 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Owen Lewis, Chair of the IIEA Climate Working Group, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this webinar, which is co-organized with the Environmental Protection Agency. The event is part of the Environmental Resilience lecture series, which explores topics such as the secular economy, air quality, environmental governance, the bio-economy, sustainable waste management, water quality, and today, climate finance. I would like to thank the EPA for their generous sponsorship of this series. To achieve Europe's climate goals, every company, every financial firm, every bank insurer and investor will need to change. Countries need to manage the increasing impacts of climate change on their citizens' lives, and they need the funding to do it. The scale and speed of the changes necessary to move towards climate resilience will require public and private finance. We're delighted to have the opportunity today to hear the insights of a renowned expert in the important field of sustainable finance. It is a real pleasure to welcome Josh Delbeca to the IIEA, and I would like to thank him for sparing the time today. Josh is a professor at the European University Institute's School of Transnational Governance, where he serves as the university's European Investment Bank Chair on Climate Change Policy and International Carbon Markets. He is also professor at the Catholic University in Leuven in Belgium. From 2010 to 2018, Professor Delbeca was director general of the Commission's DG Climate Action. In this role, he was centrally involved in setting the EU's Climate and Energy targets for 2020 and 2030, and was a key player in developing EU legislation on the emissions trading system. Professor Delbeca was previously the Commission's chief negotiator at the UNFCCC conference of the parties, where he was responsible for the EU's implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and pivotal in the negotiation of the Paris Agreement. As an economist, he underlined the role of market-based instruments and of cost-benefit analysis in the field of the environment. The title of today's address is the European Green Deal and Sustainable Finance. Professor Delbeca would speak to us for about 20 minutes or so, and after his presentation, we will go to the Q&A session. You can join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Feel free to send your questions in throughout the session. You don't need to wait until the end, and a reminder that today's presentation and also the Q&A session are on the record. You should also feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle epa underscore iiea. First, now let me hand over to Laura Burke, director general of the Environmental Protection Agency, to make some opening remarks. Laura. Thank you very much, Joan, and we in the Environment Protection Agency are really delighted to be supporting this lecture series and also delighted that Joss has kindly agreed to talk to us this morning. Really, really interesting and really topical, particularly as in Ireland, this is climate finance week, so the timing couldn't be better. And of course, as Owen said, public and private finance are both necessary for climate action here in Ireland, as well, of course, as around Europe and globally, and we need creative solutions to ensure that public finance catalyzes private action. Climate action can also serve as a lever to attract more international finance flows into Ireland. The European Investment Bank has a mandate to increase the share of its finance and financing represent with regard to both climate and sustainability up to 50% by 2025. And this represents a significant increase. And again, of course, a key opportunity for Ireland. In addition, Irish sovereign bonds are also an instrument that can successfully leverage private finance for public investment. These and other measures like green budgeting are welcome, however more is needed. And we must phase out supports that are inconsistent with climate neutrality. So we need to do the good things and also phase out where we're supporting inconsistent actions with our climate ambitions. With regard to the emissions trading scheme, and I wanted just to mention this because I know this is something that Yoss was so heavily involved in. The Environmental Protection Agency is the competent authority in Ireland for the emissions trading scheme. There are over 100 installations in Ireland covered by this theme, everything from power generation, cement, large dairy plants, semiconductors and pharmaceutical plants. And in Ireland, there have been decreases from ETS emissions over the last number of years. This has been strongest in the power generation sector, mainly because of increased availability of renewables and the phasing out of coal and peat. And in fact, that's what makes it so concerning with the discussions we've been having over the last number of weeks around security of supply and potentially bringing coal back into the equation in Ireland, which would have significant impact or potentially significant impact for greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, with regard to the emissions trading scheme, the cement industry have decreased emissions year on year, just under 6% in 2020 and 2% in 2019. And while these decreases are modest, we would hope the rising price of carbon will incentivize further investment in low carbon technologies. And the area will grow for Ireland, for the EPA, for the EU. And really interesting the current proposals from the EU Commission to widen the scope of the EU ETS to include maritime buildings and transport. And of course, this may bring new opportunities, as well as challenges both nationally and also to European level. So that's really all I was going to say. So I'm really looking forward to Yass's presentation and I'm going to hand over to now. