renewable energy magazine
Decarbonising Europe’s economy Director responsible for the Green Transition and Energy System Integration in DG Energy at the European Commission, Catharina Sikow-Magny, says that ambitious targets and agreed pathways are the cornerstones of plans to decarbonise Europe’s economy. Speaking in the context of the European Climate Law, which made endorsement of climate neutrality of the European Union by 2050 and the European Council’s decision to increase the greenhouse gas reduction target to 55 per cent by 2030 legally binding, SikowMagny assesses good progress across the EU in reaching the collective 20 per cent target by 2020 for renewables. However, the Director of energy system integration admits that, although onethird of the EU’s electricity is being generated by renewable sources, other sectors including transport and heating and cooling have been slow to decarbonise across the EU. Acknowledging that this overall assessment correlates with what is happening in Ireland specifically, SikowMagny expresses the Commission’s
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satisfaction that Ireland has entered into statistical transfers to meet its 2020 target, explaining that such use serves the exact purpose of why the transfers were introduced under the Renewables Directive. The Director states that despite evident progress, ambitions across the EU must now be increased to meet the new 55 per cent greenhouse gas target reduction by 2030. “In renewables this means that we need to look to a more ambitious target probably somewhere between 38 to 40 per cent for 2030, according to our assessments, significantly higher than the existing 32 per cent target,” she explains. Sikow-Magny outlines that for electricity this probably means a target of around
65 per cent of all electricity consumed across the EU coming from renewable sources. To this end, the EU Commission representative welcomes the Irish Government’s aim to position itself as a leader in this area and its 70 per cent renewable electricity target by 2030. However, Sikow-Magny stresses the importance of a focus across EU member states not solely on the targets but also systems to make renewables work, including storage, flexibility, interconnection, and industrial processes. “These are important challenges, and we need to ensure that high renewable production will be matched with high reliability and security of supply,” she adds.
