Decarbonization in the European Union : Internal Policies and External Strategies
The authors investigate how far the EU is along the road to decarbonisation, and what remains to be done in policy development.
The authors investigate how far the EU is along the road to decarbonisation, and what remains to be done in policy development.
As current policy frameworks are expiring in 2020, the EU is revisiting its energy technology policy for the post-2020 horizon. The main long-run objective for energy technology policy is to foster the achievement of ambitious EU goals for decarbonisation by 2050. Given this objective, we discuss how European energy technology policy towards 2050 can be effective despite i) uncertain carbon prices, ii) uncertain technological change and iii) uncertain or alternating policy paradigms shifting its focus from decarbonisation to competition or security of supplies…
(…) A number of countries, like the UK, are already in the process of reforming their electricity markets in order to ensure the delivery of the huge quantities of low carbon investment which will be needed; these reforms have involved a more central role for the government in decision-making, and in underwriting investments. The paper considers whether the role of market forces is inevitably going to be increasingly limited by the existence of rigorous environmental targets…
Floris van Foreest’s study challenges this assumption and asks whether natural gas needs a decarbonisation strategy, and what such a strategy might look like in terms of: carbon capture and storage, “renewable gas” and back-up for intermittent renewable energy…