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Laura and Owen for the very kind introduction. And indeed, I'm going to speak also a little bit about the Europe's ETS carbon market in my introduction. But I have prepared a few slides and while we are waiting for them, let me underline how pleased they are to be with the IIAEA and to have this discussion with all of you and eager to go into the questions. Now on the next slide, what I would like to do this morning with you, next slide please, is to go of course a little bit in climate change, the IPCC report, but I'm going to pass over fairly quickly and to move to the Green Deal and the sustainable finance or at least a few elements of sustainable finance that I would like to highlight. Now to start on the next slide, we all know that climate change is a manifestation that we are experiencing over not only decades and centuries, but millennia because we talk about the fundamental cycle of things on which we are today, it is in the hollow scene. And if we only look and put ourselves on the scale of 20, 25,000 years ago with the mark zero is the Roman times, you see how much the red line brings us out of range of what is normally happening in the climate system. So that's why people are talking about the Anthropocene instead of and say that we may be moving out of the hollow scene which is newly uncovered territory. So the IPCC has been doing great work on that, we have been seeing it over the summer, the forest fires, the flooding, not only in Europe quite heavily and quite you know Europe was quite openly and clearly hit but also throughout the world and one region that is bothering me a lot is the Arctic because their climate change is twice as fast as what we experience in our zones and we see there are a lot happening in terms of permafrost and methane emissions in terms of new navigation routes and in you know also in terms of the new military presence because that zone becomes very important. But moving on to the next slide, where are these emissions coming from? Well it is very surprising actually and it was not as clearly foreseen that as of the 1990s with the industrialization of what we are calling the emerging economies we are have been entering into a new phase and a new phase that brings us up to a level where we have not yet peaked the global emissions. We would have hoped that corona, the corona pandemic would help us in peaking those emissions but you know where it doesn't look like we are going to have seen already a major peaking of those emissions and it is since the 1990s where the new part of the world is rapidly industrializing. So that's why when we look on the next slides for COP26 that the Paris Agreement commitments are not good enough and we have to take a next step and I think the EU was right in 2019 to make the first step towards climate neutrality by 2050 and a 55 reduction at least by 2030 which was followed by major important players in the world, not least China. It is President Xi Jinping at the United Nations gathering who declared himself and China to be ready for carbon neutrality by 2060 and of course you know the United States followed as well with the election of President Biden which brings us that the three big players on carbon and climate policy in the world have made strong commitments now followed by more than 60 countries covering more than half of the global emissions so COP26 as from that perspective doesn't look too bad. Now on the next slide you know what is the Europe's climate vision on all this? Well it's clear that today's climate change is caused by the industrialization of the west but tomorrow's climate change will be depending on how the industrialization of the emerging economies is going to go and that brings us on the entire discussion about what is left for those new countries you know joining the clock of heavy emitters and the brutal reality is that if we come down from the well below two degrees centigrade limit that two-thirds according to some even three-fourths of the margin has been consumed already which brings the urgency for these commitments in the light of COP26 with more prominence forward. Now Europe's climate vision is strongly endorsing a multilateral approach that's why Europe has been a very strong defender of the Paris Agreement because it includes policy action by all countries which was not the case under the Kyoto Protocol so also emerging economies are asked to join the club of emissions that are required from them and it intensifies you know the Europeans intensified bilateral action in particular towards the emerging economies called them the G20 group of countries. Now Europe is putting itself forward as a first mover because it has a heavy climate responsibility but it also sees economic opportunity and I think that is an element that is new and that is where the Green Deal has been announced and we could even say that Europe is now the laboratory, the laboratory for low carbon technologies and low carbon policies. Now on the next slide you know let's zoom in on the Green Deal I think it's fair to say that the Green Deal is an economic strategy and it encompasses climate and sustainability concerns for all economic sectors of course energy is the most heavily you know involved because fossil fuels are being consumed