Ukraine Crisis Is Connected To Climate & Energy Policy

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/27/ukraine-crisis-connected-climate-energy-policy/

Decisions on a new European climate and energy policy for 2030 are relegated to autumn as heads of state are caught up in the Ukraine crisis. At their spring summit in Brussels, EU leaders gave centre stage to energy dependence. First climate change, then competitiveness, now security of supply: the shifting priorities of member states show that a holistic vision and policy for climate and energy is there on paper but not in practice. Sonja van Renssen reports on the latest EU summit

Ukraine Crisis Is Connected To Climate & Energy Policy
Originally published on EnergyPost.eu.
By Sonja van Renssen

“This is not only a summit about Ukraine,” EU council president Herman Van Rompuy told journalists at half past midnight on Thursday 20 March in Brussels. Yet what was originally intended to be a summit where EU leaders agreed the main tenets of a new EU climate and energy policy for 2030 became instead an urgent discussion on what the EU should do about Ukraine and Russia after President Putin’s annexation of Crimea. The 2030 debate became an energy security debate, yet diplomats did not look much to the former to deliver on the latter.

“It {the Crimean crisis) will catalyse a much stronger debate on energy independence, security, foreign policy and Europe’s strategic relationship with Russia,” one EU diplomat said in the run-up to the summit. He did not suggest that the European Commission’s 2030 package could be a vehicle for aspects of this debate. Van Rompuy did slightly better on Thursday night, predicting “a strong focus on reducing energy dependence” for Friday morning’s discussion on climate and energy proposals that are “also essential”.

Energy security only

But EU leaders’ conclusions focus heavily on energy dependence. They invite the Commission to propose, by June, “specific interconnection objectives” for 2030, to be agreed by October. They also call for further action on the Southern Gas Corridor and an examination of how to facilitate gas exports from the US, including through the transatlantic trade talks (TTIP). The EU gets about a third of each of its fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – from Russia today. It spent €412bn on energy imports in 2012 – more than Poland’s GDP.

Heads of state call on the Commission to present “a comprehensive plan for the reduction of EU energy dependence” by June 2014 [after an] in-depth study of EU energy security”. The plan “should reflect the fact that the EU needs to accelerate further diversification of its energy supply, increase its bargaining power and energy efficiency, continue to develop renewables and other indigenous energy sources and coordinate the development of the infrastructure to support this diversification”.