On Wednesday 17th of January MEPs will vote on three files in the clean energy package: the Renewable Energy Directive, the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Governance Regulation.
The Renewable Energy Directive consists on establishing an EU policy for the production and promotion of energy from renewable sources. At the moment, it requires the EU to fulfil at least 20% of its total energy needs with renewables by 2020, each country having its individual target. On 2016, the European Commission proposed an upgrade to a minimum of 27% of renewable energy consumption in Europe by 2030.
The Energy Efficiency Directive sets up a 20% energy efficiency target by 2020. The European Commission proposed an increase of the target to a 30% of energy efficiency in Europe by 2030, in 2016. On the same year, some goals were suggested for the Governance regulation in order to improve the regulation and ensure that the energy and climate targets are met. It is now the turn for the MEPS to vote on these proposals.
Beforehand, a letter has been signed by 62 academics supporting bioenergy and the need to acknowledge its potential as a renewable source of energy to promote bioenergy projects.
As signed by the academics in the letter ‘We believe that bioenergy has to be an essential part of the EU energy mix for at least the next 30 years. Without bioenergy and CCUS technologies, the COP21 commitment for a 1.5 degree reduction will be very hard, if not impossible to achieve. The negative impacts on the climate and society from such a failure will be significant for humans and biodiversity’.
Please find here the complete news about this issue and some of the controversy with the bioenergy sources.
