Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-431)
Mr Hans Van Steen and Mr Jean-Arnold Vinois
5 JUNE 2008
Q420 Lord James of Blackheath: Can
you tell us what incentivisation that might provide?
Mr van Steen: For offshore?
Q421 Lord James of Blackheath: Yes.
Mr van Steen: There are several issues
that are currently seen as barriers to offshore. One is technology,
as you have mentioned. Another is the spatial planning involved.
You need to develop methodologies for doing spatial planning offshore,
which we do not have at the moment. There is the issue of grid
connections. Sometimes these offshore parks will be located in
areas where they could be hooked up to different grids, so there
need to be some sort of rules that can be applied in that sense.
We are looking at all these things, but we have not yet got a
full picture because this is a document that is still under development.
We have a public consultation out currently that closes at the
end of June where we are inviting all stakeholders to come forward
with their views so that we know exactly what the main issues
to be addressed are. Hopefully we will get input on the kinds
of things you are mentioning from some of the people most affected
by these constraints.
Q422 Lord James of Blackheath: Is
there any scope for an EU-led initiative to monitor and advance
or centralise the technological developments to speed up the process
and ensure that at least we have state of the art still with us
in ten to 20 years' time?
Mr van Steen: It is one possibility that
we could look at: a big European-wide technology project in this
area. We have our Strategic Energy Technology Plan where wind
and wind turbine technology was identified, together with second
generation—
Q423 Lord James of Blackheath: My
five minutes are up, but given the huge concentration that Europe
has on this whole project I find it astonishing that it has not
happened already.
Mr Vinois: We have a technology platform
to deal with that within the research and development programme
covering 2007-2013.
Q424 Lord James of Blackheath: Is
it delivering?
Mr Vinois: That is where you put together
all the players and have a good exchange of information on the
evolution of technologies and what should be done and what kind
of incentives should be brought about to push for that.
Lord James of Blackheath: Thank you.
My five minutes have gone!
Chairman: We will be dealing with this
issue in our report, we think it is quite important.
Q425 Lord Walpole: I was going to
ask you about the relevance of the renewable targets, the EU's
energy policy, and I was going to ask you a little bit more about
the efficient use of energy, but probably this comes in your Energy
Efficiency Action Plan. I was going to ask you about security
of supply which I think you did touch on, but would you like to
go further on that?
Mr van Steen: We can do that. Maybe Jean
can also say a little bit on that. Just on the energy efficiency
point, as Jean said at the beginning, we do not have a binding
target for energy efficiency in the way that we have for renewable
energy. Some people criticise that, but we see the renewable energy
target to be a great incentive for energy efficiency because it
is obvious when you have a target which is expressed as a percentage
of your energy consumption you can try and achieve your target
both by increasing the share of renewables but also by reducing
the overall consumption. In a way, the renewables targets are
also stimulating efforts on energy efficiency, we hope. The two
are very closely linked. Just to come back to the question of
whether the 20% is achievable, and if we feel confident, I talked
about the oil price but another very important element is energy
efficiency. Without a lot of energy efficiency and efficient use
of energy in 2020 it will be very hard to meet the renewables
target because obviously the absolute amount of renewable energy
you will need will be higher in that situation. On security of
supply, in the impact assessment that we did for the roadmap when
we first proposed the 20%, we did have some analysis and said
if we met the 20% by 2020 it would lead to a reduction in fossil
fuel consumption in the order of 300 million tonnes oil equivalent
in 2020. Of course, not all of this would be imported but a big
proportion, perhaps just less than half, so there would be positive
implications for security of supply. What is important here is
that renewables replace different types of energy. Some renewables
replace fossil fuels where the import dependency is very, very
high, especially oil, but those are also renewables, as we have
seen, turn out to be rather controversial, especially when it
comes to biofuels. But they are the ones that directly replace
oil or petroleum products. It also depends on whether or not we
are going to import biomass, for example. That also has security
of supply implications. But we will be importing from different
parts of the world, we will not be importing biomass from the
Middle East for example. Security of supply is also a concept
of diversification. We do believe that it does have positive implications
for security of supply. Perhaps the maximum one could expect is
a reduction in the percentage of dependency of some 4% or 5%.
