Brussels, 28/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The industry associations that promote energy savings are critical of the lack of ambition in the framework for energy and climate policies till 2030, set by the European Council of 24 October, and of its 27% energy efficiency target.
At the European Council in March, “energy efficiency was declared the top priority to increase energy security and boost growth. Today the target presented is so low that it is meaningless and would prevent the EU from cutting gas dependency by a third”, fulminates the Coalition for Energy Savings, criticising the “doubtful” impact assessments by the European Commission that have artificially inflated the costs of energy efficiency targets. “The cost-effective potential for energy savings by 2030 is in fact 40%, according to the latest research published by the Commission itself”, the Coalition says, underlining that tapping this potential not only makes economic sense, it is also strategic for the EU, as each percentage of energy saved would reduce gas imports by 2.6%. “Our leaders have decided to ignore this reality, but the new Commission and the European Parliament have good reasons to embrace this attractive future in building the energy union Europe needs”, the Coalition nonetheless hopes.
According to EuroAce, the European alliance for the promotion of energy savings in buildings, which counts General Electric Lighting, Phillips, Velux, Rockwool, Kingspan, Johnson Control and Knauf Insulation among its members, the European Council objective is not good enough. EuroAce calls for a 40% target, the “proven cost-effective potential for the EU”. “Renovating our wasteful, leaky buildings is a key part of our effort on climate and energy policy and offers the best solution to Europe's energy crisis. Swallowing a high of 40% of all energy consumed in the EU, buildings should feature as a top priority sector to be addressed in upcoming legislation revision, namely the energy efficiency directive and the energy performance in buildings directive”, EuroAce states, underlining that a renovation programme amounting to only 25% of what they currently spend on energy imports (collectively €400 billion per year) could put member states on the right track to reducing the energy demand of the building stock in the EU by 80% by 2050.
COGEN Europe, the European association for the promotion of cogeneration, too is critical of the “side-lining” of energy efficiency in the 2030 framework. EU leaders' “failure to link greenhouse gas emission cuts to energy efficiency improvements is a cause for concern in the cogeneration sector”, it states. “Since the early 2000s, the highly energy efficient solution of cogeneration has not experienced significant market growth at EU level. The 2020 package certainly did not give any impetus to the cogeneration sector, while the effects of 2012's energy efficiency directive still remain to be seen”, laments COGEN Europe Managing Director Fiona Riddoch.
The European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE), which represents the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump industry, also slams the low level of ambition on energy efficiency. “Such a minimum common denominator will not be enough to spur effective measures and drive investments in energy efficiency technologies”, it regrets. (EH)