Green Deal and Carbon Neutrality Assessment of Czechia

Abstract

The European Green Deal declares climate neutrality as a goal for the year 2050. It establishes an EU binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990. The market, through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, will determine how EU member states contribute to this target. The Effort Sharing Regulation defines binding national targets to reduce the remaining GHG emissions not covered by the EU ETS. In this paper, an energy optimization model is applied to analyze the capability of Czechia to meet the climate change targets by 2030 and 2050. We define a baseline scenario derived from the National Energy and Climate Plan and three policy scenarios to assess impacts of the extension of the EU ETS to buildings and transport (EU ETS 2) and the coal phase-out on the Czech energy system. One of the policy scenarios aims at approaching climate neutrality in 2050. In addition, another scenario does not assess the impacts of the EU ETS 2 and coal phase-out but searches for the optimal path to achieve climate neutrality in 2050. Given the high level of GHG emissions in 1990 and the significant reduction in GHG emissions in the 1990s, Czechia could achieve a 55% reduction by 2030. However, further decarbonization will be quite challenging.