Back in 2019, the EU agreed to a legally binding climate-neutrality target that will require greenhouse gas emissions to fall almost completely by 2050. The rules and regulations needed to achieve that have been on the drawing board ever since.
When that ‘climate-neutrality’ target was first worked out, the main logic behind it was the EU’s obligations under the Paris Agreement, a 2015 international pact that commits almost every country in the world to do their fair bit to curb global warming.
Getting rid of fossil fuels then embracing clean energy and all the health and economic benefits promised by those policies has been the EU’s mantra, but there has been a lack of urgency in actually getting it done.
Then Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and changed the game.
Russian energy exports keep the lights on in millions of homes across Europe and the engines running under the bonnets of millions more vehicles, a fact not lost on top EU officials, who have...