European Commission public consultation on European climate law – achieving climate neutrality by 2050
Confederation of Finnish Industries EK appreciates a possibility to deliver views of Finnish businesses for preparation of the new EU climate law.
The climate change is a huge global challenge in every level of societies. Finnish businesses strongly support the Paris agreement and 1.5 degree policies and are fully committed to the implementation of
necessary measures to mitigate climate change. Enterprises are in the core of this long-lasting combat by innovating, investing and offering solutions globally.
We support the climate neutrality target of 2050 for the EU, which means balancing the GHG emissions and the sinks/removals by 2050. Having the EU’s very ambitious climate-neutrality target in the new
Climate law, it will give a solid signal and direction for the European societies as well as outside Europe. Because of a long timeframe, a needed flexibility will be achieved by determination of the 2050 target
as climate-neutrality instead of exact figures for GHG emission reductions and sinks/removals. The use of international off-sets (meaning GHG-reductions outside Europe realized by European actors) should be accepted to fulfil the target cost-efficiently and still keeping the level of ambitious.
The new climate law should contain guiding principles telling how to achieve ambitious climate target of 2050 and in the same time preserve growth and welfare of European societies. Europe is mitigating and
adapting to climate change in the same time, and measures of the rest of the world seems to lag behind. The competitiveness of businesses is a key to manage this huge challenge successfully. Predictable and
enabling legislation is utmost important to speed-up investment decisions. Significant R&D&I incentives are needed to create new technologies, products, and develop the present ones to emit less GHG emissions. There are plenty of promising technologies “on the drawing table”, and the full potential of sector-coupling is still partly unknown concerning both emission reductions and sinks/removals.