Publications Archive

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.

The European Commission makes suggestions on how to speed up the construction of cross-border power lines. This is intended to implement the "electricity interconnection target", according to which the capacity of cross-border electricity interconnections with other Member States should constitute at least 10% of the domestic electricity generating capacity of every Member State.

The European Commission clarifies its Strategic Framework for an Energy Union and the associated climate and energy policy measures which it is planning for the coming years. It supports inter alia in this regard an expansion of cross-border gas infrastructure in the EU and tighter CO₂ limits for motor vehicles.

Due to the one-sided dependence of many Central and Eastern European Member States of the EU on Russian gas imports, the options for joint gas purchasing from non-EU countries are currently discussed. This cepInput describes the economic impacts of mandatory as well as voluntary joint gas purchasing mechanisms in the EU and explains the legal preconditions for joint gas purchasing associations.

The European Council has agreed on the following key targets for the future climate and energy policy of the European Union for the period from 2021 to 2030: (1) to reduce the EU’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 40% relative to 1990 levels; (2) to increase the proportion of renewable energy to 27% of overall EU energy consumption; (3) to reduce projected energy consumption by 27%; (4) to increase the level in each Member State of electricity interconnections to other Member States to 15% of their installed production capacity.