EU ‘must show better leadership’ on renewable energy

By Karen Carstens

Date: 20/055/04

THE European Commission looks set to approve today (19 May) a communication that controversially fails to set a new EU-wide target for renewable energy consumption.

Green groups and the alternative energy community warn that this sends a weak political message at a time when the EU should show leadership in the sector ahead of a global renewable energy conference next month in Bonn.

Strong opposition to setting a new target that goes beyond an existing 2010 goal has mainly come from the economic and financial affairs, and competition directorates-general, which have claimed that the EU's emissions trading system will support renewables, according to sources from within the Commission. The enterprise directorate-general has also raised reservations.

The environment and development directorates, by contrast, are said to back a 2020 target of at least 20%. But green groups are pushing for 25%, a figure Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström had said she would back last year.

Meanwhile, at a recent climate change conference in Brussels, Catherine Day, the Commission's environment director-general, suggested that the EU should back a 20% target in Bonn. "We would call at that conference for the EU to be able to communicate a policy vision that goes beyond 2010," she said.

A directive in place since 2001 aims to increase to 12% the share of renewables in energy consumption by 2010. According to a Commission draft report, however, the EU is likely to reach only a 10% renewables share, as all but three member states - Germany, Denmark and Spain - are set to miss their renewable energy targets.

Giulio Volpi, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said there could still be some possible way to "save face" and suggested a forward-looking strategy as Day had implied.

Wallström could state that the EU is committed to coming up with a new target and will do so, for example, "within the next six months", Volpi said.

"That way, there is still some kind of firm promise being made."