Renewable Energy 2020 and beyond: Delivering on the EU targets and defining a pathway to a low-carbon energy future

The 2009 Renewables Directive sets a new precedent for EU policy on renewable energy sources (RES), setting a 20% target for RES in total energy consumption by 2020, rising from a 2005 level of around 8.5%. The Directive presents Member States with a huge implementation challenge that cannot simply be met by an extension of existing promotional policies for renewables. In this chapter we give an overview of some of the new directive’s key provisions impacting on the electricity sector, consider how these should be implemented by Member States, and argue that compliance with the targets will be in doubt unless significant efforts are made to ensure coherent market and system integration of RES, and crucially, greater EU-wide harmonisation in the approach to supporting the development of renewable energy. This will require further EU and national policy actions in addition to implementation of the directive. In addition, we argue that with robust implementation of the revised EU emissions trading system (ETS), without major exceptions to full auctioning of allowances to emit greenhouse gases (GHGs), a strong carbon price signal will be established, which in itself should underpin RES-development. Indeed the creation of a representative price for emitted carbon dioxide could progressively obviate the need for extensive RES support schemes within the next 10 years. The process towards fully integrating RES-power into an EU-wide liberalised electricity market, without production-based, technology-specific subsidies and without special provisions on system balancing and grid costs, could begin with the scheduled review of the Renewables Directive in 2014.