More renewables in the European Union? Yes, we can
The European Union is about to adopt new renewable energy targets for 2030. While going beyond the initially-planned 27% is absolutely feasible, the EU strategy can only be credible if it is based on a good mix between performance and effort obligations, and also includes possible review clauses.
The Gazprom-Naftogaz Stockholm Arbitration Awards: Time for Settlements and Responsible Behaviour
The signing in January 2009 of the gas supply and transit contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz marked a turning point in Russian-Ukrainian gas relations: yearly intergovernmental, last minute and non-transparent winter deals were replaced by a predictable, long term commercial relationship.
The EU Battery Alliance. Can Europe Avoid Technological Dependence?
With the launch of its “battery alliance”, the European Union is finally taking up the industrial battle with Asia and hopes to meet a large share of the surging demand for electrical batteries. Yet, the clock is ticking and the future of battery manufacturing in Europe depends primarily on the strategies that automakers will adopt.
The Role of Gas in the European Energy Transition: Challenges and Opportunities
Following difficult years for the European gas industry, natural gas is back to the front stage.
Europe in the Global Race for Electrical batteries
This study weighs up the different strategic approaches that Europe may adopt in the industrial race for electrical batteries, taking into account the demand potential for e-mobility and stationary storage, the global competitive landscape and the policy support for local players in Asia and the U.S.
The Landscape of Renewable Energy Sources in Europe in 2030
The study analyses the European rules designed to promote renewable energy, highlighting their innovations and the difficulties they will raise. The study highlights the consequences of some of the measures envisaged and pays particular attention to the electricity market.
E-mobility: European Energy and Transport Policies at Crossroads
European clean transport policy envisages the development of charging infrastructures for electric vehicles within a European e-mobility framework. After the downturns of the Volkswagen scandal and the prevailing low European carbon price, the EU is bringing forward car passenger transport electrification. This requires new business models based on interoperability.
EU Security of Gas Supplies : Solidarity Runs Through the Pipeline
Given the tensions between the EU and its main gas supplier, Russia, the European Commission has been revisiting since 2014 its energy security strategy.
The European Union : When the Commission and Governments put the Future of Electricity Producers at Stake
RWE, EON, EDF, ENGIE and other large utilities are in financial turmoil. This situation, which would have been unlikely twenty years ago, is related to several failures in governance within the EU as well as to global evolutions. This Edito Energie analyses the situation of large European electricity producers in light of the European energy policy.
Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of European innovation capacity within the Strategic Energy Technologies (SET) Plan
The purpose of this policy report is to explore the strengths and weaknesses of European innovation capacity within the Strategic Energy Technologies (SET) Plan Integrated Roadmap.
The European Energy Policy: Building New Perspectives
“After 17 years of supranationality, we are still seeking how to define a common energy policy and what it might be. [...] Could we have done more in one generation? Or were goals only established to achieve a political balance which it was explicitly agreed to ignore, once the machinery began to operate? Historians will have a hard task to distinguish between excessive ambitions and national hypocrisies”.
Commission Communication of the EU Energy External Policy: Was There an Alternative?
EU is the world’s largest net energy importer and consumer, so why do its Members continue to negotiate individually with the rest of the world rather than as one big market with a big voice?
European Energy Policy: Energy Savings Glass 2/3 Empty
Summing up Europe’s climate policies suggests we still haven’t grasped the full potential for energy savings. We act as if we were living in a system with infinite resources easily exploited by human innovation and ingenuity. We focus on the efficiencies we can gain from components of our system, but not on the system as a whole and we do not consider how the other billions of people on earth can achieve our level of comfort with a resource or carbon-constrained future and with aspirations that necessarily imply sharply growing energy consumption.
Energy Efficiency: The Commission's Complicated Calculations
Who hasn’t heard of the 3x20, those pillars of European energy policy? And yet who is able to give their exact definition?
Will there ever be a European Gas and Electricity Market ?
A year ago, I would have responded to this question rather positively. Nowadays, I am not so sure. My relative optimism before was based on the replacement of a group of monopoly-holding (at least regionally) national operators, by an oligopoly of operators with a sizeable proportion of their activity outside of their countries of origin. These included EON, EdF, RWE, ENEL, GDFSuez, IBERDROLA, VATTENFALL and others.
Energy Efficiency: Smart but not Sexy
Marie C. DONNELLY, DG Energy, reported that the EU is “unlikely to achieve a 20% reduction on the current set of policies” [1] by 2020. According to her, based on a modelling exercise, the estimate of energy savings “would be somewhere between 9 and 11% on current policies” in spite of the contribution of the economic crisis to decreasing the EU primary energy consumption.
Saving Wind from its Subsidies
European subsidies for wind energy are too high and unspecific. They risk frustrating their own objective.
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