2015 update includes greater priority on energy-efficiency technologies
When the European Commission unveiled its Strategic Energy Technology Plan in 2008, only a clairvoyant could have seen that within a few years, Germany would retreat from nuclear power, trade disputes would erupt over solar panel components, or that a major chill would befall Europe’s relations with a key energy supplier.
Now, the job of planning Europe’s energy future has become even more complex—and urgent. An updated SETPlan due for release in early 2015, a year later than planned, rethinks research and innovation priorities to speed the development of a low-carbon economy, emphasising a more integrated EU energy system and energy efficiency.
European Commission officials told Science|Business that the update pays “special attention” to encouraging energy efficiency through smart metering and other technologies that give consumers more control over consumption and storage, and allow them to transfer surplus renewable energy to public grids.
The 2008 scheme was “a good strategy at that time,” says Andreea Strachinescu, who heads the new energy technologies section at the Commission’s energy directorate, which is involved in revamping the plan. “Now [the emphasis is] having an integrated view for a more secure and affordable energy,” she explains, noting that renewable energy production has risen in recent years “without thinking how this can be efficiently integrated into transmission and distribution networks, and not curtailed, which happens far too frequently.”
Energy security
Strachinescu told Science|Business that in order to achieve Europe’s longer-term goals of de-carbonisation and better productivity, the existing energy walls need to come down. “The idea is to see how [the energy market] can be better integrated,” she says, adding: “The security of supply also can be facilitated by an integrated energy market.”
The SET-Plan added a “technology pillar” to the EU’s energy and climate strategies, including the 2020 target of generating 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources and the 2050 ambition of slashing carbon emissions by 80 per cent compared with 1990 levels. The plan set out to spur researchers, policymakers and industries to collaborate in six core areas—nuclear fission, solar, wind, bio-energy, hydrogen fuel cells, and carbon capture and storage—with a project budget of some €71.5 billion.
Georg Menzen, a German member of the SET-Plan Steering Committee — comprising representatives from the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey—notes that the scheme also sought to encourage industrial and public cooperation in achieving a more integrated energy market, thus building Europe’s capacity to manage trans-boundary supply and demand.
“We cannot stop at our borders of Germany,” says Menzen, who heads the energy research division at the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
“The development of new grid technologies should be one of the most important technological areas where the Commission should invest and should deliver results. We said to the Commission, look to those areas where there is a European dimension and grids—this is without doubt a technological area that has a Europe dimension.”
The SET-Plan update will follow the rollout of other key proposals this year—the Climate and Energy Framework for 2030 in January, the Energy Security Strategy in May and the Energy Efficiency Communication in July.
Events unanticipated when the technology scheme was drafted provide ample reason to assess its impact, rethink investment priorities—and step up the pace of change. Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, and a brief tiff with China over solar panel trade in 2013, both underscored the importance of strengthening homegrown cooperation. Then came the Ukraine–Russia conflict with all the attendant concerns about the security of gas supplies.
For Giovanni De Santi, who heads the Institute for Energy and Transport at the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the revamped strategy will help pull together other EU initiatives on energy security and climate change by providing innovation and “enhance our independence”.
“We don’t have a silver bullet that will solve our [energy] problem,” De Santi says. “Europe is importing too much energy and if we don’t improve our own independent energy sources, we will continue to increase the dependency from outside Europe. So we definitely need to improve the technology in all different energy sectors.”
The original SET-Plan has faced criticism for being too ambitious and was undercut by a weak commitment on the part of national governments and industry to finance, research and implement projects.
It also suffered from a siloed approach to innovation that failed to anticipate the impact of any single technology on the overall energy system.
A JRC review of the SET-Plan’s first two years identified a lack of ambition by members states in some core research areas and a “puzzling” lack of coordination on improving the interconnectivity of electricity grids. The OECD’s latest annual economic report on the EU also notes that energy remains largely within state domains, and calls for “further development of energy interconnections” that can carry power produced by conventional plants as well as wind, solar and other alternatives.
Financing has been another concern despite promises to marshal the resources of industry, member states and the new seven-year EU research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. Estimates put the gap between planned spending on technology and the amount needed to achieve the EU’s 2020 energy and climate change targets at between €47 billion and €60 billion, and the outlook for slashing carbon emissions by mid-century is no better.
“In the 2050 context, these numbers will become even higher and the recent economic and financial crisis had a further negative impact on the availability of private and public funds,” according to a SET-Plan analysis by researchers at the Florence-based European University Institute’s THINK project, which advises the Commission on energy matters. “Experts agree that 2050 goals are technologically feasible, but that a key challenge will be the mobilisation of the required capital.”
The gulf in the financial health of EU countries has also hurt. Since 2008, when the SET-Plan was unveiled, Eurostat figures show that EU average renewable energy has grown from 10 per cent to more than 14 per cent of final energy consumption. Ten EU nations have reached or exceed the bloc’s 20 per cent target yet Cyprus, France, Ireland, Italy and Spain—those with stagnant economies or battered by the debt crisis—remain well short of their renewables targets for 2020.
“These [economic and financial] differences hamper agreements for a unified approach for technology support,” says THINK’s analysis—A New EU Energy Technology Policy towards 2050: Which Way to Go?.
The next steps for the revamped SETPlan are the release of an integrated roadmap at a conference in December hosted by Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency, followed by the rollout of an action plan in early 2015.
Those involved in the process say the delay is partly the fault of the sheer work entailed in fielding input and recommendations from the energy sector, researchers, environmental groups and governments that are represented on two advisory groups working on the update. The filtering process involves compressing some 500 pages of recommendations into a document closer to 35 pages.
Menzen is among those who has been concerned about the slow pace, though the acknowledged that progress has been made on reaching a broad agreement and that “we feel we are on the right track on the SET-Plan.”
