Good morning, I hope you had a nice U.S. Independence Day holiday if you celebrated!
This week, Anca dives deep to find space in Europe's renewables race, and I swapped my latest Lunchtime Reads for Lunchtime Listens by catching up on podcasts and stories-by-audio during a long drive over the weekend.
It sounds basic, yet it’s an important—and potentially contentious—exercise the European Union is embarking on to figure out the best spots to fit more wind and solar farms.
Mapping out how to use space more efficiently to quickly scale up renewable energy will be key in helping the 27-member bloc meet its climate goals and shed dependence on Russian natural gas.
The Continent is marred by slow permitting and growing local opposition to big infrastructure projects, challenges the United States and other Western nations also face. Europe is more densely populated than most other parts of the world, making the problems here especially acute.
In the last two editions of Cipher, we looked at the problems and solutions for scaling up clean energy technologies to fight climate change. This week we’re zooming in on how the EU wants to speed up renewables deployment on the ground.
The bloc has seen renewable energy installations flourish over the last decade, driven by emissions-reduction laws and lower clean power generation costs. There has been less of a focus on understanding the impact this growth has had on use of space, however.
As more massive wind turbines started popping up on fields and near people’s homes, concerns about biodiversity have grown and so has the not-in-my-backyard sentiment, or NIMBYism, despite overall public support for green energy.
“Renewable energies have so far not been part of the DNA of spatial planning, but it’s clear they have to be included going forward,” said Matthias Buck, director for Europe at the Berlin-based think tank Agora Energiewende.
A May proposal from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, would oblige all countries to identify “go-to areas” suitable for the installation of renewable energy plants.
The Commission would require that projects in these locations—if deemed to have an insignificant environmental impact—receive permits within a year. Examples include degraded areas like old quarries, closed mines, landfills, urban wastewater treatment sites and brownfields.
The proposal is expected to aid mostly with on-land renewable projects. The EU already has a separate law that requires countries to map how best to use their seas, including for offshore wind projects.
The go-to areas proposal, which would fall under the EU’s renewable energy law currently under revision, is part of a bigger plan to stop Russian fossil fuel imports, known as REPowerEU.
The plan seeks to boost the bloc’s installed wind power capacity to 510 gigawatts by 2030 from the current 236 GW and its installed solar photovoltaic capacity to 600 GW by 2030 from about 166 GW currently.
Buck called those goals “highly ambitious” and said: “The EU now must ensure that all conditions for faster deployment on the ground are in place.”
The go-to areas proposal is creating mixed feelings.
Markus Pieper, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator for the EU renewables law, told Cipher that go-to areas can be a good solution for several member countries since it gives them more discretion over certain areas.
“It is clear that Europe has some densely populated regions and therefore often little potential for the expansion of renewable energies in natural space,” said Pieper, a German MEP from the center-right European People’s Party.
However, countries shouldn’t be forced to pursue such areas no matter what, “especially if they can prove that their planning is serious and that they will be able to achieve the expansion targets in compliance with the Paris climate criteria,” he said.
He says a bigger problem to solve is redesigning the EU’s animal conservation law, “which has considerably impaired the construction of wind turbines to date.” The law calls for both the protection of an entire species and of individual animals; the MEP said the focus should be on the former.
Germany, Pieper’s home country, has the highest installed wind power capacity in Europe, weighing in at 59.3 GW. The German government wants to require federal states to scout 2% of land suitable for onshore wind farms, and strike deals with other less populated states to make up for any shortfall. Currently, 0.8% of German land is designated for onshore wind power, and only about 0.5% of land is being used.
Veerle Dossche, EU energy policy coordinator at Climate Action Network Europe, a coalition of NGOs, supports the Commission’s idea of better mapping and planning at the EU level—if citizens remain involved.
“Although in low-impact zones faster permitting procedures should be considered, they still need to be transparent and inclusive in order to achieve public acceptance,” Dossche said.
Other factors beyond community acceptance are also likely to influence the process, said Christoph Zipf, communications manager at the lobby group WindEurope, which supports the go-to areas proposal. These include varied wind conditions across Europe, types of turbine technology and the rate of repowering (replacing old turbines with more powerful and efficient ones).
The European Parliament and national governments have yet to take a formal position on the Commission’s go-to areas proposal, with more clarity expected in the fall.
Outside the EU institutions, however, some worry the “go-to” phrase itself could cause trouble.
Jochen Hauff, director of corporate strategy, energy policy and sustainability at BayWa r.e., a global company that develops and maintains wind and solar projects, says the EU’s lengthy process for negotiating and putting laws into action (which can take two to three years) could lead to a slowdown in renewable energy installations while countries wait for legal clarity.
