Next on the EU's kill list: renewables

This is not a joke

In mid-December last year, the European Council approved a proposal made earlier in the year by the Commission in the RePowerEU plan. Besides deserving a Bad Name Prize, the RePowerEU plan aimed to make ambitious energy transition goals even more ambitious. And it worked. Until the Commission decided it needed to do more to stimulate the use of wind and solar.

Per the decision of the European Council made public on December 19, the 2030 EU energy mix target was updated to include at least 40% renewables — unclear whether these include hydropower but probably yes — and accelerate the permitting process for new wind and solar developments.

Now, the 40% minimum target is less than what the Commission wanted, which was 45%, but that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is the accelerated permitting process aimed at gifting us all with more solar panel-covered fields and more wind turbine-pockmarked mountain tops. Biased much? Not as biased as the EU itself, which plans to kill those same solar and wind projects that I find not entirely aesthetic.

An accelerated permitting process, per definition and per plans, aims to boost the wind and solar power generating capacity of the European Union and do it faster than previously planned. So far so clear. And here the clarity ends because once again the bureaucracy in Brussels is setting impossible tasks for all those people who actually do actual work.