Council formally adopts energy-climate package

Publication date: 07 April 2009

Council formally adopts energy-climate package

The Council of the European Union formally adopted, on 6 April, the six legislative texts that make up the energy-climate change package, thus wrapping up the long Community legislative process.

The package comprises:

- a directive establishing a revised European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), which is extended to new sectors of industry and to two new gases in addition to CO2 (nitrous oxide and perflurocarbons). The goal is a 21% reduction of emissions from these sectors by 2020 compared with 2005

- a decision on effort sharing, which spells out the effort to be made by each member state to reduce its emissions in sectors not covered by the ETS. The aim is a 10% reduction in these emissions by 2020 compared with 2005

- a directive on renewable energy, which provides for an increase to 20% of the share of renewables in total energy consumption

- a directive on carbon capture and storage, which sets the volume of quotas available to finance CSC technologies

- a directive on fuel quality setting a target of a 10% reduction by 2020 in GHG emissions produced during the fuel production cycle for fuels used in
transport

- a regulation limiting CO2 emissions from passenger cars, obliging automotive manufacturers gradually to bring down CO2 emissions from new cars to 130 g CO2/km by 2015, and which sets a new long-term objective of 95 g CO2/km in 2020.

Read the full document and access the adopted legislation:  2009-04-6-CouncilConclusions-ClimateChange.pdf (150.2 KB)

Source: Europolitics