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The European Green Deal declares climate neutrality as a goal for the year 2050. It establishes an EU binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990. The market, through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, will determine how EU member states contribute to this target. The Effort Sharing Regulation defines binding national targets to reduce the remaining GHG emissions not covered by the EU ETS. In this paper, an energy optimization model is applied to analyze the capability of Czechia to meet the climate change targets by 2030 and 2050. We define a baseline scenario derived from the National Energy and Climate Plan and three policy scenarios to assess impacts of the extension of the EU ETS to buildings and transport (EU ETS 2) and the coal phase-out on the Czech energy system. One of the policy scenarios aims at approaching climate neutrality in 2050. In addition, another scenario does not assess the impacts of the EU ETS 2 and coal phase-out but searches for the optimal path to achieve climate neutrality in 2050. Given the high level of GHG emissions in 1990 and the significant reduction in GHG emissions in the 1990s, Czechia could achieve a 55% reduction by 2030. However, further decarbonization will be quite challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable sources play a crucial role in the decarbonisation process of the current linear economy, aimed at reaching the 2030 climate objectives and fulfilling the EU's long-term strategy of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. All economic subjects, including households, can contribute to the Green Deal goals. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate households' consumption of energy sources for heating purposes in the Czech Republic in the period 2003–2020 and depict possible drivers of switching to biomass. For this, various data were collected, such as data published by the Czech Statistical Office, ministries, and other national authorities, as well as data from Eurostat. Concerning methods, data analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were used. Different models focus on the substitution effect, rebound effect, and behaviour of different kinds of households. The results show a substitution effect connected with the consumption of coal, electricity, and biomass for heating purposes. Many households substituted coal for biomass in the observed period. On the other hand, the environmental impact of such substitution is not significant, as carbon emissions and emissions of other pollutants are stable. The substitution of fuels should be accompanied by technological change, e.g., improvement of combustion boilers. Moreover, households of pensioners are the key economic subjects with the highest impact on biomass consumption for heating purposes. Against this background we recommend policies to support households in replacing their boilers for more environmentally friendly ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, a 24-year-long prohibition of coal mining within some territories in the North Bohemia coal basin was lifted and as a consequence mining a part of the brown coal reserves might well be resumed. This paper analyses the impacts of maintaining the ban versus three options for a less environmentally stringent policy on the Czech energy system; fuel- and technology-mix, the costs of generating energy, emissions and related external costs up to 2050. We find that overall the effect of lifting the ban, on coal usage, air pollutant emissions and hence externalities is rather small, up to 1-2% compared to the level of keeping the ban. The small difference in the impacts remains even if changes in the prices of fossil fuels and European Emission Allowances or different development in nuclear power usage are assumed. In fact, changing these assumptions will result in more pronounced differences in the impacts than the four policy options might deliver. Maintaining the ban would not achieve the European Energy Roadmap 2050 target and the newly adopted policy and the other two counter-environmental proposals would miss the 80% reduction target to an even greater degree. The environmental and external health costs attributable to emissions of local air pollutants stemming from power generation are in a range of €26-32 billion over the whole period and decline from about 0.5% of gross domestic product in 2015 to 0.1% in 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]