Europe creates new Directorates for Climate Action and Energy
Wed 17 February 2010
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The European Commission has created two new Directorates-General for Energy and Climate Action. A British national, Philip-Lowe will be the Director-General of Energy while a Belgian, Jos Delbeke, will take on the role of Director-General of Climate Action. Meanwhile, new Climate Action Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, says that transport will be an important focus for her department.
The departments responsible for transport policy will remain in the renamed Mobility and Transport DG (MOVE). The Climate Action DG will be created from the relevant activities in DG Environment, the activities in the External Relations DG related to international negotiations on climate change and the activities in the Enterprise and Industry DG related to climate change.
The new list of European Commissioners under President Jose Manuel Barroso was also recently announced. Connie Hedegaard, a Dane, takes on Climate Action; Gunther Oettinger from Germany will lead in DG Energy while Siim Kallas from Estonia is the new Mobility andTransport Commissioner. Janez Potocnik from Slovenia is the Environment Commissioner. (For the full list, please see associated link.)
In an early development the Climate Action Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, is promising an initiative on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from lorries. She is also reported as saying that the existing agreement to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars could be tightened to provide greater incentives to car makers.
In hearings in the European Parliament, at which MEP were able to question the nominated Commissioners before approving them for their new posts, Connie Hedegaard was adamant that targeting transport will be a central part of her job.
On the subject of the current EU target for the average new car to emit no more than 130 grams per kilometre of CO2 by 2015, Hedegaard said, 'It can be important to try and review whether we went far enough at the time, because this is a field where technology is really moving very fast.'
'Often we’ve seen industry will protest and say it’s going to be extremely difficult, in fact it’s almost impossible, but then it turns out that when we do these things, we can often do it quicker than assessed before, and claimed before, and they can do it even more ambitiously.' (Also see associated T&E news link)
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