The EU Legal Frameworks

Energy and environment today are the subjects of a number of initiatives and programs by the European Union (EU). Climate change has become the main pillar of EU policies aimed at accelerating the transition towards sustainable development, a future with low emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). The development of multidisciplinary and multidimensional strategies by the community institutions to face climate change has occurred and is still evolving within a particularly complex system. This chapter provides an analysis on current EU policies, with targets up to 2050, and prior agreements that led to the current ones. The analysis starts from the recent agreement called “roadmap for moving to a competitive low-carbon economy in 2050” promoted by the EU, and focus on the 2030 framework for climate and energy policies presented on January 2014 by the European Commission as an intermediate step to achieve the goal of longer term to 2050. The chapter then proceeds backwards, illustrating the main agreements that have led the EU to the current situation, that are the 2020 climate and energy package and the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol at EU level. Finally, it provides a description of trends in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at global and European levels.