Brussels loosens 'binding' efficiency plans

The draft directive is intended to help the EU reach its nominal target of a 20% increase in energy efficiency by 2020.

It is now being examined by several Commission departments before publication in late June.

But proposals, initially tabled in March, to make the target binding if member states are still lagging in December 2013 have been merged with a Commission assessment process.

As a result, the revision now appears to have been pushed back to June 2014, by which time the current European Commission led by José Manuel Barroso will have left office.

Stefan Scheuer, a former green campaigner who now heads an environment consultancy firm, told EurActiv that the 20% energy savings target for 2020 no longer sounded credible to him.

"Moving the deadline beyond 2013 shows a lack of seriousness from this Commission to make it happen," he said.

"In 2014 it will be left to the successor to Barroso's team, so they are probably putting their cards on the table now and showing that they are insufficient."

Strong opposition to binding targets

Binding efficiency goals are one of the strongest weapons in the EU's armoury for reducing CO2 emissions, while still improving long-term economic profitability.

Unlike the EU's other 2020 targets - for renewables and CO2 cuts - the 20% increase in energy savings is not legally binding, and is also the only one that the EU is on track to miss.

But because it is expensive in the short-term - and centrally-mandated – binding targets have provoked strong opposition.

Business lobbies and politically conservative member states argue that unilateral adoption of efficiency targets could hurt economic competitiveness.

Sam Rowe, a spokesperson for the European Petroleum Industry Association Europia welcomed the Commission's change of tone on the 2020 goals.

"If things have been watered down, that probably moves us in the right direction," she told EurActiv. "Clearly the Commission has listened a bit."

Reports that business lobbyists have the ear of the energy commissioner have circulated for some time.

One oil lobbyist told EurActiv last week that there had been "huge shifts" in the "receptivity" of officials in DG Energy to their case of late. 

Rowe said that energy efficiency was "certainly part of Europia's ongoing discussions and they do meet him [Oettinger] quite a lot. Ever since he left the entire oil industry out of his energy plan, he's been very open".

High-level advisory group

But EurActiv understands that the energy efficiency directive was not discussed at one influential meeting, the inaugural session of the 'High Level 2050 Roadmap Advisory Group' on 5 May, which met the day before the new draft directive was issued.

There, a panel of 14 experts from the worlds of business, government and academia began a process of advising DG Energy on its 2050 roadmap, which is due to be published in the autumn.

The European Commission's director-general for energy, Phillip Lowe, opened proceedings and "it was clear that energy efficiency was very high on the Commission’s agenda in their discussions with the [European] Council," one attendee told EurActiv.

The meeting addressed the challenge of achieving the political unity needed to bring about far-reaching decarbonisation of the European economy, the source said.

The Advisory Group panel members are: Professor Dieter Helm (Chair), Oxford University; Claude Mandil, director of Institut Veolia Environnement; Professor Jorge Vasconcelos, of the MIT's Portugal Programme; Professor David MacKay, chief scientific advisor to the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change; Andrea Sivarova, consultant to the Slovak Minister of Finance on climate change, and Burston Marsteller, Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency; Arne Mogren, director of the European Climate Foundation.

The list also features: Frederic Hauge, president of the Bellona Foundation; Brigitte Bach, head of energy at the Austrian Institute of Technology; Professor Coby van der Linde, director of the Clingendael International Energy Programme; Professor Eugeniuzs Toczylowski, Warsaw University of Technology; Professor Ignacio J. Perez-Arriaga, Camillas University; Professor Wolfgang Kroger, chief scientific advisor to the Swiss government; Giacomo Luciani, director of international energy studies at the Paris School of International Affairs.