The aim of the European Grids Package is to reduce bottlenecks when integrating Europe's growing renewable energy supply.
Overall, the package contains some much-needed and promising elements including a commitment to more EU coordination for the planning of the energy system, with the EU Commission in charge of developing a central EU scenario. This is a positive change to EU energy planning, as infrastructure development can better ensure far reaching benefits across the entire EU, and that renewable power can more easily flow between east and west, and north and south.
There are also stronger rules on public participation and community benefits that ensure communities which host new electricity infrastructure have a say in the decision-making and receive direct benefits from the project.
“This package is a much-needed step towards accelerating Europe's transition to a fully renewable and resilient grid” said Tom Lewis, Energy Policy Expert, CAN Europe. "Through new European-level planning, we can expand and modernize grids more effectively, while maximizing the use of our existing networks. New rules of public participation and benefit sharing will allow citizens to reap the benefits of renewable power, strengthen public support, and prevent delays to the transition."
However, CAN Europe argues that weakening environmental safeguards to speed up permitting carries a real risk of undermining nature protection and eroding public trust which could further delay the rollout of crucial electricity infrastructure even more.
“Acceleration must go hand in hand with robust environmental protection with nature, climate, and energy security goals reinforcing one another” added Mr Lewis. “Reopening RED III and its environmental provisions for permitting would carry a real risk of delaying transposition and implementation, and with it, Europe's ability to rapidly deploy the renewables it urgently needs.”
The Energy Highways Initiative is a major boost for much needed cross-border energy infrastructure priorities that require fast-tracked political and financial support. However, one of the projects, the Trans-Balkan Pipeline (TBP) Reverse Flow Initiative, gives special attention to fossil gas by benefiting from greater political coordination, enhanced permitting support, and targeted actions to remove obstacles to the maximized utilization of the pipeline.
“While the Energy Highways Initiative is promising when it comes to fast-tracking political and financial support for cross-border electricity infrastructure, it also provides a backdoor for more fossil gas to come into the EU” said Esther Bollendorff, Senior Gas Policy Expert at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe. "After the EU's political agreement on phasing out from Russian gas by 2027, the Trans-Balkan Pipeline will open the floodgates for massive US LNG imports coming into the EU via Greece, going up to Ukraine for storage and to be dispatched from there to Central Eastern Europe. This is a major contradiction to the aim of this package, strengthening energy security, reducing energy prices and integrating more renewable energy."
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