CEE Climate Policy Frontier

CEE Climate Policy Frontier Report: Policy options from beyond CEE to bridge the gap between the CEE frontier and the Paris Agreement goals

Actions are needed to rapidly implement climate-friendly solutions for the non-ETS buildings and transport sectors. This is particularly true for Central and Eastern European (CEE) EU member states, where both bottom-up activities and EU-level support can play a significant role in reducing GHG emissions to raise ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The report prepared by Climate Strategies and WiseEuropa, with input from national experts from the region, addresses which aspects of best practice in building and transport policy may be transferable to CEE countries. Lessons are shared from western Europe, as well as opportunities for intra-regional cooperation, knowledge-sharing and leap-frogging through the adoption of new best-practice.

The publication explores national policies illustrated by relevant local case studies in western Europe. The policies covered relate to sustainable transport modes (road pricing programme in the UK), electromobility and low-emission vehicles (the action plan on electric vehicles in the Netherlands and the ElectriCity partnership in Sweden ), energy efficiency in buildings (the energy efficient construction and refurbishment (EECR) programme in Germany), and clean heating sources (Swedish subsidies and consumer protection programmes, focussed on heat pumps and Austrian direct grants and housing subsidies, focussed on solar systems).

The assessment of policy transferability to CEE countries highlights that there are significant opportunities to increase climate action and collaboration in the buildings and transport sectors. Inventive approaches, such as using public complaints boards to increase trust in new technology in the buildings sector, and developing project teams akin to ‘innovation labs’ for large multi-stakeholder projects, present promising options to increase stakeholder collaboration and the public acceptability of policy adoption. Furthermore, overarching approaches, like investing in emerging technologies in the transport sector (e.g. for electromobility), provide the foundation for increased collaboration with the region. Collaboration would further be supported by regular knowledge sharing, enabling countries to work on common challenges, such as funding fragmentation for buildings finance and charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Moreover, the introduction of innovative policies enabled by ICT could facilitate favourable conditions for leapfrogging in the CEE region. Finally, the report demonstrates that in the context of the European Green Deal, CEE countries should play a role in actively co-shaping the implementation of the New Industrial Strategy for Europe.

Methodology of transferability analysis

The analysis was conducted using quantitative and qualitative questionnaire responses from experts in the transport and building sectors. During the project’s regional workshops in Warsaw and Bucharest, expert informants ranked a set of metrics for the transferability of policy from 0 – 3 (low to high potential transferability), as well as offering comments to expand on their responses. The factors ranked including: The availability of public and private financing, know-how potential, public acceptability, cooperation between stakeholders, political willingness and policy frameworks. This enabled us to estimate the transferability of a set of policy measures in the CEE Region based on expert opinion.

 

 

The European Climate Initiative (EUKI) This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI). EUKI is a project financing instrument by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The EUKI competition for project ideas is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information on the EUKI: www.euki.de

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