In the face of continuing concerns among Member States about the revision of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) (2018/2002), the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union submitted a new draft compromise to them on Monday 20 June with a view to reaching an agreement (‘general approach’) at the meeting of EU energy ministers on 27 June.
The changes proposed by the Presidency mainly concern Article 4 (energy efficiency targets) and Article 8 (energy saving obligations), as these two points of the text proved to be particularly problematic last Friday 17 June, during the meeting of Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper).
With regard to Article 4, Member States are said to have asked the Presidency to revise its proposal allowing Member States not to follow the European Commission’s formula (included in Annex I of the proposed revision of the EED) for calculating their respective national contribution to the EU energy efficiency target.
Some delegations wanted to increase the margin of deviation of a national contribution from what it would have been under the Commission’s formula from 2 to 5%.
Paris, for its part, finally proposed to raise this flexibility percentage to 2.5%.
The amendment to Article 8 relates to the inclusion of energy savings from direct fossil fuel combustion technologies in the calculation of the energy savings obligation.
While the Presidency proposed that these energy savings could be counted until 31 December 2030 in case of energy efficiency improvements in companies with an average annual energy consumption of more than 100 TJ over the previous 3 years, the new draft compromise removes the 100 TJ threshold.
The Member States’ ambassadors to the EU will discuss the new draft compromise on Wednesday 22 June as well as the draft compromise on the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive (2018/2001) (RED II).
See the draft compromise: https://aeur.eu/f/28c (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)