Negotiators in the energy and climate world will spend the season trying to wrap up the second half of the Clean Energy Package, while the Commission mulls ways for the bloc to decarbonize by mid-century.

Electricity market reform

It’s crunch time for EU negotiators working on how to best redesign the EU’s electricity market, after agreeing on tougher green energy goals for 2030 in the summer. Parliament and Council are split on whether coal-fired plants should continue to receive subsidies — grouped together as capacity mechanisms — to be on standby in case of an emergency or a drop in power supplied by renewables like wind and solar. Countries with coal-fired power such as Poland feel that emissions standards for the mechanisms discriminate against them, but others worry that the EU has no hope of meeting its greenhouse gas goals if coal remains in use.

Decarbonization strategy

All eyes will be on Brussels in November, when the Commission is due to release a draft plan to decarbonize the EU economy by 2050. There is talk of the plan suggesting a net-zero emissions target — meaning the EU would absorb as much carbon as it releases. The other big question is whether the EU will formally increase its 2030 emissions reduction target beyond its current 40 percent. It can technically go for at least 45 percent after the summer’s deals on higher renewable energy and energy efficiency goals.

COP24

Global negotiators meet in December in Katowice, Poland, to hammer out a deal on the rules underpinning the Paris climate agreement. The EU wants a common, transparent system setting out how countries monitor and report emissions cuts. Brussels also wants the financial burden of helping countries deal with the impact of climate change to be better shared between traditional developed countries and new powers like China — an issue causing growing friction between industrialized and developing countries.

This article is part of the autumn 2018 policy primer.

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