EU to promote clean energy with ‘smart cities’
The EU’s bid for leadership in green technologies will focus on developing a network of “smart cities” to demonstrate renewable and other low-carbon energies in Europe, according to draft European Commission proposals. The recommendations are featured in a draft communication setting out funding for the EU’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan).
The EU executive hopes that long-awaited funding proposals for the SET Plan will speed up the market uptake of low-carbon technologies that already exist, but are still too expensive to compete with fossil fuels. The Commission argues that billions will need to be invested in basic research over the next decade to get the Union back up to speed with the US, which has dedicated around €555 million to energy research for the next five years.
“Without a similar effort, Europe will eventually fall behind as new discoveries overtake current technologies,” the communication says.
One of the biggest investments that the Commission wants to make is to select 25 to 30 European cities to pioneer green technologies by 2020. “These ‘Smart Cities’ will be the nuclei from which smart networks, a new generation of buildings and alternative transport means, will develop into Europe-wide realities that will transform our energy system,” the document states.
The cities would become champions of energy efficiency and renewable energy, where electric cars are fuelled with renewables produced in the buildings for their electricity needs. The Commission hopes to start with “low-carbon zones” and move onto low-carbon cities and regions.
The EU should build 5-10 new testing facilities for new wind turbine components and up to 10 demonstration projects of next generation turbines, the draft states. This would aid the necessary move to offshore wind energy production, helping the bloc to produce up to a fifth of its electricity needs from wind in 2020, it says. To tap into unlimited solar energy resources, the Commission foresees five pilot photovoltaic plants and 10 “first-of-a-kind” concentrated solar power plants to bring down costs and improve efficiencies.
Moreover, the plan foresees large-scale demonstration of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, up to 30 bioenergy plants and deployment of new generation of nuclear reactors in Europe.
The publication of the funding plan has been postponed several times but sources expect it to be unveiled around the SET Plan summit organised by the Swedish EU Presidency on 21-22 October in Stockholm.
EU officials are still calculating the exact needs for funding and how it will be split between industry and the public purse but the draft estimates that additional money needed to pay for the programme would be above €50 billion over the next decade. This would require almost tripling annual investment from the current €3 billion.