in masses in the energy sector but also transport industry, construction, agriculture and forestry you know all these sectors are asked to move in with their emissions reductions. Now a very important element of Europe's action is of course also innovation research and development but perhaps even more so the deployment and the scaling up of investments in low carbon equipment and expenditure and that is what I would like to zoom in for a moment later on but what is so important on the European Green Deal and that makes me happy as an economist that is that we are moving the political attention away from targets we have set out targets that's now a done deal but that we move our policy attention into policies what are we going to do to bring the emissions down and the regulations are key and they the frustrating part and I was myself involved in developing lots of regulations is that the rollout of these regulations and policies is gradual and it takes time in fact time that we do no longer have when we look at the figures put forward by the IPCC. Now on the next slide you know and from the impact assessment that the Commission has been making I think this slide summarize it's very well where we are going with the Green Deal that means that the GDP our levels of income and wealth should continue increasing but our emissions should go down to zero or almost zero by 2050 and that is what is colored here and sketched out in the slide. By 2030 we see that the blue zone area which is power generation is going to have gone out almost entirely out of greenhouse gas emissions while the other two zones the red zone and the green zone respectively transport and industry are going to see the bulk of their emission reductions after 2030 shortly after 2030 so now it's the moment to prepare for those important emission reductions after 2030 but the biggest source of emission reductions before 2030 is going to be in the power sector and the secret about the decoupling of economic growth from emissions is technology and that is why we have to put in a lot of effort to bring forward low carbon technologies. On the next slide I summarized a little bit what was put on the table by the Commission just before the summer holiday a dozen of policy proposals which could be classified in three sorts of policies the market based ones the ones relying on mandatory standards and benchmarks and the ones looking towards the governance in particular by member states. I will concentrate in my talk more on the market based ones the carbon market the ETS but also the disclosure of climate and sustainable information by private companies that is becoming mandatory. I will leave aside the mandatory standards and benchmarks they are important you know on car emissions we see a phase out of the internal combustion engine by 2035 we see that the technology is almost mature with the electric vehicle in particular. On the renewables we have a quite ambitious target but if we believe the market we are going to beat even the 40 percent that is mandatory there for 2030 there are biofuel blending obligations for aviation there are standards for fluorinated gases that are present in heat pumps so there is a lot of mandatory standards and benchmarks that are being developed as part of that policy package and the governance tools is in particular the national energy and climate plans because somewhat half of the emissions are coming from transport buildings and agriculture and these are managed by the member states and so having a proactive planning by the member states is very important. Let's move on the next slide to the green deal and the point I want to make is that seen as an as an economist the green deal is a tremendous investment challenge according to the impact assessment we talk about an annual additional investment of 350 billion euros between 2021 and 2030 so this is quite a down thing figure it's almost 2 percent of GDP additional investment almost the doubling of the investment that is currently happening in the economy and it is going to be in the private sector but also a lot by the public sector because there is also infrastructure that needs to be updated and energy is of course the most important sector the rollout of investments in solar and wind and in the renewable sector is now really taking shape but also the grid needs an upgrade the digital developments that we are going to see are making a cluster of investments in the energy sector that are really you know big and and the scale becomes even bigger by the day on transport the electrification of the car fleet is something many member states still have to move towards another level of activity but that is of course depending also on the investments in the energy sector construction the commission was talking about the renovation wave to improve radically energy efficiency but also to have other ways of heating homes in particular heat pumps and the electrification of construction and buildings and transport is a very important trend so which puts again the emphasis on a lot of investments in the field of energy in the field of industry I think between now and 2030 we are going to see more innovation type of activity bringing forward the innovations for which the rollout massively may be expected more after 2030 we are talking about hydrogen carbon capture and storage and the carbon capture and usage and storage the biochemicals drive so on industry we see currently in the steel in cement in chemicals we see massive technological changing changes that are going to bring down the emissions of greenhouse gases so the