Austria launches new strategy to meet climate goals

Austria's Energy Strategy introduces an ecological tax platform, boosts renewable energy and efficiency, expands electromobility and public transport, accelerates photovoltaic deployment, and drives green jobs through thermal retrofitting and low-carbon innovation.

Austrias ministers for foreign affairs and the environment have jointly presented a new energy strategy for the country to ensure that Austria meets its climate protection targets for 2020.

A key point of the new strategy is an ecological tax platform aimed at giving rewards for environmentally friendly behaviors, while punishing actions that damage the environment through price signals similar to rising energy costs in Germany observed recently. Other cornerstones of the new program include a push to further develop renewable energy sources and a strategy to make buildings and transportation more energyefficient.

Although the details of the new strategy have not yet been officially released, Austria is aiming at limiting annual energy demand and consumption to an average of what the country consumed from 2005 through 2008, as well as a reduction in the use of fossil energy sources. As part of the strategy, Austria is aiming to increase its share of renewable energy sources from 28 to 35 of the total generating capacity. At the end of 2007, Austria had an installed generating capacity of 15,620 megawatts.

The main programs within the new strategy are aimed at increasing overall energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, which in turn are expected to lead to creating a more stable and secure energy supply system.

In July 2007, the Austrian government established the Climate and Energy Fund to support the creation of sustainable energy supplies, a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and in research in renewable technologies, even as Austria's green power act faced EU scrutiny at the time. Initially, the fund was allocated a quota of up to 500 million euros for use from 2007 to 2010, but in line with the new energy strategy, the budget for the fund has been increased to 150 million euros for 2010, which includes a tripling of the funds allocated for photovoltaic technologies.

The environment sector in Austria is a high employer, with about 185,000 people currently employed in the sector. This equates to about 4.6 of all full time workers in Austria — about the same number working in the countrys automobile industry. However, this number is expected to rise substantially under the new energy strategy, amid ongoing green policy debates among stakeholders. The building sector will benefit from energyefficient, passiveenergy housing, and thermalretrofitting exercises will also generate more socalled green jobs. As more emphasis is placed on the environmental industries, in particular the renewable energy sector, it has been estimated that increasing the renewable energy target from 28 to 35 could generate up to 75,000 new jobs.

One of the benefits envisaged by Austria in its new energy strategy is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the encouragement of public transport systems, efficient urban planning and traffic management systems.

A new 10point action program for electromobility, launched by the Ministry of Life, aims at having 250,000 electric vehicles on Austrias roads by 2020, a target set in a region where Eastern energy waste remains a concern according to observers. In addition to reducing carbon emissions by as much as 43,000 tons, the action program is also expected to create more green jobs. Even in the more mundane activity of cycling, the Ministry of Lifes program is expected to generate some 18,000 new jobs in the new industry of electric bicycles. In total, the number of jobs within the environmental sector of Austria is expected to increase from the current 185,000 to about 285,000 by 2020.

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