The EU Commission has published a Green Paper with the title “A 2030 framework for energy and climate policy.”
This is a first step in discussing mid-term policy. The paper explains the policy goals in place for 2020, as well as legislation enacted to achieve those goals. And then it asks a large number of questions, calling for comments from the public with a deadline of 2 July 2013.
The main three goals for 2020 are of course reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 by 20%, getting to a share of renewable energy of 20% (not only of electricity, but of all energy), and increasing energy efficiency (saving energy) by 20% compared to business as usual predictions in 2007.
There is a long list of legislation in place already to achieve these goals. This Green Paper is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in researching that.
And the list of questions is also quite long. I will discuss only one of them in this post.
Let’s just focus on oil to explain the basic idea. Right now, the EU paid EUR 500 billion in 2012 for oil imports. These are around 12 million barrels a day (Europe Facing Peak Oil Report, page 39). Dependency on imports is expected to increase, since oil production in the EU is going down fast.
So my idea would be to supplement renewable energy targets with oil import reduction targets. Get that 12 million barrels a day down to 6 million until 2030 (just one example).
And get it down faster than it would go down anyway with only a renewable target in place.
There are a couple of obvious consequences such a policy would have. For one, if the EU succeeds in getting oil imports down by 50%, the EUR 500 billion in 2012 prices would shrink to 250 billion, a substantial saving. Of course this will be overcompensated by the fact that there is no way oil stays below $200 a barrel in 2030. Which in turn means that the amount saved will be even greater.
cleantechnica
