Domino effect of energy security: binding targets, higher ambition, a good deal in Paris.

13 June 2014

While ECO has been busy this week in Bonn, our spies in Luxembourg have been keeping an eye on EU environment and energy ministers. Yesterday, a joint EU Council meeting tackled two burning, and linked, issues: EU energy security and its post-2020 climate and energy framework. ECO’s intelligence network says this will be agreed in October. 

You don’t have to be in the CIA to know that Europe as a whole is getting worried about its energy security. Countries like Germany have a secret weapon: binding targets for renewable energy and energy savings. Achieving these targets in Germany would mean at least 35% of its electricity will be supplied by largely home grown renewable sources. Similar policies in other EU countries will result in a 40% reduction in EU GHGs below 1900 levels by 2030. This recent development makes ECO feel slightly optimistic that EU politicians won’t need a decoder ring to discover that fossil fuels don’t equal energy security.

ECO hopes that all delegates took note of the EU’s intervention at the ADP ministerial meeting last week. The EU’s 40% reduction target by 2030 is just the first initial domestic offer, not the final number on the table with member states like UK, Germany and Sweden already calling for the EU to go further.

But what about you France, our 2015 host? ECO hears you are in the process of adopting a national energy transition law, but you’re strangely silent about that EU package. Would that be because you're planning to do better AND push the EU for a stronger target? Normalement, oui quand meme?