The potential for successful climate policy in National Energy and climate plans: highlighting key gaps and ways forward

Abstract

BackgroundThe EU “Winter Package” sets out specific energy and climate goals and urged formation of National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) by Member States for 2020 to 2030. Integrating scaled-up mitigation technologies within existing economic and social structures face numerous difficulties and require careful planning. While some options may be less suitable than others within a given country context, solutions exist to mitigate negative impacts and build local acceptance. We assess the resulting plans in the context of: (i) economic effects, the trade-offs arising from scaled-up technologies in terms of energy system- and macroeconomic effects; (ii) climate effectiveness, via assessment of carbon payback times of technologies, and (iii) social aspects, with a focus on identifying approaches for wider social adoption and acceptance of mitigation options. Assessment takes the form of case studies for Greece, Austria, and the Netherlands, three EU member states with very different preconditions.ResultsIn terms of economic efficiency, NECPs lack consideration of the unique properties inherent in large-scale renewable energy deployment, and we suggest a possible way forward for future macroeconomic assessment via incorporating integration costs. For economic efficiency, we find that countries may be overestimating their contributions to GHG reduction targets via failure to incorporate life-cycle based analysis. Addressing feasibility, we find that countries address acceptance to different extents, with Greece and Austria holding stakeholder workshops and allowing for public comment on draft NECPs, while the Netherlands undertook a more extensive effort to ensure local public acceptance and involvement in planning.ConclusionsThe results illustrate that even though NECPs may be finalized, their success is far from ensured, and neglecting to consider key aspects of efficiency, effectiveness and feasibility may result in underestimation of impacts, failure to have as large an impact on GHG reduction as expected, or increasing public resistance to climate policies. We present approaches to deal with gaps in economic and environmental assessment, and highlight methods for improving public acceptance via examples from the case studies and related literature.