EU member states and MEPs agreed on Thursday to almost double the share of renewables in the European energy mix by 2030. The text, approved at dawn after fifteen hours of final talks, sets a binding target of 42.5% of renewables in European consumption by the end of the decade, i.e. a virtual doubling of the current level of around 22% (just over 19% in France).
This target is halfway between the 45% demanded by the European Commission and MEPs, and the 40% demanded by the States. It marks a very clear increase compared to the current EU target for 2030 (32%).
To achieve this, the approved text provides for the facilitation and acceleration of authorization procedures for renewable energy infrastructures, with the establishment of dedicated territories where regulations would be relaxed.
The deal also makes biomass (wood burned to generate electricity) a “100% green” source, underlined MEP Markus Pieper (EPP, right), rapporteur for the text. This “bioenergy”, defended in particular by the Scandinavian countries, is however strongly denounced by environmental NGOs, worried about the impact on forests as carbon sinks and biodiversity refuges.
Nuclear, “neither green nor fossil”
However, the use of primary forest biomass has been more strictly defined and supervised. “The use of biomass is better framed, even if Parliament wanted to go further,” notes MEP Pascal Canfin (Renew, Liberals), chairman of the Parliamentary Environment Committee.
Finally, the text ensures “recognition of the specific role of nuclear power, which is neither green nor fossil”, adds Pascal Canfin. This point has been the subject of sharp differences in recent weeks between the Twenty-Seven, reviving the divisions between defenders and detractors of the civilian atom.
While the text provides for ambitious “renewable” hydrogen targets to be achieved in transport and industry, France and its allies demanded equal treatment between renewable hydrogen and “low carbon” hydrogen produced with electricity from nuclear origin.
A red line for several countries (Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, etc.), which refused to encourage, in a text devoted to green energies, the production of hydrogen from nuclear power, at the risk according to them slow down investments in renewables.
Eventually, the Swedish EU presidency, which was leading the discussions on behalf of member states with MEPs, proposed a compromise aimed at relaxing the targets for countries with significant carbon-free electricity production.
According to the agreement reached, the renewable hydrogen target for 2030 can be reduced by 20% for Member States where the share of fossil hydrogen in the country’s hydrogen consumption is less than 23%.
“This means that France will not be obliged to build renewables to make hydrogen for industry and transport but will also be able to use nuclear power (to meet the European objective). It was an absolute condition for France to support the final agreement,” said Pascal Canfin.