Op-ed: Enlighten the Climate Law with Energy Efficiency First!

By Adrian Joyce, Secretary General, and Julie Kjestrup, President of EuroACE. Published on Euractiv.

We are almost at the end of the first 100 days of the new Commission. In these 100 days, it has acted with speed and ambition, outlining an EU Green Deal that will set the EU on track to become the first carbon-neutral continent. Part of the package is the Climate Law, to enshrine the EU’s climate neutrality objective for 2050 into legislation. The road ahead is long, but it is also illuminated: we know where to go, and we have the technology to get us there.

That route has energy efficiency, and the Energy Efficiency First principle, at its core. The International Energy Agency estimates that, at a global level, approximately 44% of the required reductions can be achieved by energy efficiency. Yet energy efficiency uptake is slowing down, and the EU as a whole is set to miss its 2020 energy efficiency objective by a margin of up to 5%.

We need to keep on saying ‘Energy Efficiency First’ and enshrine it as an overarching principle of the EU Climate Law governance, but we must also go beyond that. The experience from both the 2020 and 2030 energy efficiency targets teaches us that targets must be ambitious, but more importantly, binding. And we should start where the potential is biggest: with the building stock, as 75% of the buildings that exist today will still be with us in 2050.