EU targets energy waste and coal subsidies in new climate package
The package also included plans to cut electricity bills, boost renewable energies and limit use of unsustainable bioenergies. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
From the Guardian
Europe will
begin phasing out coal subsidies and cut its energy use by 30% before the end
of the next decade, under a major clean energy package announced in Brussels on
Wednesday.
The 1,000 page blueprint to help the EU meet its Paris
climate commitments also
proposes measures to cut household electricity bills, integrate renewables into
power markets, and limit use of unsustainable bioenergy.
The
EU’s climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete said that the new energy
efficiency target was a centrepiece of the package, and would curb energy
imports, create jobs and bring down emissions.
“Europe
is on the brink of a clean energy revolution,” he told a press conference in
Brussels. “And, just as we did in Paris, we can only get this right if we work
together.”
The
bloc’s vice president for energy union, Maroš Šefčovič added: “This is really
something of a transformational nature that we are proposing – perhaps the
biggest since the central power systems were built in Europe.”
It is unclear whether the UK will pass the new clean energy
measures into national law before an anticipated Brexit in 2019.
The commission says that the new package’s benefits include a
€177bn (£151bn) mobilisation of public and private investment per year in the
next decade, that could create 900,000 new green tech jobs and spur a 1%
increase in GDP.
Adrian
Joyce, the secretary general of EuroACE, an alliance of energy efficiency
companies said the new EU-wide energy saving target was “reassuring” but that
his members had expected nothing less.
“We
will now turn to the European parliament and member states to call for an
increase in the target, as 30% is no better than business as usual,” he said.
To
keep the bloc on track towards its goal of providing 50% of electricity from
renewables in 2030, the package will also bar coal-fired plants from access to
“capacity mechanisms” that guarantee back-up power reserves.
A
benchmark of 550 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour will be introduced for new
plants, in line with the European Investment Bank’s emissions
performance standard. Existing plants will have to comply with the
new limit by 2026.
In the
interim though, 280
existing coal plants and 13 planned new ones could still benefit from the
current system, according to Greenpeace.
The
campaign group’s spokeswoman Tara Connolly, said: “Not only is the commission
slamming on the brakes on renewables, it wants to let governments dole out cash
to almost all coal power stations in Europe for at least another decade.”
In
total, eight pieces of legislation were proposed today, covering a dizzying
array of issues from electricity market design to energy poverty, and from
biofuels to security of supply.
As
the Guardian has reported, new measures were pitched to put an
electric car charging point in every new home, to redesign some energy-guzzling
productsand to remove new wind and solar power plants from the
EU’s priority dispatch system.
Despite
this, the WindEurope trade association welcomed the package as “more good than
bad” on balance. But it still called on MEPs and EU states to pile on the
pressure for an increased renewable energy target before the proposals become
law.
The
fossil fuels industry gave a guarded welcome to the EU’s deregulatory approach,
particularly the removal of the priority dispatch system. But Roland Festor, a
director of the International Association of Oil and Gas producers said:
“Proposals for new targets in different areas appear counter to the
market-based approach. Too many targets risk [policy] overlap, with the
consequence of weakening rather than strengthening EU climate and energy
policy.”
Much
of the commission’s package navigated between the contrasting demands of fossil
fuel-dependent countries and industries and those such as Germany and Denmark,
which already have advanced plans to decarbonise.
Nowhere
was the commission’s balancing act more finely weighted than on the vexed
question of bioenergy,
which Cañete admitted was “a clear problem”.
The
bloc has pledged to phase out subsidies for food-based energy crops, but a
revised renewable energy directive released today only whittles down a cap on
such biofuels from 7% in 2020 to 3.8% in 2030
Sini
Eräjää, a spokeswoman for BirdLife Europe, said: “Ignoring science and brushing
aside evidence of the
destructive impacts of current bioenergy use will not make these problems go
away. It will more likely make them worse.”
Many
environmental groups gave similarly one-handed applause to the new package,
which treads water on key issues such as renewable energy targets and the pace
of decarbonisation.
Jonathan
Gaventa of E3G called the legislation “politically cautious” while ClientEarth
lawyer Maria Kleis-Walravens dubbed it “disappointing in the extreme”.
“Civil
society has one hand tied behind its back, making it easier for industry to
continue its capture of the legislative process,” Kleis-Walravens said. “There
is a very high risk that Europe won’t get the energy transition it needs to
provide clean, affordable power for all.”
The
new package will also set up an energy poverty observatory, and offer consumers
new safeguards before they can be disconnected from the grid.
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