Oettinger calls for EU-wide policy
EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger stated at the end of last week that he aims to present proposals in June for the future of renewables in Europe – and he speaks of the German role model in the past tense.
In the Friday edition of Stuttgarter Zeitung, Oettinger stated, "I will make up some proposals in June about how to proceed with the legal framework for renewables in the EU." But apparently, feed-in tariffs – the most successful and least expensive of all policies to support renewables – have apparently served their purpose for him: "for the first steps towards a renewables, Germany feed-in tariffs were an excellent instrument." Oettinger added that there is no way around coordinating and synchronizing European policy.
Over the past decade, all attempts to harmonize EU energy policy were (usually correctly) viewed as an attack on feed-in tariffs; the politicians making these proposals generally wished to implement quota systems (like Renewable Portfolio Standards in the US) and get rid of feed-in tariffs. Oettinger cleverly avoids using the word "harmonize." If the EU were to "synchronize" its energy policies, one would expect feed-in tariffs to be adopted at the level of the EU; after all, nowadays feed-in tariffs are the standard for renewables policy throughout Europe. But feed-in tariffs across the EU is not what Oettinger has in mind.
Granted, feed-in tariffs for photovoltaics have repeatedly made headlines almost everywhere (most prominently in Spain, France, the UK, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Germany), but we must also remember that feed-in tariffs for wind and biomass, for instance, have not had to be repeatedly revised. Photovoltaics is a special case because the cost of PV has plummeted – thanks mainly to massive deployment in countries with feed-in tariffs – over the past few years. Many, even those within the PV sector (such as Centrotherm’s CEO Peter Fath), have mistakenly viewed grid parity as the point when we could get rid of feed-in tariffs altogether, but these folks have always failed to understand that feed-in tariffs for wind power and power from biomass have, in many cases, been below the retail electricity rate for some time now.
EU parliamentarian Claude Turmes, who has fought against harmonization for years, explained in an interview (PDF) from December 2010 on member states' National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) that the call for renewable energy certificates (the likely proposal this summer) would lead to a system that costs "between 80 and 120 billion euro [sic] more for consumers to promote the same volume of renewables." Turmes also had an explanation for why the Commission would nonetheless want to entertain such a proposal: a few larger firms would then succeed in making renewables more expensive "in order to make windfall profits from trading." We should also add that large corporations, not citizens and communities, would own most new installations.
Oettinger has international power supply in mind when he specifically says, "we have to clarify how we are going to integrate power from the south into our power market in terms of the power lines and regulations." But why the focus on power from the south? If he is talking about solar power from the south, then we may indeed be dealing with a focus on large investments that only giant firms can make (such as Desertec) – to the detriment of community-owned power, which has driven the German market for renewables. Otherwise, cross-border power trading is indeed to be encouraged, and proponents of renewables should latch on to this issue in order to move out of the rather unfortunate position of blocking progress in EU harmonization in this particular issue. There are good reasons why EU energy policy remains so fragmented – the World Future Council mentions a few of them here – but further integration at the EU level is coming, so renewables proponents would be well advised to coordinate their ideas for the future. (Craig Morris)
