We welcome the Commission’s proposal on the Climate Law, inserting in the EU legislation an EU-wide binding climate neutrality target for 2050 and setting out the general framework for the trajectory which will be established in order to enable the collective achievement of this goal.
In order to deliver on this ambition, we recall the importance of the concrete and daily enablers of emissions’ reduction, and hence of climate neutrality, such as energy efficiency services and effective energy management.
As already said in our reaction to the Climate Law Roadmap consultation a few weeks ago, the energy efficiency sector plays a pivotal role in the energy transition by putting in place measures and projects aimed at reducing energy consumption – and thus CO2 emissions – along the whole energy chain, and it should therefore be given a prominent position, in line with the Energy Efficiency First principle.
We also reiterate the importance of another enabler which should not be overlooked and where emissions’ reduction is surely an urgent matter: the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling sector, notably through efficient thermal solutions such as efficient district heating and cooling networks, which will increasingly serve as vectors for renewable and recovered energies, thus largely contributing to reducing our emissions.