CLIMATE RECON 2050 – Intra-EU Exchange to Raise Awareness and Build Capacity on Long-Term Climate Strategies

Long-term climate strategies for 2050 are a central thread of discussion in the European Union (EU). Under the Paris Agreement, all EU Member States had to develop their own national strategies, but with little central guidance and no overarching structure for cooperation.

Despite existing political commitments (e.g. Paris Agreement, Energy Union), by 2017 only a minority of EU Member States had formulated a robust long-term climate strategy – and those that existed varied in scope and level of detail. The project aimed to fill a gap in the landscape of existing political-technical processes and to support national planning processes.

Climate Recon 2050: 1st Meeting of the Technical Dialogue, Berlin, April 2018

Climate Recon brought together policy makers and technical experts from EU Member States with an overarching goal: to support national long-term climate planning and the implementation of national long-term climate strategies (LTCSs), while contributing to the harmonisation of long-term climate strategies through action across the EU. The project aimed to organise dialogue workshops for government experts, conduct targeted comparative analyses of selected national LTCSs in the project's target regions, create opportunities for collaboration between relevant stakeholders by organising regional seminars in the target regions and to raise awareness on these issues.

The project consisted of a series of parallel workshops that brought together policy makers and modelling experts from across Europe and enabled the two groups to exchange experiences and best practices within and between the groups at workshops in Berlin, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Rome, Paris and Brussels. 

As a core group of Member States, the project received support from the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Italy, Poland and Germany. In addition, the project organised a series of events, webinars and publications aimed at presenting findings from the two forums to a wider audience, but also allowing interested stakeholders not directly involved in the project to contribute to the ongoing project.

• Learning platform for 2050 strategies: The project established a Europe-wide learning platform for policy-makers to promote dialogue on national long-term climate neutrality strategies. Representatives of government institutions from 13 EU member states and two EU institutions (European Commission, European Environment Agency) met regularly via the dedicated Policy-Maker Platform (PMP). In four thematically focused sessions, they discussed best practices and policy frameworks for developing and implementing net zero strategies – including the role of decarbonisation scenarios and their significance for short-term policy decisions. Many national governments used the momentum of the Paris Agreement to revise their climate policy strategies or, for the first time, to define a clear path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. The dialogue supported by the project made an important contribution to capacity-building, raising awareness and aligning national approaches towards a common European understanding of long-term climate goals.
• Greater comparability and focus: The analysis of existing strategies revealed significant differences between the participating EU member states in terms of the level of detail, political mandate or legal form, for example. This diversity complicates comparability and reduces the strategic impact of individual plans in other member states. The project highlighted these deficits and promoted a common understanding of the core elements necessary for effective and coherent planning for the net zero transformation, such as standardised baseline data or comparable technological assumptions.

More about this project:

• www.ecologic.eu/de
• Find a brief document elaborating on the key findings here. 
• A Resource Library with project outputs can be found here.