This report gives an overview about the political framework for renewable energy deployment in the EU with a focus on potential future cooperation between Member States for CSP deployment. The content complements related MUSTEC project analysing and identifying, inter alia, reasons for the limited use of cooperation mechanisms in the past, drivers and barriers for the market uptake of CSP in the EU and potential obstacles to the use of cooperation mechanisms for CSP in the future. Thsi report concentrates on the political point of view and analyse mainly the role of energy policy changes occurring after 2020.
For this purpose, the report first describes the present political framework and briefly summarize the limited extent to which cooperation mechanisms have been used so far between Member States. Unfortunately, several EU countries are expected to miss their binding 2020 renewable energy targets, meaning a country-specific percentage number for the share of energy from renewable energy sources (RES) in the gross final energy consumption. These national 2020 targets are the basis for each country’s contribution towards the new EU-wide 2030 renewable energy target. Therefore, an accelerated expansion and use of renewable energy technologies is needed in the coming years and in turn cooperation and cross-border actions will likely gain in importance.
Changes of the EU renewable energy policies, in particular the definition of a new binding EU-wide target for the share of renewable energies by 2030, that become effective in 2020 and which are stipulated in EU Regulation 2018/1999 (Governance Regulation) and Directive 2018/2001, are thoroughly explained in section 2.2. The discussion focuses mainly on measures for the support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources and the possibilities for the use of cooperation mechanisms between EU Member States.