green deal is a tremendous investment challenge and the question is where are all these sources of finance going to come from and so on the next slide I'm developing some examples of sources of sustainable finance I think Laura was already indicating where on the bones and the green bones etc let me highlight three elements the first is the EU funds the EU budget and the the post pandemic pandemic resilience funds called next generation EU you know the 750 billion that is the new you know type of financing the EU that is being experimented with which brings us forward with a daunting amount of 1850 billion euros that are going to be subject to a strong green dimension 30% of these funds of the EU budget and 37% of the next generation EU budget is mandatory to be spent in direct relation to the green agenda to the green deal agenda while at the same time there is a no harm principle being used that is that we would not you know would do damage and other fronts by the green investments that we are going to see there are still plenty of multiple challenges we just had a debate on the common agriculture policy that is not yet bringing us entirely in line with the green deal objectives but that is going to be one of the key examples where we are going to see lots of more discussions in the future on the next slide I wanted to make the carbon markets as an issue for also sustainable finance because when we look at the EU ETS Europe's carbon market we have been looking primarily at the price impact to reduce emissions and as you can see the prices have gone up spectacularly over the last couple of years the prices today hovering around 60 euros per tonne of carbon so I should have updated my slide for you know what we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks but it is unlikely that prices are going to go below you know that the 50 euros of the 50 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide that we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks now on the next slide you know the price impact is so important we know that economists will know how Scott the Nobel Prize winning win for that theory that he has been doing on this issue but the revenues have been a little bit snowed under in the attention that we had for carbon markets and you know just the back of the envelope estimate is indicating that the revenues from auctioning have easily or are according to today's prices are easily reaching the staggering amount of 50 billion euros and this 50 billion euros go to the member states and it is quite timely that member states now that these carbon prices are so high in combination with the high gas prices that the social impact is being addressed because energy and electricity prices are you know quite high historically very high in most parts of Europe and using part of the revenues from auctioning to dampen the social impact is I think particularly important then and the commission is going to come forward this week it seems with the communication on the issue but what has been clear is that the social impact use or this use of revenues for the for addressing the social impact should be used in a targeted manner and not in a eternal manner but in a temporary manner so the revenues from the carbon market are really an important element of the political debate and innovation and modernization is is clearly an issue that should continue going on now dwelling a moment on the EU ETS and I think that Laura was indicating that we go for a larger scope to include road transport and heating fuels in an adjacent ETS system and this separate system would converge over time with the main ETS system the main ETS system is being extended also to the maritime sector but a very important new element is that for the first time the EU is proposing a correction at the border a carbon border adjustment mechanism that should also raise revenue that could be used for the elements that I just was indicating either social or innovation or internationally for support worldwide for those going under quite dramatic changes for example in the trade they are making with the EU I wanted to make on the next slide a question mark on the voluntary carbon markets because since Mark Carney has been chairing his task force on scaling up voluntary carbon markets the question is there to what extent this voluntary carbon markets will be able to drive finance to low carbon to encourage low carbon investments and this voluntary carbon markets come from the demand for offsets in particular to the multiple net zero announcements we are currently having from companies local authorities foundations you know a lot of demand coming from this net zero announcements because first companies should reduce their emissions as much as possible but the remaining part is going to be subject of a demand for offsets and then comes the question where is the supply of these offsets going to come from and that is where the private sector is very active so it seems but it is active without any public regulation and so the question that is still hovering around is will the voluntary carbon market be able to scale up itself through the creation of trust and confidence that is voluntary carbon market is requiring because if that creation of trust and confidence would not happen then it's difficult to see how important funds will be channeled through the voluntary carbon markets finally third the next slide I would like to put some attention on the greening of the private finance and there a number of new initiatives have been taken by the commission the taxonomy regulation for sustainable