Projev Andreje Babiše na klimatickém summitu v Madridu
Statement by H.E. Mr. Andrej Babiš, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, at the 25th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol and 2nd session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, Madrid, 2nd December 2019
Mr. President, Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen, firstly, let me express my utmost gratitude to the Government and People of Chile and Spain, and in particular to His Excellency Sebastian Piňera, the President of Chile, and the President of the Government of Spain, His Excellency Pedro Sánchez, for hosting such important climate conference.
Like all the EU member states, the Czech Republic fully supports the goals and implementation of the Paris Agreement and we are currently well on track to fulfil our commitments. In 2017 our greenhouse gas emissions were 35 per cent below the 1990 levels and are projected to decrease further over the next decades. At the same time, our economy has grown five times since 1990, showing that economic growth and emission reductions are possible through technological progress and innovations.The EU member states are ready to substantially change and modernize its economies to achieve climate neutrality. But due to the global nature of climate change, it is mainly a worldwide commitment to secure such a transition and EU should be followed by others, including all major emitters, if we should fulfil the goals we jointly agreed in Paris in 2015. There is only one planet for all and we all are responsible for its protection and the common endeavour must be shared wold-wide.
In recent years, the Czech Republic has adopted several ambitious climate policies with the aim to achieve our mid and long term goals. The Czech Republic has been fully committed to keep its 2020 EU climate and energy obligations and I am glad to announce that we will meet the 2020 goals or even we may go beyond. We adopted a binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030 and we are on the track to reduce them even more. We expect the reduction by 43 per cent by 2030. Our long term goal is to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
This should be, for example achieved by schemes aimed at energy efficiency, savings and use of renewables in the housing sector and in industry. In this respect, the Czech Republic can demonstrate its efforts by the successful programme focused on energy savings and renewable heating in family houses and apartment buildings. More than 100 thousand projects were supported thanks to this successful programme in the last ten years. Moreover, there is a number of other financing schemes in place, for instance, program for purchase of low emissions buses and cars for municipalities regions and businesses. Moreover in terms of forestry we plan to reduce our carbon footprint and enhance sustainability of forests by planting 10 million trees in urban and rural landscape.
The Czech Republic has also already reached its target for renewables by 2020 (13 %) with the current share of 14.5 per cent. We are well aware that the EU is heading towards an ambitious decarbonisation policy therefore and we have announced a target for renewables amounting to 22 % by 2030. We are also closely following the market development and if this technology carries on in market integration as by now, we are open to reassess this 22 % target for even more robust one. However, this is our priority that the renewable deployment is performed on cost effective grounds. In this spirit, we have set up a new legislation that should facilitate a sound renewable development in coming decade.
Our government has also recently established a so called Coal Commission, which works on setting an exact schedule to phase out the use of coal in our energy mix and its results should be delivered in the second half of 2020. Also, a discussion will evolve around how we can replace the coal capacity in our future energy mix in few decades to come.
Besides mitigation, adaptation is a crucial part of our climate policy aiming at strengthening our resilience and reducing damages and losses caused by climate change. We have adopted several key strategies and plans to tackle negative climate impacts. As a response to the severe droughts that hit my country in recent years, we introduced the Rainwater reuse programme to promote better utilization of rainfall and waste water in households and municipalities. On local level several of our cities committed to reduce their carbon footprint and increase urban resilience and safeguard citizens´ wellbeing.
In addition, the Czech Republic provides finance to various climate projects in developing countries through its bilateral and multilateral channels. In 2018, the total climate specific finance flows reached more than 7 mil. EUR.
On the other hand I must mention the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions which are significant. Green energy is becoming cheaper but it is still not fully competitive in terms of its costs. Currently sun and wind provide less than two percent of the world's primary energy but require 140 billion dollars in subsidies annually. From this reason we should invest more in research, development and deployment of technologies so that the price of renewable energy falls below the price of fossil fuels and naturally encourages the energy transition.
We also must be open-minded and committed in looking into other zero-carbon energy sources such as nuclear energy although we may face some contradictory views. It a simple matter of fact that my country has very limited options to decarbonize our energy mix and successfully facilitate the energy transition so we intend to rely on nuclear energy as a zero-carbon energy. The Czech Republic is a country whose economy's dependence on industry is high, and although we are investing a lot in new technologies, research and development, innovation, decreasing dependency on coal and strengthening low-emission energy sources, we must take into account also technological, economic and social factors.
Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen,
during the last years, we were witnessing devastating impacts of climate change all over the world. The number of extreme events in 2019 is alarming. From this reason I believe that it is possible based on cooperative approach to implement ambitious climate policies in all countries around the world to preserve our planet for us and future generations.
Thank you for your attention.