 So thank you very much everybody for joining us today for our event. Caroline was asking me, are we starting at 245 or are we starting at 3? And I had to explain that in Ireland we invite people for 245 to start at 3. And then we both remarked that it was a bit like climate targets. In Sweden, you know, if you have a climate target, you meet it, but in Ireland, if you have a climate target, you meet it, but you might meet it a little bit late. So anyway, thanks a million for coming to the event. And I just want to remind you to switch off your mobile phones. You don't have to switch them off, but please switch them to silent. Feel free to tweet, et cetera, about the event at IAEA. So I'd like to thank Phil, actually, for introducing us to today's speaker, who is Caroline Westblom. And welcome to Ireland, Caroline. You've been here for a few days, if I'm not mistaken. And she managed to squeeze us into her busy schedule. Caroline works as an EU Climate and Energy Policy Coordinator at Climate Action Network, Cannes, Europe. And Cannes is a very influential NGO in the EU, Emilia, for those of you who haven't heard of it. It represents its umbrella organization with approximately 150 member organizations from 35 countries, representing 40 million citizens. She's going to speak to us today on the topic of Ireland's Climate and Energy Policy within a European context. A critical perspective, a bit of a sting in detail there, maybe. And from chatting to Caroline before the event, we asked her, would she, given her closeness to the EU policy developments, would she offer a perspective on where EU energy and climate policy developments are going? And seen from an EU, and maybe perhaps a Swedish perspective, how you would see Ireland's climate policy performance within that EU context. And then finally, maybe looking forward at the integrated national energy and climate plans, you might also touch on those and what the implications might be for Ireland. So without further ado, Caroline, I'll pass over to you. And you can speak from your table or from the podium, whichever suits you. Sure. No, I'll stay here. Okay. Thanks a lot, Jo, for inviting me and to feel as well. It's been a real pleasure to be in Ireland the last couple of days. Like Jo said, we're based in Brussels, but we're a network organization. So our members are national, well, European and international NGOs as well, but obviously based all around Europe, not only in EU countries, but broader than that as well. But obviously, and so what we're doing in Brussels as a secretariat is trying to influence EU climate energy policy in a positive direction. Obviously, however, that is very much dependent on what's going on the national level, because I was saying to the colleagues the other day, what we often hear in Brussels is that, you know, in the member states, in the capitals, there is a tendency to want less Brussels, to want less restrictions coming from Brussels and Brussels to tell member states what to do. Of course, however, reality is that Brussels is the member states. I mean, it is the 28 member states, and what they come together to develop and compromise on is ultimately what is them going to be implemented on the national level. So very excited to come here today and talk about EU's climate policy and Ireland's role in that. I think it's a very good and critical time to come together to talk about this year, this year of 2018, because it is internationally, it is the year to take stock. To take stock of where we are in terms of global action to mitigate climate change. Once the countries, all of the world's countries got together in Paris, you know, with the unprecedented effort that we saw there to sign the Paris Agreement, they also recognized that the goals that we set ourselves there to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 was not going to be achieved with the pledges that were made ahead of Paris. That was formally recognized, and so what they agreed was to come back in 2018 to take stock of where we are, look at how big is the gap, and what will we now need to do to close it, so that we know later than 2020 can come back and make sure that we actually revise those commitments that we made pre-Paris. So given that, it's of course also a very good opportunity to zoom out also in the EU, both zoom out and zoom in, if you may, on how things are going. Now, just for context, I mean, what was agreed in Paris, I call it an unprecedented effort to mitigate climate change, and it really is, because what we agreed there to sort of advance the commitment that we had from before to limit warming to two degrees and actually pursue it to 1.5 will have a significant impact, or actually maybe I should say if we fail to limit it to 1.5, that will have significant impacts. Just as one example, and it's quite a terrifying one, that if we limit warming to 1.5 degrees, we might actually be able to save roughly 30% of the world coral reefs, or if you put it the other way around, we will still lose 70% of them, but if you go to two degrees, we might actually as well lose all of them. So that's how severe impacts there will be and the changes, the differences that we're talking about. In terms of the gap of the Paris pledges, we indeed, the countries agreed to take stock this year, but we actually already more or less know how big of a gap we're talking about. The United Nations Environment Programme in their emissions gap report last year said that the MDCs that were put forward before Paris cover roughly one-third of the emission reductions that we need to undertake to deliver even the two-degree targets, one-third, so basically two-thirds of the emission reductions we need to undertake, they're still not being tackled. Now, going to the EU, the EU is at the moment busy with turning its Paris pledge into legislation. That's good news because it is very few countries still in the world that are taking that step. I mean, all of them have committed, they've made pledges to the Paris Agreement, but haven't really sort of started to actually turn those into legislation. So the EU is advancing on this. That's very good. We are now coming to the end of a very long cycle of agreeing on new climate and energy policies for 2030. Actually, the energy files, renewable energy directive, energy efficiency directive and the new governance regulation they were adopted only last week. So it's really, really fresh. However, these pieces of legislation are indeed based on the pledge that the EU made to Paris, which is to reduce emissions with 40% till 2030, and this 40% emissions reduction target is indeed part of that pot that I was exactly just referring to, that pot of inadequate targets that are not enough to deliver Paris. So it's clear that there's more that needs to be done. There