Reacting to the recommendations of the Draghi report, Europe’s energy ministers agreed, on Tuesday 15 October, at a thematic debate of the Energy Council on the need to speed up the decarbonisation of European industry and ensure affordable energy prices to support the EU’s competitiveness. However, differences of opinion over support for nuclear power once again figured prominently in the debate.
For countries such as Austria, on the initiative of the meeting of the so-called ‘Friends of Renewables’ countries (see EUROPE 13503/14), the strategy for the coming years is to massively deploy renewable energies and network infrastructures. Nuclear power is not part of the equation, as it is considered “too expensive and too slow”.
Sven Giegold, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Action, also pointed out that the European Commission’s impact assessment on the 2040 climate target (see EUROPE 13433/6) included the need to increase installed renewable energy capacity by 1,400 GW, “while indicating a reduction in the share of nuclear power”.
In response, the French Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, explained that the expected drop in the share of nuclear power compared with renewable energy was due to the fact that all the existing facilities should be replaced. “And we know that when there is a shortage of nuclear power, prices soar. The proof is in the second half of 2022, when Europe was short of French nuclear electricity and security of supply was jeopardised”, she reminded.
Like her Swedish counterpart, Ebba Busch, she also called for the cost of developing the networks needed for the massive integration of renewables to be taken into account.
“I think we will have retaliation from citizens when they see on their bill that electricity is one thing, but that the cost of the network system now exceeds the price of electricity”, she told the press.
Interconnections. On the subject of networks, several Member States called for their funding to be increased, in particular via the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’, as mentioned in the Draghi report and judged to be “severely underfunded” by the Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson.
Other issues on which ministers focused were the implementation of the principles of the electricity market reform (see EUROPE 13454/27), the acceleration of procedures for granting permits and a strategy to promote flexibility and increase storage capacity.
Price divergence. Ministers also discussed the divergence in energy prices within the EU, in response to the price peaks experienced by countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe this summer (see EUROPE 13502/6).
“We have seen a 10% increase in annual energy prices, with no increase in costs. This is a market failure”, said the Greek minister, adding that the existing rules did not cover endemic short-term crisis situations.
Commissioner Simson stated that “the situation has improved over the past few weeks”, but that several factors could be put forward, such as changes in weather conditions, the lack of flexibility in production and consumption, and the region’s limited physical interconnection capacity with the rest of Europe.
In her view, the increase in exports to Ukraine in response to Russian attacks on its energy system does not appear to have had a significant impact on prices. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)