NICOSIA — Europe may have set the bar too high on its climate goals without focusing enough on economic competitiveness, the president of Cyprus said on Friday, adding to a growing debate on the pace of reforms.
Tough European Union rules seek to slash net greenhouse gas emissions in the bloc by 90 per cent by 2040, and reach zero net emissions by 2050.
While energy transition targets should be met, the EU has set some “very high goals,” President Nikos Christodoulides told an energy conference in Nicosia, having just returned from the COP29 global climate summit in Azerbaijan.
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“I do not consider it possible to achieve those goals within the timeframe we have set — it’s greatly challenging — without having made progress on major issues related to competitiveness,” he said, without elaborating.
Cyprus is racing to boost its renewable energy production to 33 per cent of overall output by 2030 from 19-20 per cent currently, but is also pressing ahead with plans to tap its offshore natural gas reserves, as a stop-gap to wean itself off the more heavily polluting oil now firing its power stations.
In an interview with Reuters this week, Cypriot Energy Minister George Papanastasiou said gas still had a ‘few decades’ of survival as a fuel.
Nearly 200 countries are gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a primary goal of agreeing a new target on how much money needs to be provided to help developing countries adapt to climate change. So far the talks have made little progress.
Christodoulides said he didn’t have high hopes of a global consensus on the way forward.
“To be perfectly honest, nothing I heard allows us to be particularly optimistic on the targets towards green transition,” he said.
(Reporting by Michele Kambas; Editing by Mark Potter)
