The European Union possibilities to achieve targets of Europe 2020 and Paris agreement climate policy

The Europe 2020 strategy and recently ratified Paris agreement are the main documents in the European Union (EU) involving energy and climate policy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reveal the possibilities of EU countries to achieve the Europe 2020 strategy and Paris agreement targets. Referring to the regression analysis, the results showed that the growth of economy and primary energy consumption stimulate GHG emissions in EU-28; meanwhile, the increase of RES share decreased them. Moreover, the paper revealed that if the EU will achieve its targets committed in the Europe 2020 strategy, even assuming fast economic growth, the target to reduce GHG emission by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 will be achieved. According to different tendencies of economic growth, energy consumption and share of RES changes, the results showed that only recent (2005-2012) tendencies are the most suitable for the implementation of GHG emissions targets of Europe 2020 strategy but not of the Paris agreement. Therefore, the EU countries should attempt more to reduce energy consumption and to increase the share of RES seeking to implement the target of GHG emissions committed in Paris agreement. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.