The Commission proposal for a Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union contains some positive elements. But in the absence of binding national targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy, the Commission proposal does not provide incentives for Members States to make appropriately ambitious pledges regarding their national contributions on renewable energy and energy efficiency. It also does not convincingly define what happens if the national contributions do not add up to the EU targets.
In summary, CAN Europe calls on the European Parliament and Council to improve the proposed legislation by taking into account the following key political demands:
- Strengthen the provisions on setting and assessing the national contributions for renewable energy and energy efficiency to ensure that the EU targets will be met
- Maintain the requirement for Member States to include in their NECPs linear trajectories between 2021-2030 for the renewable energy and energy efficiency national contributions
- Require that these linear trajectories are to be used by the Commission to check whether Member States and the EU as a whole are on track, both for the renewable energy and the energy efficiency targets
- Maintain the provision that Member States shall only modify their targets, objectives and contributions upwards, to reflect an increased ambition
- Integrate the long-term strategies within the NECPs, rather than having those strategies as an ‘add-on’ document
- Use the 2050 milestone – i.e. the timeline foreseen for countries’ mid-century strategies as agreed in Paris in 2015 – as horizon for the long-term strategies developed as part of the governance regulation
- Improve the binding template for the national energy and climate plans (NECPs) by including policies and measures related to a smart retirement process of polluting power production sources, policies and measures to phase-out fuel fossil-fuel subsidies, and a clearer references to 2050 climate targets
- Add a binding reporting template and key ex-post reporting indicators in the Annexes of the Regulation proposal
- Include provisions to adjust the EU’s 2030 policy framework as a result of the UNFCCC’s facilitative dialogue in 2018 and following the submission of the EU’s revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, to ensure that targets and measures reflect the progression contained in the revised NDC
CAN Europe position on the regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union
