Introduction

Climate policy integration (CPI) represents one possible policy strategy that can be deployed to respond to the challenge of making policy to combat climate change. This chapter describes the European Union (EU) policymaking processes and some of the key moments in the historical development of climate and energy policy in the EU. EU energy policies are categorised into three main types: EU internal policies on the production and transmission of energy; EU internal policies on the consumption of energy; EU external policies on ensuring continued supplies of energy to the EU. EU climate policy has developed international agendas on climate negotiations since the 1980s. The Parliament was the first of the EU institutions to call explicitly for common policy measures to combat climate change. The early 1990s involved policy preparation leading to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The chapter also presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.