was a report from the ECCO Institute just the beginning of this year that said that if the EU would be able to deliver on the two-degree target, we would have to set ourselves a goal of 55% reduction instead of 40. Now, if we're looking at the 1.5-degree temperature goal, we would be have to looking at something like 60 to 65%. That's clearly a lot more than 40%. However, we do see some positive movements, and I'll start with that. So there recently agreed energy targets for renewable energy and energy efficiency that were just adopted last week that were improved compared to the commission's proposal. So we will now have a renewable energy target of 32.5%. No, yes, 32.5%. No, it's 32%. Sorry, for renewable energy, 32.5% for efficiency. And these two targets together will de facto, if we implement them, of course, take us to 45% emission reductions. So what this clearly shows is that the EU is able to go beyond the target they have set themselves. It also shows, however, that the EU keeps underestimating its potential to do more, and it keeps setting unambitious targets because of that. So that should be a clear signal going forward. However, as I said, even this 45% reduction clearly would not be enough, and we would have to be looking at much more. So therefore, going forward, it's still critically important that these emission reductions that we can achieve with these newly agreed energy targets that we agree that they only serve as a springboard for actually agreeing on these much more steeper emission reductions that we will have to see resubmitted to the Paris Agreement in 2020. Now, as I said, 2018 is a year of taking stock internationally. So we should also be doing this in Europe. So that's what we did from our side, from Can Europe's side, when a couple of weeks ago we released a report, a ranking, of EU member states' performance on climate action, because we thought we cannot simply take the sort of macro perspective and only looking at where we're going as the EU, because of course it is the member states of the EU that will have to deliver the EU target. The EU such will not deliver a target. It is the member states that will have to deliver the target. And we named the report of targets because unfortunately the message is as clear as it's underwhelming. No country is doing enough to deliver on the Paris Pledge. This is very clear. However, there is a group of countries that have started to recognise exactly this, that the target is too low, and we're also not doing enough progress to reach it either. So, and that group of countries, it started as a group of seven in April under the leadership of France, and with countries like Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany, Finland and Portugal, finally were the ones who joined it. And it has recently grown even further, but I'll come to that later. Now, I'm sorry to say Ireland is not part of that group of countries that has been calling for more ambition. And I don't know so much about the Irish context. I'm not an expert on Irish national policy. But having followed EU policy closely for a couple of years, here is a couple of things that I know. There are many ways in which you can design EU policy so that it looks nice and shiny on paper, so that it looks as if you will have no problems to reach your targets, but that in reality those targets actually don't have to be met through real action and through real emissions reductions on the ground, but through the use of certain offsets or accounting tricks, et cetera. And so this is, for example, in one very important piece of legislation that was adopted at the end of last year. It was called something very sexy as the effort sharing regulation. Luckily they renamed it into the climate action regulation, which basically deals with emission reductions in the sectors outside of the emissions trading scheme. For example, transport, agriculture, buildings, waste. And for those sectors we have a target of 30%. Now, because of a certain amount of loopholes that have been enshrined into that legislation, it's not at all sure that we will be delivering those 30%. Only 25% is actually going to be ensured to be delivered through real emission reductions. And so this is clearly unacceptable in the situation we're in with runaway climate change and global targets not adding up to what we need to do. So this was also one of the criteria that we looked at in our report. How are countries, what are country stands on these kind of issues and do they take active participation in actually preventing these kind of loopholes and making sure that we are taking real action and not using different kinds of accounting tricks to just meet targets on paper. And here I have to say that the role of Ireland has been not very constructive in this particular debate. On this particular piece of legislation where it is possible to, for example, use forest offsetting to offset emissions in the agriculture sector, Ireland was particularly keen on that. And so on paper Ireland has the target of 30% emission reductions till 2030. If you do add up all of these loopholes that can be used as little as 1% will actually have to be made until 2030 compared to 2005. So that's 1%, not 30%, 1%. And there are a couple of other examples as well during the negotiations on the emissions trading scheme which was taking place a bit earlier. Some of you, many of you might know that the carbon market we have in Europe has been crumbling for a long time, has been suffering from way too low carbon prices so it's not driving the emission reductions that we wish it would do in the industrial sectors. And so it was put up for reform and a couple of quite important ambitious proposals were put on the table to make sure we remove allowances from the carbon market and therefore we sort of forced the price to go up. And this was also something that Ireland was against which of course did not help the political debate. And in the recent negotiations on the clean energy package that I just mentioned have just been closed. The European Commission proposed renewable energy targets for the EU for 2030 to be 27%. Now that target, basically the moment it came out it was heavily criticized not only by the NGO community but by business, by industry, by international organizations such as IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Federation saying that basically this target is business as usual. Given the rate of deployment that we've had for renewable energy in Europe it would actually even stagnate the renewable energy development and we would lose jobs in the renewable energy sector if we stick to this target. And we would have to go to a target of at least 35% to 45%. So that was quite clear and nevertheless Ireland was not willing to accept that the target should be higher than 27%. It was only I think in the very last energy council in June that some willingness was shown to move further on this topic. So this list can be made long. