The European Environment Agency – lastly published assessment report
On 31 October 2019, the European Environment Agency issued its assessment report “Trends and projections in Europe 2019: Tracking progress towards Europe's climate and energy targets”, which is available and can be downloaded here.
According to such report, which provides a EU-wide perspective as well as an in-depth analysis for each member state, the EU is on track to achieve its 2020 goals in terms of reduction of the emission of Greenhouse gases, increase of energy efficiency and surge of the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption.
On the contrary, the majority of member states (excluding Portugal, Sweden and Greece) are still lagging behind in their effort to reach the 2030 target of at least 32 % renewable energy share. In particular, higher investment in the de-carbonization and electrification in the transport sector are highly needed in order to achieve such targets. Also considering the growing interest of the public opinion with respect to climate-related issues, hopefully the EU member states, coordinated and supported by the European Union, will put in place the proper measures to fasten the pace of the transition toward sustainable development, which is, still, not fast enough.
Lorenzo Spiller