Memo

Memo to the commissioner responsible for climate policy

Publishing date: 04 September 2024
Authors: Simone Tagliapietra Georg Zachmann

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The European Union has set ambitious climate targets and, to reach them, has rolled-out a wave of legislation. But despite this momentum, the pace of decarbonisation has not been fast enough. Your overriding challenge for the next five years is to accelerate EU decarbonisation in sectors such as buildings and transport, while addressing the social impacts of climate policy. Whether green industrialisation can be fostered and an effective green social contract can be put in place will make or break the European Green Deal.

You must then lay the foundations for a ‘Fit for 90’ package, tackling emissions in agriculture and land use, among other difficult policy questions. A new governance framework for climate adaptation must be developed as climate impacts increase. Finally, it will be important to scale-up the EU’s green global reach, strengthening diplomacy, ramping-up climate finance and pushing new green industrialisation partnerships.

Key actions:

Firm-up 2040 emissions reduction plans
Establish a green social contract and focus on adaptation
Extend the EU’s green global reach

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About the authors

Simone Tagliapietra

Simone Tagliapietra is a Senior fellow at Bruegel.

He is also a Part-time professor at the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) of the European University Institute and an Adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Europe of The Johns Hopkins University.

His research focuses on the EU climate and energy policy, and on its industrial and social dimensions. With a record of numerous policy and scientific publications, also in leading journals such as Nature and Science, he is the author of Global Energy Fundamentals (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and co-author of The Macroeconomics of Decarbonisation (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

On the basis of his policy and scientific production, Dr. Tagliapietra regularly supports EU and national institutions in the development of their public policies in the field of climate and energy, also through regular interaction with public decision-makers in EU and national institutions, as well as through regular parliamentary testimonies in the European Parliament and various national parliamentary assemblies inside and outside Europe, such as the French Senate, the UK House of Lords and the US Senate. His columns and policy work are widely published and cited in leading international media.

Dr. Tagliapietra also is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Senior associate of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. He holds a PhD in International Political Economy from the Catholic University of Milan, where he previously graduated under the supervision of Professor Alberto Quadrio Curzio and where he also served as an Assistant professor (tenure-track) until 2024. Born in the Dolomites in 1988, he speaks Italian, English and French.
Georg Zachmann

Georg Zachmann is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, where he has worked since 2009 on energy and climate policy. His work focuses on regional and distributional impacts of decarbonisation, the analysis and design of carbon, gas and electricity markets, and EU energy and climate policies. Previously, he worked at the German Ministry of Finance, the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, the energy think tank LARSEN in Paris, and the policy consultancy Berlin Economics.