Question mark hangs over EU resource efficiency targets

Europe – There is ‘only a 50:50 chance’ that a high-level panel convened by the European Commission to advise on how to improve resource efficiency will recommend targets in its first major report this July, according to comments from industry sources reported by ENDS Europe.

While the 2011 resource efficiency roadmap dictates that the EU should agree indicators and targets by the end of this year, experts working with the European Resource Efficiency Platform (EREP) doubt this will happen. Instead, they argue, the panel will simply ask the Commission to propose targets itself.

A cause for concern is that recently-published draft conclusions for the EREP meeting of June 17 did not shed any light on the efficiency targets, including on what has been dubbed the ‘most contentious’ issue of how to decouple resource use from economic growth. ‘I was surprised that targets were not in the draft because we have been working a lot on it,’ one of the sources working with EREP is quoted as saying. ‘But it is not impossible that the platform will make a political gesture and say ”we need this to be credible”. I would not be totally pessimistic.’

Not very realistic

It is not up to the group to ‘spell out’ the required targets, another added, while a third expert said hoping for recommendations to be presented is ‘not very realistic’ and underlined that the Commission already had a mandate to propose targets from member states and Members of the European Parliament.

According to an EU spokesman, the Commission is momentarily ‘looking for EREP’s recommendations on targets in line with its mandate’. He concludes: ‘Targets provide clarity because coping with a resource-lean future means businesses need clear signals of the direction of future policy so that they have predictable conditions for their investment decisions.’

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