European Green Deal – the long-term growth strategy towards climate neutrality

FORTUM CORPORATION ONLINE NEWS 11 December 2019

The new European Commission published today a Communication on the European Green Deal. The Green Deal is one of the six headline ambitions for Europe that Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the Commission has defined in her political guidelines for the next five years and well beyond.

Fortum welcomes the Green Deal as a comprehensive growth strategy for Europe towards climate neutrality: it bundles up all EU policy areas and all sectors of the society. Until now, the focus of decarbonisation has largely been on energy sector, but the Green Deal takes a whole society wide approach. Sector integration and electrification of sectors like industry and transport can become important solutions in reaching climate neutrality. In Fortum’s view, the Green Deal also offers an excellent opportunity to reshape the target-setting and instruments of the whole post-2030 EU climate policy.  

“The European Green Deal is an ambitious initiative and we at Fortum strongly advocate for it. It is especially important to set a binding long-term climate neutrality target in legislation. This target needs to be accompanied by a regulatory framework that ensures a just energy transition, preserves the competitiveness of the European economy and supports the overall decarbonisation objective,” says Merja Paavola, Vice President, Public Affairs.

In Fortum’s view, carbon pricing alone would be the most suited and cost-efficient instrument to achieve economy-wide climate neutrality by 2050. Carbon price should be established for all sectors by strengthening and extending the EU ETS and by pushing EU member states to increase the price for emissions not covered by the ETS. Furthermore, CO2 removals and negative emissions should be priced and incentivised in legislation. Fortum takes a positive note in the Communication as it recognises the possibility of including emissions from buildings in the EU ETS.

Fortum Corporation
Group Communications