The Energy Commissioner Cañete is fighting to defend the European Commission’s controversial “gas supply package,” which was unveiled last week. The Greens criticised the focus on fossil fuels and deny that gas offers a reliable bridge from coal to renewables.
Miguel Arias Cañete met EU lawmakers on February 22 to present the “security of gas supply package,” released almost one week ago.
“The future of the EU’s energy supply should rely mainly on natural gas for at least the coming two decades,” the EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy said.
Cañete explained to the members of European Parliament (MEPs) that the proposals are “not about using more gas, but using it in a more intelligent way and efficiently.”
In order to achieve good energy efficiency, a “gas transition” needs to be put on track, explained Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, the European Commission’s spokesperson.
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“This is a bridge between coal and renewables, but we remain optimistic, pragmatic, but very, very realistic of what can be done overnight,” Itkonen said.
“Because we have lots of member states who still use a lot of gas and then this is not something that we can brush aside overnight.”
Commenting on the so-called gas transition, Dan Nica, the centre-left Socialist and Democrat’s energy policy spokesperson, explained that “this package allows us to achieve the target that by 2025, 30 percent of the electricity consumed by a country is to come from a renewable energy sources. Without a gas strategy transition, the EU will not achieve this target,” Nica said.
In a report published in 2014 called “A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas,” Robert W. Howarth from the Carnell University in Ithaca (US) denied the transitional role of natural gas.
“While it is true that less carbon dioxide is emitted […] when burning natural gas compared to coal or oil, natural gas is composed largely of methane, which itself is an extremely potent greenhouse gas,” Howarth wrote, adding that methane is “far more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.”
Fossil fuels don’t match Paris agreement
Claude Turmes for the Greens argued that “the Commission has completely ignored the COP21 Paris Agreement, because there’s nothing in the proposals on improving energy efficiency and promoting renewables in the transport sector or in heating and cooling systems.”
At the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) in December 2015, the EU pledged to keep future temperatures below 2° Celsius by focusing on non-carbon energy sources.
Therefore, such a package promoting gas is not appropriate after the Paris deal, argued the Green MEP.
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“This means that we need to leave gas, coal and oil in the ground. So it is a bit at least a difficult timing that the European Commission now, as a first stand after Paris, comes up with a communication to say ‘let’s ignore Paris, let’s do more fossil fuels in Europe,'” Turmes said.
“I think what we need is a high efficiency, a high renewable pathway for Europe and we need a EU Commission which definitely doesn’t suggest that we need enormous investments in fossil fuels still.”
North Stream pipeline controversy
One of the main targets of the EU’s strategy is to decrease its dependency on a single gas supplier, say Russia.
Cañete pointed out to the EU lawmakers that “after the gas crises of 2006 and 2009, which left many millions out in the cold, we said ‘never again.'” He added that “the stress tests of 2014 showed we are still far too vulnerable to major disruption of gas supplies.”
Political tensions on EU borders give ammunitions to the European Commission by warning that the risk is still there.
“We cannot wait until another disruption of gas supply, we need to act now and make sure we have enough gas supply everywhere,” Cañete said. Therefore, this package is “it’s about guaranteeing security and diversification.”
According to the Commission, the EU gas import dependency was at about 65 percent in 2013, with 39 percent of the imports coming from Russia, 30 percent from Norway and 13 percent from Algeria.
Ten billions of euros would be needed for investment in infrastructure, including new cross-border pipelines and the building of terminals for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
At the same time, Russia is discussing about doubling its North Stream pipeline to Germany despite the Ukraine crisis. The construction should start in April.
For MEP Turmes, the Commission’s seriousness about reducing its gas dependency is questionable.
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“Sorry if the Commission is serious about reducing the dependency on Gazprom, the first thing to do at this very moment is to be very vigorous against the doubling of the North Stream pipeline,” Turmes said.
“So, where is the Commission on being very vigorous against the doubling of the North Stream? So, I think this is pure hypocrisy.”
The European Commission’s gas package should come into force by 2019, after approval of the European Parliament and the EU member states.
- Author: Laeticia Markakis, Euranet Plus News Agency
- Further image credits: (middle 1 & 2) Visit of Fatih Birol, Executive Director of International Energy Agency (IEA), to the European Commission on February 19, 2016 / ec.europa.eu | (middle 3) Pipes for Nord Stream / flickr / Steffen Sameiske / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