activities is intended to put some light on what is green I'm going to come into that in a minute but once the definition of what is green is made then this definition is going to be used in two important vehicles the corporate social reporting directive that would be applicable to all major companies industrial companies in with the mandatory obligation to create reliable and comparable sustainability information towards investors but also other stakeholders and that is part of the proposal by the commission it's being negotiated in council and parliament but it is hoping to put a fresh a fresh approach to the ESG reporting the environment social and governance reporting that is today being implemented but in a little bit of a creative manner let's put it that way and the third element that is already mandatory is the sustainable finance disclosure regulation that is applicable for all financial companies so let's zoom in on the next slide on the taxonomy the taxonomy is covering six environmental objectives climate mitigation climate change adaptation sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources the transition to a circular economy pollution prevention and control and biodiversity and the goal is on this six environmental objectives to increase sustainable investment in those six areas but to limit as much as possible the greenwashing that we are currently seeing lots of activities currently are called green but are they really green and that is what the taxonomy wants to do it is not creating a mandatory obligation for companies to go into green activities but it creates an obligation when companies are saying that they are going to go green that they have to follow the classification that is developed under the taxonomy and the European Commission is developing you know implementing legislation as we go forward and the heat is in the debate in particular on which natural gas and nuclear power generation is subject to the taxonomy is nuclear and natural gas use a green activity yes or no you may have followed the press there are heated debates on this so the taxonomy is there it covers six environmental objectives and the implementation is being rolled out step by step but so far gas and nuclear is not yet covered by the EU taxonomy and the jury is out whether that is going to be the case on the next slide I zoom in on the sustainable finance disclosure regulation which is a very important one and it is also the Irish Commissioner by the way Mrs. Guinness who is responsible for the implementation of the sustainable finance disclosure regulation that is already applicable and the goal is to create much more transparency on the ESG you know in particular and sustainable finance disclosure is applicable for financial companies and investors banks and it is to to have much more information about the adverse impacts on sustainability that their actions may have so it is improving transparency and all financial market participants are covered for the products they develop on the EU market so also foreign financial market participants who are active on the EU market are subject to this sustainable finance disclosure regulation and as of next year there is going to be a list of indicators that are applicable to indicate the principal adverse impact of the activities that are being undertaken so this SFDR is a very new kit on the blog and I was wondering whether my comments that I just make on the voluntary carbon market whether the voluntary carbon market also should not be brought under the SFDR because after all the voluntary carbon market can be seen as trading financial products and the players there can be interpreted as being financial market participants so a whole new machinery and in particular the indicators the PAI the principal adverse impact indicators are going to play an important role so let me underline that this is already applicable this legislation and of course we are not yet very far on the disclosure in an orderly manner for 2021 the first statements and project disclosures are falling already under the legislation but much more you know streamlined indicators are still being developed so a very important regulation to green the financial activities of financial market participants in the EU and I think through this the potential of having and creating another Brussels effect in which the EU is putting up an implicit standard on what is happening possibly also elsewhere in the world and also in the United States for example the financial regulator is very interested in these activities that are being rolled out in the EU and I hope that a helpful debate is going to develop in the immediate future on the next slide let me put up some conclusions the green deal is a comprehensive economic strategy but it requires a huge investment effort and I would hope that a lot of economists looking at public policy are going to include the green deal dimension much more proactively in the policies they are coming to come forward with market-based instruments remain central in the policy approach on climate change by the EU but they are combined with a lot of other regulatory measures and it is that combination that makes I think the EU very very successful in bringing forward emission the reductions there is an economic dimension and there is a mandatory regulatory dimension for one or the other specific area that needs to be that or that is difficult to catch through the development of market-based instruments and the greening of private finance I hope is key and is being dealt with through new legislation and the sustainable