Now, the job of planning Europe’s energy future has become even more complex—and urgent. An updated SETPlan due for release in early 2015, a year later than planned, rethinks research and innovation priorities to speed the development of a low-carbon economy, emphasising a more integrated EU energy system and energy efficiency.
European Commission officials told Science|Business that the update pays “special attention” to encouraging energy efficiency through smart metering and other technologies that give consumers more control over consumption and storage, and allow them to transfer surplus renewable energy to public grids.
The 2008 scheme was “a good strategy at that time,” says Andreea Strachinescu, who heads the new energy technologies section at the Commission’s energy directorate, which is involved in revamping the plan. “Now [the emphasis is] having an integrated view for a more secure and affordable energy,” she explains, noting that renewable energy production has risen in recent years “without thinking how this can be efficiently integrated into transmission and distribution networks, and not curtailed, which happens far too frequently.”
Energy security
Strachinescu told Science|Business that in order to achieve Europe’s longer-term goals of de-carbonisation and better productivity, the existing energy walls need to come down. “The idea is to see how [the energy market] can be better integrated,” she says, adding: “The security of supply also can be facilitated by an integrated energy market.”
The SET-Plan added a “technology pillar” to the EU’s energy and climate strategies, including the 2020 target of generating 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources and the 2050 ambition of slashing carbon emissions by 80 per cent compared with 1990 levels. The plan set out to spur researchers, policymakers and industries to collaborate in six core areas—nuclear fission, solar, wind, bio-energy, hydrogen fuel cells, and carbon capture and storage—with a project budget of some €71.5 billion.
Georg Menzen, a German member of the SET-Plan Steering Committee — comprising representatives from the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey—notes that the scheme also sought to encourage industrial and public cooperation in achieving a more integrated energy market, thus building Europe’s capacity to manage trans-boundary supply and demand.
“We cannot stop at our borders of Germany,” says Menzen, who heads the energy research division at the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
“The development of new grid technologies should be one of the most important technological areas where the Commission should invest and should deliver results. We said to the Commission, look to those areas where there is a European dimension and grids—this is without doubt a technological area that has a Europe dimension.”
The SET-Plan update will follow the rollout of other key proposals this year—the Climate and Energy Framework for 2030 in January, the Energy Security Strategy in May and the Energy Efficiency Communication in July.
Events unanticipated when the technology scheme was drafted provide ample reason to assess its impact, rethink investment priorities—and step up the pace of change. Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, and a brief tiff with China over solar panel trade in 2013, both underscored the importance of strengthening homegrown cooperation. Then came the Ukraine–Russia conflict with all the attendant concerns about the security of gas supplies.
For Giovanni De Santi, who heads the Institute for Energy and Transport at the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the revamped strategy will help pull together other EU initiatives on energy security and climate change by providing innovation and “enhance our independence”.
“We don’t have a silver bullet that will solve our [energy] problem,” De Santi says. “Europe is importing too much energy and if we don’t improve our own independent energy sources, we will continue to increase the dependency from outside Europe. So we definitely need to improve the technology in all different energy sectors.”
The original SET-Plan has faced criticism for being too ambitious and was undercut by a weak commitment on the part of national governments and industry to finance, research and implement projects.
It also suffered from a siloed approach to innovation that failed to anticipate the impact of any single technology on the overall energy system.
A JRC review of the SET-Plan’s first two years identified a lack of ambition by members states in some core research areas and a “puzzling” lack of coordination on improving the interconnectivity of electricity grids. The OECD’s latest annual economic report on the EU also notes that energy remains largely within state domains, and calls for “further development of energy interconnections” that can carry power produced by conventional plants as well as wind, solar and other alternatives.
Financing has been another concern despite promises to marshal the resources of industry, member states and the new seven-year EU research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. Estimates put the gap between planned spending on technology and the amount needed to achieve the EU’s 2020 energy and climate change targets at between €47 billion and €60 billion, and the outlook for slashing carbon emissions by mid-century is no better.
“In the 2050 context, these numbers will become even higher and the recent economic and financial crisis had a further negative impact on the availability of private and public funds,” according to a SET-Plan analysis by researchers at the Florence-based European University Institute’s THINK project, which advises the Commission on energy matters. “Experts agree that 2050 goals are technologically feasible, but that a key challenge will be the mobilisation of the required capital.”
The gulf in the financial health of EU countries has also hurt. Since 2008, when the SET-Plan was unveiled, Eurostat figures show that EU average renewable energy has grown from 10 per cent to more than 14 per cent of final energy consumption. Ten EU nations have reached or exceed the bloc’s 20 per cent target yet Cyprus, France, Ireland, Italy and Spain—those with stagnant economies or battered by the debt crisis—remain well short of their renewables targets for 2020.
“These [economic and financial] differences hamper agreements for a unified approach for technology support,” says THINK’s analysis—A New EU Energy Technology Policy towards 2050: Which Way to Go?.
The next steps for the revamped SETPlan are the release of an integrated roadmap at a conference in December hosted by Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency, followed by the rollout of an action plan in early 2015.
Those involved in the process say the delay is partly the fault of the sheer work entailed in fielding input and recommendations from the energy sector, researchers, environmental groups and governments that are represented on two advisory groups working on the update. The filtering process involves compressing some 500 pages of recommendations into a document closer to 35 pages.
Menzen is among those who has been concerned about the slow pace, though the acknowledged that progress has been made on reaching a broad agreement and that “we feel we are on the right track on the SET-Plan.”
“We have to look for integration of our renewable energies in the energy systems, and then we have to overcome the borders and we have to look for an integrated electrical [system] in Europe.”
This article is part of "Europe's Energy Challenge", a Science|Business special report. The report is available for download, here.
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