Publications Archive

In its Communication, the Commission sets out how heating and cooling can be made more efficient in the EU. In cep's view, the proposed rules on energy efficiency and the use of renewables are unsuitable for reducing CO₂ emissions in a targeted and cost-effective way. Instead, all forms of heating and cooling should be included in the EU Emissions Trading System.

The EU Commission wants to facilitate the cross-border use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and gas storage facilities in order to complete the internal gas market and increase security of supply. For this purpose, cross-border gas infrastructure will be built and cooperation with third countries improved in order to remove barriers to global trade in LNG. In cep's view, this will increase security of supply for Member States that do not have their own LNG terminals and gas storage facilities.

In future, the European Commission wants to ensure the compatibility of intergovernmental agreements with EU law by way of "ex-ante checks" on energy agreements between EU members and third countries. In cep's view, however, this would constitute drastic intervention in the sovereignty of the Member States.

Disruption to the gas supply in the EU should be prevented by better regional coordination. To achieve this, Member States would, under plans put forward by the EU Commission, have to draw up binding risk assessments and develop preventive action and emergency plans, no longer nationally, but jointly with other countries in their region.

The current support for electricity generation by way of photovoltaics is failing to meet the European Union's climate and energy policy targets: It is not resulting in a reduction in carbon dioxide or in lower electricity prices. Neither has security of supply increased. In addition, it has not succeeded in developing an internationally competitive industry for the manufacture of photovoltaic modules in the EU.

The strategic plan to support energy technology (SET Plan) is to be refocussed on the priorities of the Energy Union. The EU Commission criticises the existing SET Plan for the fact that its technology-specific research support is failing to take sufficient account of the synergies between the various energy technologies. It therefore wants to replace this "technology-specific approach" with an "energy system approach".

The EU Commission wants to improve consumer information by rescaling energy efficiency labelling. The EU label, with its uniform scale of energy efficiency classes, provides a clear indication of how each product affects energy consumption by comparison with similar products.

The EU Commission wants energy consumers to have a stronger position on the retail market. Thus, in future, consumers will be better able to compare energy supply contracts using independent sources of information – such as internet portals. In addition, private households will be more able to adjust their electricity consumption to take account of changes in price at different times of day. cep has assessed the individual measures.

In the context of increasing electricity generation based on renewable energy, the Commission puts forward its ideas for redesigning the European electricity markets. Thus support for renewable energy should follow a more market-based concept. The simple provision of reserve capacity will only be remunerated by way of capacity mechanisms in the exceptional case that electricity supply cannot be secured by the electricity market itself.

Many of the power plants currently still in the market will be shut down in the medium term due to their age. As, in addition, the incentive to invest in new secure power-plant capacity is low, due to low wholesale electricity prices, more and more Member States are starting to develop "capacity mechanisms" which provide extra remuneration for the provision of secure capacity.