The EU Green Deal and economic competitiveness

The future is green – at least when it comes to the European Union’s new growth model. By 2030, the world’s second largest economic bloc aims to reduce emissions by 55 percent compared to 1990 levels. By 2050, it is to go carbon neutral, in line with the Paris goal of well-below 2 degrees of global warming. The EU Green Deal amounts to a historic transition. Never before has a big trading bloc transformed its economic model so deeply and so quickly. The transition from feudalism to industrialized economies took a century and a half, as Europe went from biomass-energy to coal. The transition ahead will move the EU from high-carbon fueled production to low-carbon in less than three decades. This will shift Europe from a growth model built on resource overuse to one aimed at preserving the global ecosystem.