Renewable Energy for Climate Protection and Energy Security: Lessons Learned from the European Green Deal and REPowerEU

The European Green Deal is the lighthouse and key strategy for the European Union (EU) to become climate neutral by 2050. The Green Deal will be implemented by a number of new or amended directives, regulations, and strategic elements. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Green Deal was updated by a strategy named “REPowerEU”, which was designed to accelerate the EU’s transformation towards a sustainable, renewable-based energy system and thus to rapidly reduce Europe’s dependency on (fossil fuel, particularly gas) imports from Russia by drastically scaling up renewable energy deployment. A first ever “European Climate Law” entered into force at the end of 2021, which increases the EU’s greenhouse gas reduction target from minus 40% to at least minus 55% by 2030. To achieve this target, the European Commission (EC) published a package of proposals for enabling legislation and accompanying policies in July 2021, which is titled Fit-for-55, including an amended Renewable Energies Directive (RED), an amended Energy Efficiency Directive, a revised Emissions Trading Scheme, a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and a handful of additional communications and proposals. While these proposals were already being discussed between the European Parliament and European Council to reach a final agreement on targets, policies and measures, the ongoing process was enhanced by the REPowerEU package, which became part of the Fit-for-55 package to the extent that it was not fast-tracked as “emergency regulations” to limit energy prices and to support supply security. Some of the elements of the packages, such as the Emissions Trading Directives, the Effort Sharing Regulation and some others, have already been politically agreed and will be formally adopted in the next few months. Others such as the revised Renewable Energies Directive, the Energy Efficiency Directive, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms are in the process of final negotiations and will most likely be politically agreed by the time the WREC 2023 takes place in July 2023. I shall analyse the status of the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU package and assess the results of the legislative and regulatory processes against the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the objective of enhanced energy supply security. In a final chapter, I shall provide conclusions and recommendations for successfully accelerate the renewable energy transformation as a major driver for reaching net zero emissions well before 2050.