De Palacio refuses to bow to pressure over renewables

Date: 27/04/2000

By Renée Cordes

THE European Commission is refusing to bow to demands for national legally-binding renewable energy targets, prompting renewed criticism that the plan will do little to help the EU reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio will call for 'indicative' national targets for energy generated by wind, solar and other kinds of renewable energy in a proposal due to be adopted by the full Commission next Wednesday (3 May), in time for Union energy ministers to discuss it at a meeting a few weeks later.

The long-awaited proposal has been revised several times amid internal Commission arguments over its content, mainly between officials in the energy and environment departments.

De Palacio's latest draft calls for the share of electricity generated by clean energy to be boosted significantly in several member states. It recommends, for example, increasing the percentage of electricity generated by renewables nearly fivefold in the UK and Belgium between 1997 and 2010, nearly tripling it in the Netherlands and Ireland, and more than doubling it in Germany and Greece over the same period.

Commission officials have warned, however, that they will call for legally-binding targets later if it emerges that member states are falling short of these goals.

Environmental groups argue that while the latest draft is an improvement on previous versions, legally-enforceable targets are still essential to ensure that the EU meets the climate change goals agreed at the Kyoto conference in 1997.

'We believe that the draft directive has improved considerably, but there must be some kind of mechanism in place which enforces increasing renewables at the expense of more conventional fuels,' insisted Stephan Singer of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

De Palacio's plan foresees increasing the overall share of electricity coming from renewables across the Union as a whole from 14.5% today to 23.5% in 2010. Commission officials say they are confident that this would be enough to ensure that the EU meets its long-term goal of doubling the share of renewables to 12% of total energy production within a decade.

Work on the latest guidelines began last year after Union energy ministers urged the Commission to draft legislation to boost the renewables industry. De Palacio's plan will seek to strike a balance between promoting the use of clean energy and ensuring that state subsidies to the burgeoning sector do not conflict with rules designed to promote a single European electricity market.

The European Commission is refusing to bow to demands for national legally-binding renewable energy targets, prompting renewed criticism that the plan will do little to help the EU reduce greenhouse gas emissions.