Integrated energy and climate planning
While reading this text on the computer or mobile phone, we prepare food, we sit in chilled rooms while there is 30 degrees Celsius outside or in the warmth of your home enjoying with loved ones during the winter, how many times do we wonder where the energy that comes to us comes from?
it heats, cools, allows us to prepare food and make coffee every morning. The process that starts from energy to plugs in our homes, is debt. But many everyday activities today would be unthinkable without electricity and heat. One of the challenge is that the modern way of energy production at the same time affects human health and disturbs the environment. According to the International Energy Agency data, energy is responsible for two-thirds of the GHG, which are considered to be the main cause of climate change.
Clean energy for all Europeans
The European Union (EU) is seriously considering the impact that fossil-based energy have and has decided to put the solution to this challenge high on its political agenda. After the goals in the field of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and goals for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for 2020, for which many considered they are unattainable, the EU set themselves even higher goals in the same areas for 2030.
In order to meet the set goals, the European Commission presented at the end of 2016 Legislative framework - Clean Energy Package. By adopting the latter of the eight acts from this package in May 2019, the 2030 targets have also become legal obligation for all member states of the European Union. In order to avoid that these goals could remain just a list of desires, Member States are obliged to adopt 10-year national plans, which integrate activities in the field of energy and climate change.
What are and what do the National Energy and Climate Plans bring?
The Governance Regulation, which is part of the Clean Energy Package, regulates the unified content of national energy and climate plans at the EU level. States members are obliged to anticipate national goals, contributions, policies in an integrated plan and measures for each of the 5 dimensions of the Energy Union for the period 2021-2030. Areas covered by integrated energy and climate planning are energy efficiency, decarbonisation of the economy - ie the field of renewable energy sources, energy security, the internal market and the areas of development and research and competitiveness.
Prior to the integrated plans, the EU member states were obliged to do so in over 50 individual plans provided for in various legislative acts. Bearing in mind that all three activities are now integrated into one plan national level, this means that national energy and climate plans are declining administrative burden of states in planning, monitoring and reporting in the field of energy and climate change. Also, long-term planning gives investors the confidence to plan their investments in accordance with plans at the national level. Among others benefits of integrated planning, the Management Regulation encourages the participation of all stakeholders in the planning process. This means the involvement of the interested public, ie. citizens, the civil sector, the economy and the academy, as well as all levels of government, such as local governments and cities in the process of drafting national energy and climate plans.
A clean planet for everyone
That the European Union has decided to go a step further is also proven by the new European Green Deal, where it sets himself the most challenging goal so far, that by 2050 be a carbon-neutral economy. Instruments that will lead the EU as a signpost to the climate the neutral continent encompasses as many as nine areas - from biodiversity and sustainable production food and agriculture, through clean energy, sustainable industry and mobility, sectors construction, emission elimination and climate action. Once this proposal is adopted, the EU will get the first Climate Law, which means that the political vision of the EU by 2050 will become the letter of the law.
What awaits Serbia?
Energy Community (Energy Community - an international organization whose mandate is creating a pan-European energy market between EU member states and countries Western Balkans) passed in 2018 a Recommendation on the preparation of integrated energy and climate plans and guidelines for their adoption. Although the recommendations are not legally binding acts, the aim of this act is to create preconditions for the development of integrated plans. Many countries of the Western Balkans recognized the importance of integrated planning and began drafting integrated energy and climate plans. Namely, Northern Macedonia has already made up the first two chapters of the integrated plan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo * were drafted significant progress in the drafting process, while Montenegro and Albania have begun the process. Parallel with this process, within the Energy Community, the process of setting goals in areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and emissions with effect greenhouses by 2030 for the Western Balkans.
* This title is without prejudice to status and is in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 and the opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo's declaration of independence.