It’s important to make clear that these are additional steps, not a replacement to how things are currently done, he said.
“’Go-to’ is dangerous as phrasing,” he said. “It bears the risk that everything else is no-go.”
Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes
Watt It Takes with Andrew Ponec, co-founder of Antora Energy — podcast by Powerhouse Amy’s take: This was a great listen on the importance of decarbonizing heat--stay tuned for a column on this topic soon.
The climate-change agenda can survive the Supreme Court’s EPA ruling — The Washington Post Amy’s take: Key line: “To truly decarbonize, we need to build a better and more resilient power grid, establish supply chains for solar panels and critical minerals and build local support for new energy technologies. Those can’t be regulated into existence.” Thanks, WaPo, for the feature of being able to listen to this story instead of reading!
Supreme Court ruling opens door to carbon capture — E&E News (paywall) Amy’s take: Huh, Petro Nova has been damaged by a fire. Also, let’s not forget EPA is still moving ahead on emissions for the transportation sector—the U.S.’s biggest source of emissions.
Europe power prices hit new high in wake of Russian gas supply cuts — Financial Times (paywall) Anca’s take: Things are not looking good at all in Europe. They were looking bad before, but now fear is growing about what the winter will look like.
Airliners Powered by Sustainable Fuel Remain a Distant Goal — The New York Times Amy’s take: This is an overly—and unnecessarily so—negative article. It doesn’t talk to any of the startups pursuing this, like LanzaJet, and it doesn’t consider other technologies (electric for shorter flights, hydrogen, etc.)
Poland looks to ease rules blocking development of onshore wind power — Reuters Anca’s take: This fits right in with the wider theme in today’s newsletter of how to scale up renewable energy more quickly. The bottom line is that more countries are changing their laws to facilitate the buildup.
Northvolt chief warns of turbulence in battery market — Financial Times (paywall) Anca’s take: Rising costs are affecting almost everything we do, including the speed of the green energy transformation. This is another example of the challenges ahead.
More of what we're reading:
EU parliament backs labelling gas and nuclear investments as 'green' — Reuters
Shell to start construction of renewable hydrogen plant in Netherlands — Reuters
Climate change: ‘Sand battery’ could solve green energy’s big problem — BBC News
Renewables provide 49% of power used in Germany in first half of 2022 — Reuters
UK-based startup Tevva launches hydrogen-electric truck with 310-mile range — CNBC
Electrolyser producers being held back by lack of green hydrogen FIDs — ReCharge News
DATA DIVE
Wind, solar can be main source of EU clean grid by 2035, report says
Source: Ember• Natural gas in the technology driven scenario includes carbon capture and storage (CCS) tech; 'Other renewables' includes marine and geothermal energy.
Wind and solar energy can become Europe’s dominant source of electricity as part of an almost entirely clean power system by 2035, according to a recent report by climate think tank Ember.
Getting there would require additional upfront investments of up to €750 billion on top of existing national plans to decarbonize the grid, for a total of about €1.3 trillion to €1.6 trillion.
However, Europe would save about €1 trillion by 2035 in fossil fuel consumption, and the cost of electricity would also drop.
This means the grid transformation would come at no extra cost beyond countries’ current plans, the report states.
For wind and solar to provide up to 80% of electricity generation by 2035, annual growth in capacity must quadruple by 2025 compared to the last decade, Ember researchers said.
The chart above explores different scenarios for Europe’s power generation mix.
The “stated policy” scenario is based on stated national policies until October 2021 and does not capture any policy announcement since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The other two scenarios, “technology driven” and “system change,” focus on minimizing costs while remaining aligned with the Paris climate agreement goals.
These latter two scenarios would expand clean electrification but differ in their assumptions about available technologies, such as long-duration energy storage and renewable hydrogen, as well as the levels of energy savings.
The technology driven scenario includes the option to invest in new nuclear power plants and power generation equipped with carbon capture technology.
The system change scenario relies more heavily on behavioral change to drive energy savings. Coal is also phased out by 2030 in this scenario and other fossil fuels by 2035.
‘Europe’ refers to the 27 EU countries, as well as to the United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland and six Western Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
AND FINALLY...
Beachside solar
Anca snapped this photo of solar panels next to sunbathing sea lovers by Barcelona’s city beach. The view is from a cable car descending into the Spanish city’s port. Only about 1% of the energy the city of Barcelona produces locally is made from renewables.
Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.
