European Commission seeks harmony on energy and climate change

Utility executives will have been carefully analysing the unveiling on Wednesday (September 10) of a new European Commission team to take office from November 1. As well as new personnel, a key initial move with potentially important implications for European Union (EU) energy policy was the uniting of the current energy and climate portfolios. Assuming the new commissioners are all confirmed by the European Parliament, these policies will be handled for the next five years by a Spanish conservative Miguel Arias Cañete, a former agriculture minister with links to Spain’s oil industry.

There has been a perception under the current commission that the commissioners for energy and climate action have sometimes worked at cross-purposes, with one side focused on boosting EU energy supplies and the other reducing emissions. A senior official working with incoming European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said having one commissioner made sense as the energy and climate policies were closely linked. He added this was particularly important given the EU’s important energy and climate policies and potential future international commitments on as the UN-organised Paris climate summit in November and December 2015.

“From now on we will have only one commissioner to harmonise what we need to do inside and outside,” Juncker’s team member said.

In an unusual move, Juncker has also laid out Cañete’s tasks in a mission letter, where he indicates that green energy growth is as much about security of supply as it is about emissions concerns. Juncker stressed: “I strongly believe in the potential of ‘Green Growth’ and I want the EU to become the world number one in renewable energies.” The development of renewables is, according to Juncker’s letter, “an industrial policy imperative if we still want to have affordable energy at our disposal in the medium term”.

He added: “You will have to identify and select infrastructure projects on which to focus, assess the need to add to the current legal framework and monitor very closely the implementation of existing legislation.”

He also wants the energy and climate commissioner to guide work on energy efficiency and to steer the negotiations and adoption of the EU’s 2030 energy and climate package, which was presented as a draft by the outgoing Barroso commission in January.

Cañete’s nomination has raised questions as he is chairman of the board of two Spanish oil companies. He is expected to face tough questioning in his European Parliament hearing about his suitability for the Commission job.

If he makes it through, Cañete will have to report to a Commission vice-president for the energy union, which is a new position resulting from Juncker’s restructuring of the European Commission. The Luxembourger has appointed six influential vice-presidents (usually an honorific position) tasked with coordinating key policies and keeping relevant commissioners on message. Juncker has designated former Slovene prime-minister Alenka Bratušek for the energy job. “Your objective will be to bring about a resilient Energy Union, with a forward-looking climate change policy, by steering and co-ordinating the delivery of key initiatives,” Juncker wrote in her mission letter. Completing the EU’s internal energy market by fully applying the currently binding legislation will lead to increasing competition “that should help drive down costs for citizens and businesses and boost growth,” according to the letter.

The composition and broad policy thrust of the new Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker has been widely welcomed by the energy sector. Hans ten Berge, secretary general of Eurelectric, the EU electricity industry association, said: “We are…reassured to see that energy policy is given particular prominence in the new European Commission, in particular through the appointment of a vice-president for energy union”. While it remained to be seen how the cooperation and coordination between the vice-president and the new energy and climate commissioner would play out in practice, “at the end of the day it’s not really about who is doing the job – it’s about making sure that the job gets done, effectively and cost-efficiently,” ten Berge told Utility Week.  “Our sector is facing enormous challenges and getting the EU’s energy policy right – not least the 2030 framework under discussion – is of critical importance,” he said.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) said it welcomed the appointment of Bratušek as vice president – and commissioner-designate for energy union and Cañete as the commissioner-designate for energy and climate action. EWEA chief executive officer Thomas Becker said the appointments “showed a commitment by the Juncker presidency to make strides toward a single electricity market that places renewable energies, such as wind power, at the heart of European energy security.” He said EWEA looked forward to working with the new commission “on building a new…energy union in Europe, which is underpinned by renewables. For a true single energy market to flourish in Europe, energy policy must become the domain of EU lawmakers and should not be shackled to 28 diverging ministries, regulators and agencies at national level.”  

Gordon Edge, director of policy at RenewablesUK which backs wind, wave and tidal energy, said that “from our experience of merging the energy and climate change portfolios in [Britain’s ministry the] DECC, we believe that there can be some valuable gains in coherence in bringing these two portfolios under one roof”.

He warned however that there was a downside, namely “the risk of an internal focus as two bureaucracies are merged, particularly when decisions on the crucial 2030 package are imminent.”