Q426 Lord Walpole: Thank you. If
I could just make one quick remark about the efficiency of energy.
I have no idea what Brussels looks like at night, but I am sure
you know what Westminster looks like at night. We do waste a fantastic
amount of energy, do we not? If we could do better, could you
give me a year when the EU will start lowering its energy consumption?
Mr van Steen: I do not think we can give
you that. We can say what the ambition with the Energy Efficiency
Action Plan, is to increase energy efficiency by 20% compared
to a baseline. This is not my particular responsibility in the
Commission since I have my hands full with renewables, but as
far as I understand from colleagues who deal with that, it will
lead to an overall reduction in the level of consumption within
the EU sometime well before 2020 if we meet the 20%. For me, that
is a very, very ambitious target.
Q427 Lord Walpole: I think it is
where we have got to go, is it not?
Mr van Steen: It is certainly where we
have to go, but there are few examples of Member States who have
actually managed to do that, even those that have performed best
when it comes to energy efficiency. The best performing Member
States have managed to keep energy consumption relatively flat
in spite of economic growth and all that.
Q428 Lord Walpole: And population
growth.
Mr van Steen: To my knowledge, no Member
State has managed to decrease energy consumption as such in any
major way.
Lord Walpole: Thank you very much indeed.
Q429 Lord Powell of Bayswater: Can
I ask an entirely different question about the legal base that
you propose under Article 175.1, which is qualified majority voting.
There is a view, in some Member States anyway, that these are
very sensitive issues which go to the heart of national decisions,
including security of supply. Do you expect to have a major argument
in Council as to whether it should have been under 175.2, unanimity?
Mr van Steen: No. We had that discussion
when the 20% target was agreed. In a statement to the minutes
of the European Council the President of the Commission, Mr Barroso,
made a very clear undertaking that no Member State would be forced
to accept a target which it could not accept. What you are referring
to is this business about measures that significantly affect Member
States' choice of energy source and the structure of energy supply.
There is an element of unanimity, one can say, in the sense that
no Member State will be forced to accept a target which it cannot
live with. We have proposed this with a double legal basis, which
is both 175.1 and 95. Article 95 is the internal market. We propose
that for the Biofuels Sustainability Scheme in particular because
we want that to be an internal market measure which should apply
in exactly the same way in all Member States. No Member State
should be allowed to go further on biofuels sustainability for
internal market reasons.
Q430 Lord Powell of Bayswater: You
do not see this replacing the President of the Commission's statement,
relegating that to past history in a sense?
Mr van Steen: No, I do not see that.
Q431 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Before we conclude, I want to ask Mr Vinois if there is
anything that he was dying to say during that fascinating hour
we have just had.
Mr Vinois: Maybe one point of information
linked to some questions that have been put. In the Strategic
Energy Review we will deal with security of supply, which means
we will look much more at the contribution of the internal market
to the security of supply of each Member State and the EU collectively
at whether the infrastructures are there to meet our energy objectives,
including the integration of renewables. It is important to see
how the wind, for instance, onshore and offshore will be connected
to the grid. At the same time we will produce a Green Paper on
the role of the trans-European network policy. It is a policy
which is in the Treaty where up to now we have had mainly the
superposition of national plans to make a European grid but we
need now to have a view on a European grid. We see electricity
as part of that approach. With the internal market we have much
better co-operation among the transmission system operators and
regional regulators in the initiatives. This means we have a lot
of co-operation in looking at how we may best include wind, for
instance, in the electricity grid. The incumbents were not very
keen to bring renewables in because they preferred nuclear or
a thermal power plant. It is important that we create the right
climate with all the players to integrate these new renewable
resources. It is working and we will address it in this specific
paper dealing with infrastructures in Europe.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
that has been an absolutely fascinating explanation by yourselves.
Thank you for answering all of our questions.
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