20-20-20 – in December 2008, the European Union agreed on this formula in the framework of a package of directives and targets for climate protection and energy to be met by 2020:

Discussions concerning initiatives like this one are always highly controversial. In most cases they are about costs, the methods to calculate them, and the fear of slowing down the economic growth.

Traditional models showing the connection between climate protection measures and economic growth look mainly at the additional use of renewable sources of energy as well as the lowering of energy consumption and the costs connected to it. The study “A New Growth Path for Europe” was conducted by an international group of scientists from Oxford University, the National Technical University of Athens, Université Paris 1 Pantheón-Sorbonne, and the European Climate Forum, with the Potsdam-Institute of climate research (PIK) responsible. It breaks with this logic and considers further, positive economic aspects. Among them are the consequences of investments for learning processes (“Learning-by-doing”) and for technological progress as well as the great significance of investors’ expectations. They expect an acceptable return and thus create further economic pressure as well as the pressure to innovate.

Should Europe raise its emission targets to 30 %, the share of investments in the gross national product would rise to 22 %, the economic performance would grow by 620 billion Euros, and six million new jobs would be created.