European Union Gases Itself

It’s time to stop making the wrong energy choices, argues the European Commission’s new framework strategy for a globally warmed E.U. Make way for the more resilient Energy Union?

“Today, the European Union has energy rules set at the European level, but in practice it has 28 national regulatory frameworks,” the communication explains. “This cannot continue.”

Instead, the European Commission proposes the continent seize the “historic opportunity” of “current low oil and gas prices” to “move away from an economy driven by fossil fuels” — to extinction, it may as well have added. The entire E.U.’s aging infrastructure, built too weakly on imported energy (the E.U. is the biggest importer in the world), must be transformed by “citizens [who] take ownership of the energy transition.”

It’s a utopia that sells itself. But the fine print is never as easy a sell.

Since the six member states of the E.U. depend on one gas supplier, the E.C.’s way forward first proposes “multiple” liquid gas hubs from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. As a backup, the E.C. will “explore the full potential of liquified natural gas,” secure its minimum stocks of oil and gas during a crisis, and ” use all its foreign policy instruments to establish strategic energy partnerships with increasingly important producing and transit countries” like Algeria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, the Middle East and Africa.” It’s an oily story so far.

There are further calls in E.C.’s framework strategy for continental synchronization on technical and market specifics, from interconnection to software and beyond. It isn’t until you get halfway through that you start hearing about how important distributed generation and smart meters are. It does not help that they appear near calls for E.U. member states “to establish a road map for the phasing-out of all regulated prices,” while somehow “propos[ing] a mechanism to protect vulnerable consumers” from predatory markets.

Nor is increasing the E.U.’s energy efficiency from a prior 27 percent to a revised 30 percent by 2030 much of a stretch, especially since that’s the year that the E.C.’s self-titled “ambitious E.U. Climate Policy” plans to achieve an underwhelming 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 1990. It’s something of a comedown.

It isn’t until the last third of the framework that the E.U.’s commitment “to becoming the world leader in renewable energy” is mentioned, event though the 20-page report (and its attendant 15-point plan) manages not to mention the word solar once. There are, however, specific new policies set aside for what the E.C. calls “sustainable biomass and biofuels,” as well as the aforementioned diversification and securitization of fossil fuels.

Eventually, the E.U.’s utopian Energy Union isn’t so sunny anymore. In the final analysis, its framework strategy’s oil and gas geopolitics can make one forget that the E.U. does more or less lead the world in renewable energy.

And that’s a scary thought.

This article appeared at Solar Energy