National benchmarks for a more ambitious EU 2030 renewables target
Summary
The Clean Energy Package presented by the European Commission in November 2016 proposes a binding EU energy efficiency target of at least 30% and a binding EU renewables target of at least 27% by 2030, building on earlier conclusions of the European Council. These EU-level targets shall not be broken down in binding national targets.
The proposed targets have been heavily criticised by multiple stakeholders, including the European Parliament and the European renewable energy associations. They raise two main points of criticism. Firstly, they consider the targets as too low, as they appear not in line with the long-term decarbonisation pathway required to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Secondly, they call for binding national targets to ensure that the EU targets are achieved. According to the Commission proposal, the proposed EU-level targets for renewables and energy efficiency are not broken down to national targets, but instead, Member States shall pledge their own contributions. Even under the pledging approach, however, Member States’ pledges would need to be measured against national benchmarks to assess whether their contributions are adequate to collectively meet the EU target.
To inform the debate on targets and benchmarks, this report derives national target benchmarks for a more ambitious EU renewables target of 30%, 35% or 45%. It also analyses the positive effect of increased energy efficiency on the effort required to meet the 2030 renewables targets. In doing so it provides relevant indications for the required effort and fair contribution of the Member States to the achievement of the EU-level RES target. The national benchmarks for the achievement of the EU 2030 RES-target are compared to the efforts required to meet national 2020 RES-targets and to the status quo of renewables deployment in 2015.
Higher energy efficiency facilitates more ambitious renewables targets. An increase in the EU energy efficiency target from 30% to 40% would help to achieve any EU renewable energy target more easily as the aggregated RES deployment needed for any RES target would be reduced by nearly 15%.
The calculations show that the currently proposed 2030-target of 27% for renewables could drastically slow down current levels of renewables expansion in the EU-28.
Even a RES-target of 30% would result in a lower overall deployment increase of renewables in 2020-2030 compared to 2010-2020, both under a 40% and a 30% energy efficiency scenario.
Assuming a 40% energy efficiency target, a RES-target of at least 35% would need to be set to maintain current deployment increase of renewables in the EU-28.
A 45% renewables target would imply a strong increase in renewables deployment compared to 2010-2020. On aggregated EU level, the net increase in 2020-2030 would be almost threefold in case of a 30% energy efficiency target and about twofold in case of a 40% energy efficiency target.
Figure 1 shows the national benchmarks derived from the effort sharing method that was applied for the allocation of the 2020 EU RES target (“2020 logic”).
- For the 30% EU RES target, national RES benchmarks increase between 7.0 percentage points (pp) and 12.2 pp compared to 2020;
- For the 35% EU RES target, national RES benchmarks increase between 10.3 pp and 18.4 pp compared to 2020;
- For the 45% EU RES target, national RES benchmarks increase between 17.0 pp and 30.8 pp compared to 2020.
Different approaches are conceivable to derive national benchmarks. Exemplarily, an alternative effort sharing approach included in the Impact Assessment of the proposed recast of the Renewable Energy Directive is considered (“alternative approach”). The “alternative approach” implicitly takes the potential availability of renewables resources into consideration by including the size of the country as a determining parameter in addition to GDP and equal sharing (“flat rate”). For this alterative approach, the span between lowest and highest national benchmark becomes larger than under the “2020 logic”. For an EU RES target of 30%, the increase per Member State would range from 7.8 pp to 17.1 pp. Member States that are relatively sparsely populated have comparatively higher benchmarks. From the perspective of these Member States, the resulting distribution of renewables deployment across the European Union may be seen inequitable and less balanced compared to the “2020 logic”.