Many initiatives have been launched both at national and European level to achieve the European objectives for climate and energy by 2030 and for the Paris Agreement. One of these is now a reference about environmental policies and governmental actions: CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) 17675 ‘Mapping of the mandatory and voluntary Carbon Management framework in the EU’.
Published last 17 March, it is based on a proposal by UNI, the Italian National Standardization Body, that involved European companies such as JRC, ADEME, CLEOPA, in addition to other National Standardization Bodies such as DIN and BSI.
The document collects the regulatory (voluntary) and legislative (mandatory) tools existing in Europe for carbon management, clarifying the relationships and increasing their synergy, in order to maximise the effectiveness of the mitigation actions of greenhouse gases (GHG), facilitating adaptation to climate change and making the path established by EU policies interacting with market dynamics.
From the Kyoto Protocol to the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the Green Deal, from the Environmental Footprint of products and organizations (PEF/OEF) to Sustainable Finance as mandatory policies, this document identifies possible synergies with EN ISO 14064, EN ISO 14065 and EN ISO 14067 on greenhouse gases, after providing a mapping of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by sector.
Objectives such as revising the emissions trading scheme, reducing national emissions for sectors outside the ETS, or changing the land and forestry use for long-term climate change mitigation, can be more easily achieved if the mandatory and voluntary regulatory framework is clear and well defined and if the organisations responsible for actions in support of these objectives know how to orient themselves in the articulated European legislative and regulatory framework.
CWA 17675 is also the basic document from which the newly established CEN/TC 467 ‘Climate change’ will be able to start its own activities aimed at addressing the issues of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Importantly, the Paris Agreement can mark a turnaround on climate change, as long as decarbonisation is accelerated, i.e. the abandonment of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energy and to models of efficiency and energy saving.
For more information, please contact Andrea NAM at CEN-CENELEC or Viviana BUSCEMI at UNI.
