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THE EUROPEAN ENERGY UNION: SPURNING INTEGRATION OR BUSINESS AS USUAL?
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digitalisation will impact on the whole value
chain. It is crucial for the European energy tran-
sition that the European energy industry re-
mains at the forefront of such innovations. This
will certainly not happen overnight and needs a
strategic and truly European approach towards
public policies supporting R&D and innovation.
The Clean Energy Package unfortunately leaves
this key challenge unaddressed. National re-
search and innovation agencies should jointly
elaborate their funding programmes; merge
available funds at European level, thereby
spreading best practices in terms of innovative
financing, and to develop early on common
technical standards to allow for the emergence
of strong European industrial players for the en-
ergy transition.
The Commission goal of increasing energy
efficiency is definitely a key pillar to success. As
tapping the tremendous potential not just in
buildings but also in production reduce the
amount of required installed capacity of renew-
able energy and the connected land-use. A pre-
requisite for efficiency gains is technology and
innovation. However, the sole emphasis of the
Commission on striving for global leadership in
renewables ignores the huge economic implica-
tions of energy efficient products, services and
knowhow that can also be exported. Hence, the
policy framework should encourage efficiency
innovation. Moreover, most technologies that
will dominate the energy world of the 2050s
have still to be invented or developed. This is
why the Commission should step up Europe’s
efforts in developing strategic energy, efficiency
and climate technologies with a focus on a few
key topics and sufficient funding for innovation
in energy efficiency technologies, energy stor-
age, smart grids and clean mobility.
Reforming the ETS
A reform the current ETS is paramount to attain
the right price signals within the decarbonisation
strategy. It is therefore necessary to reform the
governance of the EU ETS taking into account
the governance of the Energy Union, in order to
be able to adjust the volume of carbon allow-
ances made available depending on the results of
other policies, for instance regarding energy ef-
ficiency. This is also true for those sectors, which
are not included in the EU ETS (e.g. transporta-
tion and agriculture). Concerning those sectors
lacking a single carbon price at European level,
member states should explain how their emis-
sions are priced at national level. This should pro-
gressively foster further coordination and harmo-
nisation and, on the medium term, could allow
for the creation of a European-wide carbon tax
for these sectors until they are eventually inte-
grated into the ETS. When it comes to the issue
of energy cost competitiveness, the aim should
be to avoid any type of energy cost dumping
across member states. Rather, a level-playing
field in Europe needs to be created without exces-
sively burdening energy-intensive industries that
operate in global markets. Such a goal can only be
reached by in depth-analyses of the cost of energy
for energy-intensive consumers in all member
states (i.e. considering not only wholesale prices,
but also network costs and taxes including exemp-
tions on tariffs and taxes), and above all by defining
a convergence strategy across the Union, notably
thanks to EU-supported energy efficiency policies.
Integrating energy policy with broader
European policy goals
With its strong – almost exclusive – focus on the
electricity sector, the Clean Energy Package