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that. Obviously Ireland is not the only country doing this. Let's be clear. It is an issue that we face in EU policymaking that when we have an EU-wide target that will need to be met and individual member states will have to contribute to that target. It is clear that the dynamics aren't always good. Some will always want to make sure that their neighbour is doing more than themselves. And what we are hearing also from those countries and what I've been hearing from the Irish government in Brussels would indeed be that Ireland would be a special case. And I do understand and when we do know that reducing for example emissions in the agriculture are difficult. It is difficult. However, it is also difficult in the transport sector. And in Germany, my own country like Sweden who has very nicely set goals are facing enormous troubles reducing emissions in the transport sector. So does Luxembourg, which is also a country that promotes further climate action in the EU. So all countries have their difficulties. However, what we do know and what we see is that the further we delay action the more expensive it will get. Take the example of the agriculture sector. Some colleagues of us in Brussels did a little calculation on if we would make use of all the loopholes that we allow to offset emission reductions in the agriculture sector. The sector would have to take as much as up to nine times steeper reductions after 2030 going to 2050 if you are to reach our long term goals. That doesn't really sound like a cost effective pathway to me. So actually delaying this kind of action isn't beneficial. And at the same time the co-benefits of taking actions in the sectors compared to, in addition to the climate benefits are many as we know in terms of health reduced air pollution, et cetera. So the message that I take away from this is that we cannot, clearly we cannot afford this kind of race to the bottom approach that we have seen in Europe in the last couple of years. And that's why I am happy that we do see this recent movement in the member states with groups of countries coming together calling for more action even though they're facing difficulties implementing some of the targets at home because it's about reality checking, I would say, facing the science of the climate crisis that we really still need to do more. And earlier this week, I mentioned before that this group of seven was growing and it was indeed, so earlier this week it was on Monday. The so-called Green Growth Group of Ministers came together and they released a statement at the Environment Council on Monday where they came together and they made a very clear call on the European Commission to come forward with a new long-term climate strategy which they have been appointed to do by the health of states which is truly Paris-compliant. So very clearly saying they have to look at the 25-degree pathway and on the other hand they also have to take a real serious look at revising the 2030 target as well and looking to announce such a revision at the COP this year in Katowice in Poland. However, the Green Growth Group consists of 16 member states and only 14 signed. One was Austria who has the incoming presidency and probably therefore was reluctant to sign and the second one for unknown reasons to me was Ireland. However, the other piece of good news and that will be my final point is indeed that with the adoption of the clean energy package of last week we are entering into, according to me, a very exciting phase in EU climate and energy policymaking in the sense that one of the new requirements upon EU member states as compared to the current period of legislative files that we have until 2020. Countries will now have to develop so-called integrated national energy and climate plans and the word integrated is what is interesting here and what is new because until now the EU climate and energy policy monitoring, planning, reporting scheme is very complex. If anyone ever tells you Brussels is just one big bureaucratic exercise they're probably right because only in the climate and energy policy sphere countries have over 50 different planning and reporting and monitoring obligations that they have to fulfill which is obviously not, probably not very efficient so within this new regime they have to do these integrated energy and climate plans which will have to be 10 year plans and which will have to look at in an integrated way how to deal with the energy transition and tackling climate change in the country and so that is what's exciting to me and to us that in many countries where we face challenges in certain sectors it is also to a large extent due to the fact that we tend to do policy making in silos we tend to deal with environmental issues in the department for environment and we tend to deal with everything that is with grid development and grid infrastructure in the department for energy and they might not necessarily talk to each other and so that's why we see a lot of potential in this new scheme to tackle some of the real challenges that member states are facing and within this new scheme and this framework it's basically two things that countries will have to do they will have to on the one hand state the targets and objectives that they have for 2030 and beyond as you might know within the agreed renewable energy directive and energy efficiency directive there will be no more national binding targets for countries we will have EU binding targets which member states will have to meet somehow without having a national target so they will have to pledge towards this target basically it's a bit similar to the Paris agreement approach bottom up you pledge we see where we go the difference is of course here we have a binding EU target to live up to so they will have to do that on the one hand in the plan states how much they will contribute but then on the other hand and I think this is what's really important they also have to come forward with very detailed policy plans and for us this is critical and also in reference to what I said about potential loopholes earlier for us this is clearly also an issue of transparency and so that civil society and stakeholders will be able to take a close look at these plans and see that the policies that are put in place are actually robust and the targets will be met with real action and not the use of loopholes it's clear we're still not on track to deliver our international climate goals but while the challenges have never been so great I think neither has the opportunities so I'll stop there thank you