia is a very passive observer of developments around the European Green Deal.”
Less than 4 per cent of the world's forests are in the European Union, shared by no fewer than 16 million owners. There is no common EU forestry policy, but the European Green Deal is set to put a new emphasis on reforestation.
With its "farm to table" strategy, the European Commission aims to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilisers and at the same time increase organic production by 2030. But how?
The COVID-19 pandemic may have opened a window of opportunity for the European Union to strengthen its fiscal cohesion and to put the climate transition on the right track.
The European Union wants to abandon coal by 2050, but this will require significant help from European banks, which still finance 26 per cent of all coal power plants in the world.
Climate change-related extreme events have seriously damaged the countries of the European Economic Area, accounting for loss of almost 3 percent of GDP for each country per year, according to a new report by the European Environment Agency.
The value of European fossil infrastructure protected by the Energy Charter Treaty is almost €345 billion, says research by Nico Schmidt and Oliver Moldenhauer at Investigate Europe. Lawsuits, allowed by the treaty, are likely to prevent states from adopting ambitious climate policies.
Emissions are not for free in Europe. As a carbon trade system, the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) sets an annual cap and a price for emissions. Wijnand Stoefs, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch, says it should become “a more ambitious tool”.
The Global Wind Atlas displays the typical amount of wind flowing in all areas of Europe, making it easier to identify valuable ares for wind power generation.