As part of the European integration process, Serbia expects to meet the benchmarks and open a chapter 15, which deals with energy. Development of integrated energy and climate plans in addition to already these benefits, would contribute to the EU integration process and the negotiation itself, because it would bring a long-term perspective to the energy sector. The process of making integrated plans requires both cross-sectoral coordination and inter-institutional communication. Namely, next to energy, climate change has an impact on many other sectors such as agriculture, industry, etc. In this regard, the adoption of the law in the field of climate change is forthcoming passed a public hearing in 2018.
Despite the adopted strategic and legal framework (National Action Plan for Use renewable energy sources from 2013 and the Energy Act from 2014), bylaws (set Regulations from 2016 and 2019) and connection of new plants that produce electricity from renewable energy sources, Serbia will not reach the target of 27% share of renewable energy sources in total final consumption by 2020 (Energy Community Report 2019). Like some for this reason, long and complicated administrative procedures for obtaining are mentioned permit, construction and licensing, transposition of EU regulations without implementation, completed support quotas for solar and wind power plants, as well as the non - introduction of auctions as a system for support for new plants, etc. Given these challenges in meeting the 2020 targets, before the adoption of new goals and accompanying strategic and legal frameworks, a process is expected evaluation, which is now a legal obligation under the Law on Planning System. It's an evaluation necessary to determine where we have been successful and where we have been less successful and why. At the end, it was announced that the European Green Deal will also have a Green Agenda dedicated to states Western Balkans, and it is necessary to follow what awaits us in the future.
Long-term consequences of 2020 decisions
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a world-famous inventor, said: "Energy is the key the problem of the future - the question of life or death. Current energy sources are unreliable and poison our planet. We may survive that poisoning, but the day will come when these energy sources will dry up. " The challenge of fossil fuels as energy sources is their limited capacity, which raises the question what if we run out of supplies? So that we can continue to perform unhindered daily activities from the beginning of the text, we must plan management and development of energy sector - energy policy - long term and to think of generations that are coming. Therefore, the choices in energy sector planning that we make today will take place impact on where our children will be in 2030 and where our grandchildren will be in 2050.
The blog was developed with the support of the Open Regional Fund for South East Europe - Energy Efficiency (ORF-EE) implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The views expressed in the text represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of GIZ's Open Regional Fund for Southeast Europe - Energy Efficiency (ORF-EE), as well as the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence (BFPE).
Varvara Aleksić, consultant in the field of energy and environmental law,
PhD student in the field of energy policy
References (in the text itself in the hyperlink or below):
Balkan Green Energy News. 2020. Western Balkan countries on the way to finalizing their National Energy and Climate Plans. https://balkangreenenergynews.com/western-balkan-countries-on-the-way-to-finalizing-their-national-energy-and-climate-plans/.
Energy Community. 2019. Annual Implementation Report. Vienna. https://www.energy-community.org/dam/jcr:a915b89b-bf31-4d8b-9e63-4c47dfcd1479/EnC_IR2019.pdf .
Energy Community. 2020. NECPs in ENERGY COMMUNITY CPs – presentation for the Renewable Energy Coordination Group meeting. Vienna. https://www.energy-community.org/dam/jcr:4537ab27-eefb-420f-a019-317df11fa46c/RECG_ECS_NECP_0420.pdf.
Energy Community. 2020. Minute of Meeting of the 5th Energy and Climate Commitee. Vienna. https://www.energy-community.org/dam/jcr:470f199a-423f-4967-a6d0-296cdd1da26e/MoM_ECC_25032020.pdf.
European Commission, 2019. European Green Deal. Brussels https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en.
European Parliament and the Council. 2018. Regulation (EU) 2018/1999 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action, amending Regulations (EC) No 663/2009 and (EC) No 715/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council, Directives 94/22/EC, 98/70/EC, 2009/31/EC, 2009/73/EC, 2010/31/EU, 2012/27/EU and 2013/30/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council, Council Directives 2009/119/EC and (EU) 2015/652 and repealing Regulation (EU) No 525/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2018.328.01.0001.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2018:328:FULL.
International Energy Agency. 2019. Global Energy & CO2 Status Report 2019. Paris. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019.
Photography: Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/light-bulb-idea-creativity-socket-3104355/