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As governments and renewable energy industries across Europe digest the details and implications of the package of climate change legislation proposed by the EU's executive arm last month, first reactions to its release have been overwhelmingly positive.
The European Commission appears to have pulled off that rare coup—a combination of legislative proposals that pleases both governments and the renewable lobby alike. The main dissenters are those who would have preferred a faster trajectory towards a single EU-wide market for renewable energy, while some states are dismayed at their tough targets.
The legislation's largely positive reception, however, is the best foundation possible for the hundreds of hours of horse trading ahead. Each of the EU's 27 member countries has been allocated a specific renewable target. As they work to transpose the Commission's instructions into national law, governments, parliaments, and EU legislators will be driving hard bargains under the watchful eye of energy producers and consumers to ensure a fair and strategically sensible distribution of weapons in the European war on climate change.
The EUR 60 billion package ($88 billion) contains two crucial pieces of draft legislation that will drive more use of wind energy: a renewable directive with national targets and a major overhaul of the EU emission trading system (ETS). The proposals translate the historic agreement reached a year ago by EU members to cut greenhouse gases across Europe by 20% and boost renewable s' share of energy consumption to 20%, both by 2020. The greenhouse gas reduction goal will be increased to 30% if a global climate change agreement is reached.
In a last minute compromise, the Commission dropped its plan for development of a single European market for renewable energy based on trade of green certificates. The aim had been to introduce "flexibility" in meeting the targets by allowing countries falling behind to buy green certificates from countries ahead of the game. But massive opposition from the renewable lobby and some governments to certificate trade, which they said would destabilize the established national markets for renewable s, caused the Commission to postpone the plan.
A slower transition towards cross-border trade, says Christian Kjaer of the European Wind Energy Association, is a signal to member states to put in place domestic market frameworks to stimulate the development of their own renewable resources first, including the use of price subsidy mechanisms, improved grid networks for uptake of locally generated electricity and streamlined planning procedures.
If American wind industry members are perplexed by the European industry's fierce opposition to a single EU market for renewable it is hardly surprising. For years, the American Wind Energy Association has campaigned for just that: a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard for the United States. But with individual state markets for wind power gradually developing across the US, America might find itself running into the same dichotomy faced by Europe: once a state or national market is up and running, it becomes extremely difficult to replace that with a federal market structure, however beneficial that might be for consumers in the long run.
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http://www.worldofrenewables.com/vbnews.php?do=viewarticle&artid=1451&title=europe-forges-ahead
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