finance disclosure regulation I think is a real a real new instrument that has not yet been discussed widely enough in my view apart from those who are immediately involved in the in the consultancy and in the private finance world so thank you very much for your attention I produced a little book with my colleague Peter Viss that is freely downloadable through open access for all those who are interested it copes with the current legislation that we are having in place but as I was indicating through the green deal a lot of this legislation is now being reviewed and is part of a negotiation process in the institutions of the European Union thank you very much thank you very much indeed professor Delbeca I find the the scale of the numbers that you're talking about just eye watering I mean nearly nearly two trillion euro over the the period that we currently foresee and over a third of that it relation to to the the green the greening of of our budgets you refer to commissioner McGinnis made McGinnis was was writing at the weekend talking about setting EU standards for green investment and clearly I mean it's it's perhaps it's a detailed point but it's a potentially very damaging one they hold green washing and do you see a significant role for EU green bond standards in climate finance measures and I think you you you referred to the possibility of this being exported becoming international standards would you say something on that I know relatively detailed but rather crucial issue please right right well the orientation that is being taken is either to develop specific products such as green bonds and they are quite important the European investment bank I think Laura was indicating that at the beginning is going into that quite extensively but and has been an innovator on on this in this area but where I think the most powerful impact is going to come from this transparency this regulation the sustainable finance disclosure regulation because it is addressing the whole bulk of private finance because let's face it how staggering the numbers are on the public finance private finance is the big player those days and fighting the green washing I think most of us will agree that when we look into the the the annual reports by companies that there is a lot of green you know subjects being raised but you never know exactly what is being covered and this green washing I will not say by all of them but increasingly you know people are looking into that and at least half of what we see in the reporting by private companies is subject to greenwashing others would say it's even up to 80 percent I I saw a recent report by some green NGOs I wouldn't be that dark I think that many players in the sector are very honest and and want to do a good job but for that you need to go to regulatory context and that is what the sustainable finance disclosure regulation is offering and that is where I think Mrs. McGinnis is really sitting on an extremely important chair for greening the economy in in Europe and setting implicitly a world standard because a lot of other financial players from global players are also very active in the European Union and they will discover their standards as they have to implement them for all their activities inside the European Union. Thank you. His excellency Adrienne Palme the ambassador of the Netherlands to Ireland raises a point which is of a certain sensitivity here in Ireland he thanks you for a very interesting presentation and says that for many sectors the way ahead on reducing carbon emissions is more or less clear like in the power sector as you highlighted but for agriculture responsive for one third of greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland this is still unclear he asks what steps do you regard as essential for the agricultural sector to contribute substantially to our EU climate action goals and what financial instruments would be necessary? Well I think it is obvious that the common agricultural policy should be the vehicle to drive the greening of agriculture even to put it a little bit ironically because agriculture is a green activity but the common agriculture policy makes important steps but more in you know not in the core of the way subsidies are being managed but rather ancillary you know in the margin that a lot of activities sustainable activities are being financed but they are not in the core of the pricing of agricultural products like it should be and that has been a heated debate in the Indian institutions European parliament as you know you know had the very lively discussions on the issue and there are two elements to be addressed first is how to reduce the direct emissions from agriculture it's you know a lot of emissions come from the activities there but even more important is the potential in agriculture to absorb carbon from the atmosphere so the way agricultural practices are going you know could and should be reviewed to improve the absorption of carbon and to store it in the ground instead of traditional activities where a lot of emissions are being you know through the way plowing is being done are coming into into the air of course animals are very important to this and the way cattle is being fed there are you know new studies now coming forward where you can come forward with better feed for this for these animals and this feed can control the methane emissions that they are emitting it's hard work I think that is still in front of agriculture because it is not as I don't dare to use the word simple as the power sector where you can switch from coal to gas from gas to