EU Climate Mitigation Policy

The EU has made significant progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in recent decades. The 2020 targets were met early: EU GHG emissions fell by 23 percent relative to the 1990 level already by 2017, although many countries have a large gap between consumption-and production-based emissions (Figure Lower emissions intensity was the key driver (emissions per GDP declined by 84 percent over this period). This was mainly due to a shift toward a cleaner energy mix as the share of renewables in energy production increased to 30 percent over the last three decades.