MEP hails opportunities brought by climate change

MEP Miriam Dalli has described the necessity of adapting to climate change as not just a challenge, but also a source of opportunities.

During a conference entitled ‘Our Climate, Our Future’ organized in Brussels, Dalli said that for this to happen, all European countries and the European Union as a whole needed to create the right environment to invest in cleaner and greener technology.

The conference was organized with the participation of major commercial players in the energy and the retailer sector, together with environmental organizations. A group of 20 Maltese representatives participated in the event ,which was held in the European Parliament.

“Here is an opportunity for the European Union as a whole to increase its efforts to build strong alliances and work together with other countries and continents and other key partners around the globe,” Dalli said.

The MEP said that the Paris deal on climate change is considered as the strongest indicator for investors to finance low-carbon technologies and to move from polluting sources like coal and oil to cleaner sources including natural gas and renewable technologies. This can be supported further through more research and innovative solutions into cleaner energy and cleaner transport so that these projects would be rolled out on a commercial scale.

Fabio Marchetti, Head of the EU Public Affairs of ENI stated that there needs to be a revamp in policy since as things stand today the power sector has to reduce emissions by 44%. This means that investments need to change to cleaner energy sources because otherwise the 2030 targets will not be reached. For this to happen a move to natural gas is essential as this would mean that emissions would be halved in many cases around the EU. Katarina Maaskant, Head of European Affairs for IKEA emphasized on the need to make sustainability available to everyone even people who are on a tight budget whilst Julia Poliscanova from Transport & Environment emphasized that a lot more can be done in the transport sector particularly since clean technology and clean diesel do exist.

Dalli described the bringing together of industry and environment representatives as 'essential if we want to achieve our goal of decarbonizing our planet.'

‘This is our common responsibility and all of us have to act together, individually and collectively, both at national, European and International level. The climate change agreement in Paris is only the beginning of a revolution in policy making, in investment decisions, in financial markets and in energy and transport technologies and today’s conference was clear evidence of this.” .