Our house is on fire, the EU is highly dependent on foreign energy imports and its citizens are increasingly feeling the weight of energy bills: it’s time for action. While EU legislation to halt climate change is progressing, much more needs to be done, and fast. 

2023 saw record-breaking temperatures in Europe and across the world. Fires ravaged across Southern and Western Europe and droughts put a strain on agriculture across the whole continent, while the year before saw communities across Europe suffer from devastating floods.  

Not every extreme weather incident can be directly attributed to climate change, but with warmer climates come more frequent extreme weather patterns, leading to more heat waves, intense precipitation, and longer droughts.  And with every new year, new temperature records are broken.  

Extreme weather events have immense consequences on all aspects of our society: agriculture, health, transport, equality, security, and cultural identity.  The fight against climate change is intersectional: it links closely with biodiversity, water, and health crises, as well as social issues that climate change exacerbates.  

The consequences of climate change are seen all around the world, however many of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are those least responsible for it.   

The EEB believes that the EU has both a historical responsibility and the capacity to act. We must take the lead in helping to combat this global crisis and commit to a 2030 target of reducing EU emissions by 65% compared to 1990.    

The primary work of the EEB focuses on the decarbonisation of both our energy production and consumption: in close cooperation with Climate Action Network Europe and other partners we work to ensure that the EU fully complies with its obligations under the Paris climate agreement, in particular by outlining a Paris Agreement Compatible scenario that suggests a path to sourcing 100% of EU’s energy needs with renewable energy.     

Secondly, the EEB is strongly committed to promote renewable energy at the global and local scale, by promoting nature-positive renewable infrastructures that can tackle climate change without harming biodiversity and with the participation of local communities. 

We also work on promoting sufficiency, efficiency, and renewables (SER) as key solutions to achieve the decarbonisation of our economy by 2040, thus contrasting the growing focus on other less reliable solutions that are either not timely or not economically feasible or technically immature, such as Small Nuclear Reactors or direct CO2 air capture. 

The EEB also works on non-energy related climate issues such as the impact of refrigerants used in refrigeration, heating and cooling. We advocate for a phase-out of climate-unfriendly fluorinated refrigerants at the global level and for the adoption of more climate-friendly alternatives such as CO2 and hydrocarbons, chiefly by the swift implementation of the Fgas regulation. 

The EEB is a member of the Coalition for Energy Savings and the Cool Heating Coalition.

Library for Climate and Energy