EUREC has responded to the European Commission’s public consultation on Streamlining of planning and reporting obligations as part of the energy union governance.
The survey asks, “Which elements of the current reporting obligations in the field of energy research and innovation do you consider indispensable?” It refers to the indicators referred to in the SET Plan Communication of 15 Sept 2015 (C(2015) 6317, p9).
The ‘indispensable’ element is the public spending by each Member State on R&I in energy. This figure has political significance, in part because the International Energy Agency has tracked it for decades. COP21’s Mission Innovation also tracks it in its signatory countries. (EUREC recognises that output-related measures are needed, too.)
EUREC supports the capacity of the Energy Union, via its annual State of the Energy Union report, to track indicators specific to the SET Plan’s value as an instrument for ‘joint programming’.
Progress towards the technology performance targets written down in the Issues Papers / Input Papers exercise should be monitored. EUREC would like the EC to present a ‘SET Plan scenario’ in its Impact Assessment for the upcoming RES Directive 2020-2030. This scenario would explicitly use the values agreed between stakeholders, the Member States and the European Commission as its inputs. In doing so three things would be achieved: i) more people would become aware of the SET Plan ii) greater meaning would be given to the Issues Papers / Input Papers exercise iii) the EC would have a scenario that could not be criticised for containing too-conservative assumptions about technology costs or performance.