The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) supports reforms and investments designed to strengthen European economies and advance the green and digital transitions. Assessing its contribution to the EU’s climate objectives requires consistent and comparable information on the outputs delivered across Member States.
This study supported the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs in analysing the contribution of the RRF to climate change mitigation. It expanded the coverage of the Commission’s climate impact calculations by incorporating additional data on the outputs of climate-related reforms and investments financed under the Facility. The assignment involved collecting, validating and harmonising information across all 27 Member States on outputs such as square metres of buildings renovated, renewable energy capacity installed and zero-emission vehicles procured.
The work combined automated screening and machine learning techniques with documentary analysis, data collection from EU and national sources, consultation with Member State authorities and the development of procedures to address information gaps. The collected data were converted into standardised output indicators compatible with the Commission’s methodology for estimating avoided greenhouse gas emissions. Particular attention was given to ensuring that the assumptions used to convert different types of national data were consistent and transparent.
CSIL led the assignment and reviewed and validated the initial classification of targets included in national Recovery and Resilience Plans. It coordinated the data collection and validation process, contributed to consultations with Member State authorities, constructed the EU-wide dataset and supported the development of the methodological framework for converting national outputs into comparable indicators.
The final deliverable included:
The work contributed to the European Commission Discussion Paper The Contribution of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the EU.