Jos delbeke biography of donald

The second time President Donald Trump put the U.S. on the path to quit the Paris Agreement, defenders of the international climate order barely stirred in protest. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe will "stay the course” on climate action, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer declined to criticize Trump, and Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva left it to his deputies to react.

It was one of Trump’s very first acts in his second term, and one of the least surprising.

"The whole movie we’ve seen before is playing again, but just at a higher speed,” said David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California at San Diego who closely tracks global climate diplomacy.

The movie might be the same — but it’s playing in a different theater now and to a friendlier crowd. Inflation and threats to energy security have eroded the political strength of climate-forward leaders and emboldened Trumpian populists around the world.

Countries and companies that once set decadal goals and made bold statements about saving the world now face the prospect of missing those 2030 targets by big margins. U.S. and Canadian banks have rushed to exit corporate climate alliances, even as their European counterparts remain. Only 1 in 4 global environmental meetings organized by the United Nations last year resulted in a major deal. And the billions of dollars that the U.S. provided in climate finance to developing countries under President Joe Biden are set to go away, which kneecaps the ability of poor countries to deploy clean energy at a time of high interest rates.

The Paris deal is a voluntary commitment from all countries to keep warming "well below” 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. With the planet’s average temperature in 2024 breaching 1.5 C for the first time and most countries not on course to meet their climate commitments, there ar

“Jos Delbeke’s name is more closely associated with the reform of EU environmental policy than that of any other official in the EU. Through his pivotal role in the European Commission’s Task Force on the environmental dimension of the internal market in the late 1980s, he helped to lay the theoretical and political foundations for market-based instruments in the EU. He later designed the EU’s CO2 emissions trading scheme and expertly steered the landmark legislation through all political storms. This first multilateral GHG emissions trading scheme may in the end become the benchmark for similar schemes if not the international standard.”

– Christian Egenhofer, Belgium

“Jos Delbeke is the ‘safe pair of hands’ for tackling the most difficult and sensitive environmental issues for the Commission. His promotion reflects the need for his considerable skills to be applied across a wider range of policy issues. I first came across Jos in 1992, when he was draftsman for the first CO2/energy tax proposal. As a representative then of a major oil company, I found this a very engaging policy relationship!

As an economist, Jos was the ideal person to lead the DG ENV approach to Sustainable Development, and I was able to observe his efforts (and Frank Convery’s) in this through the work of the Consultative Forum. More recently I have been a close observer of Jos’ major success in ‘selling’ emissions trading as a flexible tool to tackle climate change, to help deliver environmental transparency and effectiveness, at the same time as minimising economic and, hopefully, competitiveness impact of showing EU leadship on climate change.”

– Michael Wriglesworth, Belgium

“It has been simply great to work with Jos. He is sometimes called a slave driver — although working as a slave in th

With European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen unveiling plans to nearly double the rate of the EU’s greenhouse gas emission cuts over the next decade, climate change is set to dominate Brussels’ policy agenda over the next few months. And few people have as much experience of climate policy as Jos Delbeke, an environmental economist turned top commission official who helped shape the EU’s first climate action targets, and was instrumental in establishing the ETS.

Currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence and KU Leuven in Belgium, Delbeke is clear that - with the Commission pushing for 55% and the European Parliament 60% - the hard work in raising the EU’s 2030 emissions reduction target has only just begun.

“It’s going to be a challenging target,” he says via video link from his home office in Leuven. As the former head of the commission’s climate action directorate-general, known as DG CLIMA, he knows better than most how grand ambitions on climate change are subject to intense political pressure as they pass through the Brussels policy sausage-maker.

While a broad alliance of MEPs, green groups and progressive businesses has thrown its weight behind accelerating emissions cuts, the commission finds itself with a daunting task if it is to persuade recalcitrant member states to back even its own proposal for a 55% cut by 2030.

For Delbeke, it is not just the usual suspects – Poland, in particular – that will prove tough to win over. There are, he says, “a number of member states that have been hiding a little bit in the background, because they have not yet established the policy measures that are necessary to deliver the [current target of] 40%”.

“I’m a Belgian myself, but I look at what is happening in Belgium: this country has to shape up its policies for the 40% [target] but even more so for 55%,” he says. (Belgium has yet to form a federal gove