Meta-review of Belgium’s integrated National Energy and Climate draft Plan 2021-2030

Journal title ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Author/s Erik Laes, Aviel Verbruggen
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/1
Language English Pages 16 P. 57-72 File size 208 KB
DOI 10.3280/EFE2019-001004
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The EU energy & climate policy requests from all Member States to submit a National Energy & Climate Plan (NECP) over the year 2019, to reach the aggregate goals of energy efficiency, renewable energy supplies and greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030. The complicated Belgian context is briefly described. Then the many comments on Belgium’s draft NECP are summarized and annotated. Commentators are the European Commission, various statutory advisory councils on energy and climate policies, NGOs, consultants, etc. The draft plan requires significant improvement for meeting the formal standards imposed by the EU framework. More problematic however are the doubts about the actual capability of Belgium to realize the paper & ink commitments. Delving into the draft NECP and the abundant comments created a growing insight that the bureaucratic NECP approach of the European Commission is obsolete and dysfunctional. For addressing the energy & climate challenges, urgent & drastic, i.e. disruptive transformation is requested. Hence, disruptive thinking, novel frameworks and approaches should prevail.

Keywords: Energy & climate policy, federal state governance, emissions reduction, EU NECP framework & process, sustainable transition vision.

Jel codes: D71, D78, Q28, Q58

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Erik Laes, Aviel Verbruggen, Meta-review of Belgium’s integrated National Energy and Climate draft Plan 2021-2030 in "ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT" 1/2019, pp 57-72, DOI: 10.3280/EFE2019-001004