The Works

EU Backtracks on Renewables, Opens Door for Nuclear Power

The European Commission announces plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, but will likely drop its mandatory renewable target.

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After weeks of speculation and worrying by environmentalists, it finally happened: The European Union will likely abandon its binding targets for renewable energy generation.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body that suggests legislation, unveiled a proposal on Wednesday that would ask the 28 member states to generate 27 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The target would be voluntary rather than mandatory, and it would apply to the bloc as a whole rather than individual countries.

Greenhouse gas emissions would have to be cut by 40 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2030, a change from the current target, set in 2007, of a 20 percent reduction by 2020. (Green advocates can at least find some solace in the 40 percent target, as a 35 percent target was still on the table until Wednesday’s recommendations were issued.)

The proposal comes while much of southern Europe still reels from the economic crisis, and with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron claiming that the mandatory renewables target would end up costing the British economy 9 billion pounds, or $14.8 billion, a year by 2030.

“When gas prices in the European Union are three or four times as high as in the United States,” E.C. Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger told reporters, “then this is a competitive disadvantage we can’t accept.”

Oettinger’s former colleagues in Germany, however, were not pleased. Germany has some of the continent’s most ambitious green energy goals — the Federal Environmental Agency last year released a report outlining how it would go about reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 — and the German energy minister vowed to forge on with the country’s plans despite the EU’s backtracking.

The biggest winner from Wednesday’s news could be nuclear power. Even though it’s not a renewable energy source, nuclear power has near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and would fulfill the EU’s binding reduction mandate without the cost burden of other, more expensive power sources. Germany has already pledged to phase out radioactive energy in the wake of Japan’s disaster at Fukushima, but other European countries are still committed to nuclear generation.

France especially could benefit, as the nation currently derives three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear reactors — the highest proportion of any country in the world. France’s plan has been to reduce nuclear’s share to 50 percent within 20 years, but the expected move by the European Union (member states still have to pass the recommended measures) could give the country a bit of slack on meeting its goal.

During a visit to China for a nuclear energy event, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg said that nuclear power is a “sector of the future” that will continue to contribute “at least 50 percent” of the country’s total electricity output, calling it France’s “only national energy source.” (France’s nuclear industry has long had a reputation for being one of the safest in the world, with more stringent controls than in, for example, Japan.)

Nuclear power in the U.K. could also get a boost from the EU’s laxer renewables target. Just this week a consortium led by French energy giant EDF signed a €19 billion deal to build one or two next-generation nuclear reactors in England. With Germany and Japan winding down their involvement in nuclear power, the industry — in which French firms like EDF and Areva have traditionally played a large role — is looking to markets like the U.K., where nuclear power is not as stigmatized as on the continent, to staunch the losses. A looser renewable mandate could make it that much easier.

The Works is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Stephen J. Smith is a reporter based in New York. He has written about transportation, infrastructure and real estate for a variety of publications including New York Yimby, where he is currently an editor, Next City, City Lab and the New York Observer.

Tags: infrastructurethe worksenergy

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