Recently, the European Commission issued a temporary emergency policy proposal stating that in order to promote diversified energy supply, the EU will accelerate the increase in the proportion of domestic renewable energy installed capacity and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. Specific measures to be taken will include temporarily relaxing environmental protection requirements for building renewable energy power plants, simplifying approval procedures, and setting a maximum approval time limit. However, the industry generally believes that the current measures introduced by the EU are still mainly to deal with the short-term energy crisis, and the long-term effective guarantee of energy supply is still unclear.

■ Simplify renewable energy management process

The European Commission stated that the lengthy and complicated management process has always been the main obstacle to the construction of renewable energy and related infrastructure in Europe. As early as May this year, the European Commission proposed in its energy plan that it would simplify the approval process for clean energy projects; in October, the European Council also issued a call for countries to speed up the deployment of renewable energy projects. However, the deteriorating situation in the European energy market has forced the European Commission to take further steps to introduce the above-mentioned emergency proposal.

It is understood the emergency proposals target projects such as solar, existing renewable energy plants and heat pumps. In the field of solar energy, the emergency proposal will provide fast-track approval for projects to install photovoltaic equipment in man-made facilities. Such projects will no longer need to provide environmental assessment results, and the maximum approval time limit for various links such as photovoltaic panel installation, supporting energy storage facilities, and grid connection projects is one month.

At the same time, the EU will further simplify the approval process for the renovation of existing renewable energy projects, and the maximum approval time limit will be set at 6 months. If the power generation increment after the transformation does not exceed 15% of the original capacity, the transformation project will also receive a more simplified grid connection procedure.

In addition, the European Commission also stated that heat pumps are an important technology for the realization of renewable energy cooling and heating. For this reason, heat pump projects will be provided with a maximum approval time limit of 3 months, and a simpler approval process will be provided for small heat pump projects.

The European Commission pointed out that the development of renewable energy will help reduce the EU’s dependence on fossil fuels and benefit major sectors such as electricity, refrigeration and heating, industry and transportation. Energy cost. Currently, the terms of the emergency proposal are valid for one year.

■Cause environmental controversy

From the perspective of the industry, the European Commission’s proposal has brought obvious benefits to the renewable energy industry. EU Climate Affairs Director Frans Timmermans said that the proposal launched this time is another measure for the EU to accelerate the green transition and deal with the energy crisis. “The EU has been able to increase the 2030 renewable energy development target from 55% to 57%,” he said.

According to previous reports from Reuters, affected by factors such as the ecological red line of European countries and the opposition of local residents, European renewable energy projects often experience serious delays, and many countries cannot achieve the established renewable energy development goals. Taking Greece as an example, the average approval period for wind power projects given by the Greek Wind Energy Association can even reach more than 8 years. Previously, the European Wind Energy Association also repeatedly called on EU countries to speed up the approval of renewable energy projects, otherwise it will be difficult for the EU to achieve the established development goals of wind power installations.

It is worth noting that the above-mentioned proposal also pointed out that the classification of renewable energy power plants is “higher than public interest”, which means that the approval process of renewable energy projects will be subject to a more simplified environmental assessment process, which largely avoids the environmental impact caused by bird ecology. , habitat protection and other reasons for project development risks.

However, the statement sparked protests from several environmental groups in Europe. EEB, the largest environmental protection organization in Europe, issued a statement saying that although Europe should promote the growth of renewable energy installations as soon as possible, it should not be at the expense of environmental protection requirements. This move will bring legal uncertainty and may also trigger waves of opposition at the local level . Another European environmental organization, Bankwatch Network, said that Europe should give priority to using idle roofs to install photovoltaic panels instead of considering the challenges to the environment; if the proposal is passed, Europe will face additional risks of damage to the natural environment.

■ Long-term solutions are urgently needed

Despite the controversy, in the eyes of the industry, developing renewable energy as soon as possible is the only choice for the EU. According to the latest report released by climate think tanks E3G and Ember, Europe is still experiencing the worst inflation crisis since World War II. Statistics show that in September this year, the cost of energy consumption in Europe rose by 40.8% compared with the same period last year, and the inflation in the energy sector has promoted the intensification of overall economic inflation.

In this context, renewable energy power generation has become the main tool to ease inflation in Europe. Statistics from E3G and Ember show that during the period from March to September this year, renewable energy generation in the EU accounted for 24% of the overall electricity supply, a record high. The surge in renewable electricity generation has saved the EU more than 99 billion euros in energy costs compared to using imported natural gas.

Despite the outstanding performance of renewable energy generation, the EU’s existing response measures are still far from sufficient to further reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. In response to the intensifying energy supply crisis, the European Union has introduced a number of emergency plans in recent months. On the one hand, EU countries have significantly accelerated the speed of “gas storage”. On the other hand, many EU member states have introduced a number of financial support measures to help residents reduce energy costs, with a total scale of hundreds of billions of euros, including heating for residents Provide subsidies and other key measures.

Under such circumstances, the above-mentioned think tanks warned that the continuous increase in spending by EU governments to solve the energy crisis is obviously unsustainable. In the face of high fossil fuel prices, European countries should introduce long-term energy supply solutions as soon as possible.