Ecology

The EU must put an end to unabated fossil gas use by 2050 at the latest to comply with its climate neutrality objective. To stay within the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C, the use of unabated fossil gas would have to end significantly earlier – by 2035. This report outlines the implications of this challenge for the management of the energy transition in a way that rapidly phases out Russian gas imports, protects security of supply and energy-poor consumers as well as the climate.

Current discussions about growing food on fallow land are missing the point: the price-reduction effect would be very low. This publication argues that it would be better to provide financial aid to the most vulnerable countries in the Global South.

Ukraine was among the first EU neighbours to announce their readiness to contribute to the European Green Deal and a high-level EU-Ukraine dialogue on this topic has already commenced. However, what are the contours of Ukraine’s engagement with the EGD and how will it move forward?

The report covers a range of important aspects of Europe’s agri-food and rural policy, and includes some brand new content, while also bringing together the ARC2020's work during 2021.  It includes an overview, an analysis of the initial European Commission recommendations, analyses of aspects of CAP in Germany (Green Architecture), Bulgaria (High Nature Value) Poland, Italy, precision farming, and finally CAP and EU relations to third countries.

A continuing insistence on nuclear will be detrimental to our ability to power a Just Transition: while the jobs it creates are few and primarily for the highly skilled, its enormous costs will likely result in austerity policies.

The notion of geoengineering includes a wide array of technologies that seek to intervene in and alter earth systems on a large scale – a “technofix” to climate change. There are many reasons to be wary of these technologies. They do not address the underlying causes of climate change themselves, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, thereby delaying the implementation of a transition away from fossil fuels. Moreover, as they are very pricy, they redirect funding and investments away from real climate solutions.

The findings of this joint policy brief challenge the flawed underlying assumptions of the original EU Joint Research Centre (JRC)’s assessment, published in April 2021, which concluded that nuclear energy is detrimental neither to people nor to the environment. These concern chiefly four aspects: the role of nuclear energy for power generation in the EU27; nuclear waste management; the risk assessment of nuclear technologies; and nuclear proliferation.

The debate in France today on choosing the electricity mix is set against the backdrop of an ageing production infrastructure that is earmarked for replacement. So, what electricity mix is the answer? And does the country need to build new nuclear reactors in order to have decarbonised electricity?

Nuclear energy has been brought back into the European energy debate due to populist power. Currently, a complex debate is taking place within the EU about whether nuclear power should be part of the Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities. To determine whether nuclear energy can, or even should, play a role in future energy policy, it must fulfil basic criteria of sustainability.