renewables that is where and how we are reducing the emissions in the in the power sector but on agriculture we are at the beginning of a long process production emissions carbon absorption but also the way in the habits that people feed take food to themselves you know there is a lot of criticism on the red meat that is possibly very bad for for the climate in comparison to white meat that chickens and and things like that and pigs are much less damaging compared to red meat so a lot of new developments lots of structural changes ahead I myself not particularly a specialist of the agricultural sector but addressing emissions absorbing through the feeding of animals and things like that other food patterns that the society may adopt and the absorption of carbon in in in the in the underground or in the ground I think are very important elements to look at thank you Dost I have a question from a journalist Porick Hoar with the Irish examiner and he asks the sheer scale of the challenge ahead is so daunting not only because of the cost but also the urgency of what must be done but naysayers also said the same about post-war reconstruction from 1945 to 1953 that it couldn't be done that period was a triumph of European cooperation is the current climate crisis analogous to 1945 to 53 um yes but I would say if we um do it in a clever manner and that is where I think I would have to say the European Commission with the economic analysis they made in preparing for the Green Deal is using a lot of possibilities to keep the costs down as much as possible because if you make the wrong regulatory decisions then the costs are going to be very high and cost effectiveness you know the hobby horse of the economist is very important because potentially you could drive up costs without improving much the overall result and so going in first where the low hanging fruit is and that is exactly what the carbon market is doing the carbon market is giving to many people in companies the option either to reduce emissions themselves or ask someone else to reduce them and through that cost effectively reducing emissions where I think we should be very much on our guard is to avoid stranded assets and stranded assets is making the wrong investments now you know in the light of where we have to go and I think that that is perhaps the most powerful element of the Green Deal and the carbon neutrality by 2050 everybody knows the direction of travel and if you go in and you have a disregard for that direction of travel your chances of investing in the wrong issue is going to become much more likely so my reply would be that we are perhaps better equipped to where we were in 45 of course it was brutal in 45 with the destruction that the continent was going through so let's not go for such a radical destruction but let's move in let's phase in in a cost effective manner the reduction of emissions and above all let's avoid stranded assets because that's very expensive and I think that this stranded asset this avoidance of stranded assets is going to be improved a lot through the transparency that the sustainable finance disclosure regulation is going to offer us so in that sense I'm more hopeful that we have not to go through such a disastrous you know new reality as we saw in 45 thank you Mary Burke has a question in relation to that regulation she asks would you comment further on the public sector infrastructure that would be necessary around the sustainable finance disclosure regulation she refers in particular to water scarcity measurement testing verification and sampling of air and water but the public sector infrastructure is her query I think indeed that the demand for data is going to be staggering and we are not yet fully equipped neither in the public nor in the private sector to already deliver all these data overnight so that's why I think the commission made the right decision to make the sustainable finance disclosure regulation mandatory but to be to phase in gradually the data need over time and not too much time but still allowing that still a lot needs to be done because not all data related to economic activities are in in great detail yet available I think that the work that the European environmental agency is doing and new elements and new technologies like monitoring from space offering lots of new data are going to be ways to develop much more proactively compared to what we did in the past and I see that these developments become available in particular as regards space or monitoring from space through satellites and things like that where in when it comes to forestry to agriculture you know these are very very important thank you there's a question on changing the topic changing the area a little from a an economics researcher at the institute Dora Lwawar his question is do you believe that the world needs a multilaterally negotiated global carbon price to be able to effectively ensure global emissions are reduced um yes I would be strongly in favor of a world carbon price or you know tax or market or whatever we do it but there is a but and that is why it is probably the reason that it is not included in the Paris agreement that is that the authority by parties to the Paris agreement to go for a carbon tax slash carbon market is their own internal responsibility what Paris has been doing the Paris agreement is setting objectives targets obligations but not in the detail that is required to create such a carbon tax worldwide that's why I would hope that the border adjustment the carbon border adjustment that mechanism that has been proposed by the commission