We have an active Climate Parliament Group in the European Parliament with members from all major party groups, and we are building a regional network of legislators to promote the transition to a low carbon economy.

Our main focus will be on reallocating funds within the €120 billion EU budget to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Download the Climate Parliament Strategy (pdf)

While climate and energy have in recent years become a major political priority for the European Union, less than 2% of the budget is devoted to the transition to a low carbon economy. 

We have a major opportunity in the next two years to shift much larger resources into the battle against climate change, as the European Commission, Parliament and Council will be working on the "Financial Perspectives" setting the overall priorities for the next seven-year budget cycle, which will run from 2014 to 2020. 

While the Commission drafts the budget, the power of decision regarding its final shape is equally divided between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which gives MEPs considerable influence.

The Roadmap 2050 report produced this year for the European Climate Foundation by the McKinsey group and others has shown that the EU could achieve its target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 while actually saving money on its energy bills. 

In all the scenarios the study examined, it found that the transition can be achieved most cheaply and easily with the construction of a Europe-wide grid to enable renewable energy sources to be shared across the region. 

By shifting to a de-carbonised power supply in which renewables play the main role, combined with electric cars and electric home heating, the reduction in energy costs might be as much as €350 billion per year by 2050 -- some €1500 per year per household! 

We only need to invest a small percentage of government budgets (perhaps as little as 1%), combined with incentive systems such as European feed in tariffs, in order to trigger the massive private investment that is needed in grid connections, energy efficiency, wind farms, solar power stations and small scale renewable technologies.