Speak to virtually anyone connected to the wind industry in Europe, and they’ll tell you that this year has been perhaps one of the most important that we’ve ever faced. A springboard period for future growth, 2011 was a seminal period, and the highs and lows have all been documented by the European Wind Energy Association (which itself is celebrating its 30th birthday this year). PES presents the recently-revealed highlights…
Making the voice of the industry heard
A post-2020 policy framework is urgently needed in the EU: the centre-pin of this must be a binding renewables target for 2030 to maintain investor stability and growth in the sector.
EWEA’s analysis of the Member States’ national renewable energy action plans, released in January, showed that they were on track to slightly exceed the 2020 target of 20 per cent renewable energy. EWEA has been working with its national associations to implement the directive.
In March, on the opening day of the EWEA 2011 Annual Event, EWEA launched a call for a post-2020 policy framework at EU level with a 2030 binding renewables target at its core, to give investors continued stability. It followed this up with a report on ‘EU Energy Policy to 2050′.
In the next few months, EWEA worked with the European Commission to influence its EU Energy Roadmap 2050 and released both a report on EU energy policy post-2020 and its updated scenarios for wind energy in 2020 and 2030. Over that time, two EU Commissioners – Climate Action Commissioner Hedegaard and Energy Commissioner Oettinger – referred to the need for a discussion on a possible 2030 renewables target.
In December, the European Commission’s EU Energy Roadmap 2050 was released. At the launch Commissioner Oettinger suggested that binding renewable energy targets for 2030 could be in place by 2014. In all the scenarios in the Roadmap, wind energy produces the most electricity by 2050, and all of them, including the High Renewables Scenario, show similar system costs despite some highly unrealistic assumptions in all scenarios such as oil prices dropping from over $100 per barrel today to $70 per barrel in 2050. “Despite these attempts to prefabricate the results, the scenarios confirm that a renewable energy future comes at no higher energy cost to Europe,” EWEA CEO, Christian Kjaer commented.