is going to lead to a fresh international debate because those exporting to the EU are not going to be very enthusiast that's what we heard from China India you know Saudi Arabia Russia you know they they are very they use very strong words against this border tax and I hope that in the context of either the G7 the G20 the WTO we may go into a debate or the OECD where we have a little bit of the emergence of comparing policies having some more pressure to come forward with carbon pricing policies we already see that happening we even see in Russia you know where people are looking into the possibility of a carbon price because they see it as a rent that may be taken off by the EU to the disadvantage of Russia in this context and so out of this debate I would not exclude that the debate of a carbon club is going to be dusted off and a carbon club is a club of countries where you would agree that amongst the club members there would not be trade restriction because their policies are comparable but for all those who have not comparable policies they would be a tax at the border so the tax at the border would be a kind of a de facto sanction for not having or not implementing a carbon price and I think that that may be a very interesting route for for for discussions to go and I would hope that economists could contribute into that we know the Chinese go for a carbon market that is very similar to the European carbon market they are going to roll it out not only for power but also for aviation for steel for cement etc so the Chinese are really working on that what is my worry and my deep regret is that it is not on the table in the United States the idea of a carbon tax or carbon pricing came from the United States they were trying to put it in the Kyoto Protocol we did it in Europe the Chinese are doing it but oh irony the United States is not taking any steps to do that it's so controversial in the United States and so reflecting further on the carbon club idea I would welcome very much a carbon club I would welcome very much a multilateral approach to a carbon price or a carbon tax but what are we going to do if the United States does not play ball on this issue and that is a bit of a headache we all would have hoped with the arrival of Biden that they would have been more proactive on this issue but it is not in the major act that Biden is currently negotiating on the hill there are here and there some hoops but they are being weakened as the process continues so yes there is scope it's hard work and I hope that the Europeans are going to use their carbon border adjustment mechanism proposal to make a next step in that direction a related question should businesses in developing countries be exempt from the adjustment mechanism given that these well the countries have historically not responsible for the climate crisis I would personally be in favor of that because they were not as you are indicating at the source of the problem but it goes against some of the basic principles of the World Trade Organization that you cannot have any form of discrimination between the trading partners according to the countries they are coming from so I would hope and we need a debate in the WTO so as possibly to allow such an exemption for the carbon border adjustment mechanism that the Europeans are having put on the table for more discussion so we need a discussion not only on climate but also on trade policy and that's a very hard nut to crack as we all know in the WTO but it's unavoidable we will have to raise that debate and we will have to put it on the table well we're coming close to the end and there are quite a few questions so I'll have to be selective and I'll take if you're talking about tough nuts to crack there are two questions one from Osir Kuddiaba and another from Jean Boucher which are about the de-growth strategy about that consumption sufficiency one even going so far as to suggest that the green deal could be construed as a kind of greenwashing if given its continued focus on GDP and growth and so on do we need to focus on a de-growth strategy please I would be hesitant to go into that line because what we have been observing in the past is that economic growth facilitates change and if you have no economic growth you camp on old assets and what we are clearly in need for is new assets that are low in carbon low in carbon emissions and so without economic growth we will not be able to do that now having said that I'm not pleading for growth figures like we have seen in China or 10 per cent per year etc that is clearly doing harm to the planet but we need a little bit of economic growth to facilitate the transition we are going through so my argument would be in between the two not very high economic growth not zero economic growth but a little bit to facilitate the change we are going through otherwise the green deal objectives the emission reductions 55 per cent by 2030 is very important is drastic you will not achieve that through de-growth you will achieve that through the use of of new capital new equipment new tools insulated houses and for that you need a bit of economic growth to facilitate that. Professor Drostilbecker on behalf of the EPA and the IIA I want to thank you sincerely for giving us the benefit of the enormous experience of this whole area that you speak to us today on that on that platform and this isn't by any means the end of the topic it's one of course we will have to return to time and time again but thank you very much for your insights today we are very grateful to you you're very much welcome it was my pleasure.