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Bruggeman, Véronique; Delvaux, Bram --- "EU Energy Policy and Legislation under Pressure since the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol?" [2006] ELECD 436; in Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt (eds), "EU Climate Change Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: EU Climate Change Policy

Editor(s): Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426057

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: EU Energy Policy and Legislation under Pressure since the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol?

Author(s): Bruggeman, Véronique; Delvaux, Bram

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

12. EU energy policy and legislation
under pressure since the UNFCCC and
the Kyoto Protocol?
Véronique Bruggeman and Bram Delvaux1

1. iNtroDUCtioN
to meet our socio-economic development goals, people and countries must have
access to reliable and affordable energy and energy services. However, the
production, distribution and consumption of a substantial part of present energy
resources (namely fossil fuels) contribute to a significant increase in greenhouse
gases. as a result, a great deal of new legislation establishing a link between
environmental protection and energy production, distribution and use has been
created.
alongside the international efforts to limit emissions of greenhouse gases
and their possible adverse effects on the global climate system with the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in 1992 and the
Kyoto Protocol in 1997,2 the European Union (EU) provides this goal as well
by identifying climate change as one of its key priorities. the very beginnings
of the European Community climate change policy saw the light in 1989, the
year in which the European Commission (the Commission) submitted to the
Council a communication on climate change, which led to a non-binding Coun-
cil resolution to stabilize Co2 emissions by the year 2000 at their 1990 level.3
this initiative has been followed by various ambitious programmes and a bunch
of legislation on the reduction of greenhouse gases, of which a significant
number include energy-related measures. the latter will be addressed and dis-
cussed critically in this chapter. First, however, the ...