‘No remorse’: The EEA’s six steps to make Europe extra aggressive with out sacrificing sustainability

Geopolitical instability, technological disruption and local weather change are casting a shadow over Europe’s future.

Could investing in sustainability make the continent extra resilient?

A brand new report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) reveals how Europe might strengthen its long-term competitiveness by nurturing each the marketplace and nature.

Rather than selling short-term productiveness and financial progress primarily based on useful resource depletion and environmental degradation, the EEA urges a extra holistic strategy that treats nature restoration and social capital as integral to long-term stability.

The report, titled ‘Competitive by nature: Europe’s long-term competitiveness by means of the lens of sustainability’, launched on 13 October, identifies six ‘no-regret’ choices that would increase the marketplace whereas sustaining life on Earth.

6. Investing in local weather adaptation and resilience

Europe is warming faster than every other continent, with flooding, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires rising more and more excessive on account of local weather change.

Adapting to this new actuality and mitigating its results is now not simply an environmental necessity however an financial one too, the EEA argues.

This contains investing in nature-based options, like restoring wetlands and floodplains or including green space to cities, which can assist absorb floodwater and funky city areas.

5. Using sources extra effectively

Europe imports an enormous share of its uncooked supplies and vitality, and up to date provide shocks have proven how dangerous that’s.

Disruptions to transport by means of the Strait of Hormuz, triggered by the battle on Iran, have put immense stress on gas provides, prompting an accelerated shift to homegrown renewable energy.

But the expertise behind wind generators, photo voltaic panels and batteries depends on vital minerals, and the grids to hold all that clear energy nonetheless need to be constructed.

Circularity – repairing, reusing and recycling merchandise – “can cut back demand for main supplies and vitality, protect the worth embodied in merchandise and development projects, and restrict publicity to unstable commodity and vitality exchanges,” the EEA says.

Sometimes there are trade-offs, nevertheless: for instance, whereas conserving previous buildings and development projects in use is sweet for circularity, it will probably lock in belongings which are inefficient or weak to local weather impacts.

4. Leveraging next-gen tech

AI might be leveraged to assist Europe use its sources extra properly, the EEA says. Digital instruments can monitor supplies by means of provide chains, handle variable renewable vitality on the ability grid, and monitor environmental harm in actual time.

Building these capabilities at house additionally reduces Europe’s reliance on expertise developed elsewhere.

The EU is already utilising these instruments to strengthen accountability: its Digital Product Passport launched in July and can first be a requirement for batteries from February 2027. Consumers will be capable of entry data, for instance by means of a QR code, on the origin of a product’s supplies, its environmental efficiency, and the way it may be repaired or recycled.

But the energy- and water-hungry information centres wanted to gas AI are a rising concern in their very own proper.

The EEA additionally encourages the event of next-gen biotechnology – making supplies and fuels from crops and different organic sources, moderately than oil and gasoline. While this could reduce fossil gas use, it additionally comes with its personal footprint: rising biomass takes land and water and may put nature beneath pressure.

3. Investing in abilities and schooling

Spreading and creating these new applied sciences is vital to creating a low-carbon marketplace that sacrifices neither wages nor the surroundings. While a latest EEA evaluation discovered that clear vitality is creating jobs throughout the EU, it faces main bottlenecks in workforce availability and training.

That’s why the company’s newest report urges funding in abilities, schooling and lifelong studying that may create a resilient workforce able to adapting to a quickly altering planet.

Ensuring these abilities are unfold throughout totally different demographics would foster social cohesion and equity.

2. Building public belief

In a number of EU international locations, local weather coverage has turn out to be politically divisive, with fierce debate over prices, farming rules and crimson tape.

Ensuring the inexperienced transition leaves nobody behind would additionally assist to construct public belief in and help for it. Without this, even well-designed insurance policies danger being watered down, delayed or scrapped.

The EEA argues that clear, predictable regulation and efficient establishments are integral to this. Companies usually tend to put money into clear applied sciences if they will depend on clear, secure guidelines, and the general public is extra more likely to again the transition if it trusts these guidelines are utilized pretty.

1. Leading on sustainable standard-setting

The EU’s single market has the ability to form international guidelines on all the pieces from chemical compounds to carbon emissions. The EEA says it ought to maintain enjoying an lively position in setting environmental and social requirements, together with by means of cross-border establishments.

Cooperating with different international locations by means of democratic, cross-border boards just like the UN’s COP can assist create frequent guidelines, diversify commerce relationships and make provide chains extra resilient.

But the system is beneath pressure. Nearly 200 nations pledged to transition away from fossil fuels at COP28 in 2023, but a brand new settlement on fossil fuels is taken into account unlikely at COP31 in Türkiye subsequent month. Meanwhile, fossil fuel-reliant nations are pushing to delay the UN local weather science panel’s subsequent main report till after the worldwide local weather summit, with the IPCC assembly this week to attempt to resolve the impasse.

At house, the EU can be beneath stress to simplify its personal green rules within the title of competitiveness. The EEA maintains that sustainability can reinforce competitiveness.