Von der Leyen offers diagnosis but no cure on EU’s ecological malaise

Por Zia Weise, Marianne Gros — Sustainability – POLITICO

BRUSSELS — Ursula von der Leyen doesn’t mince words about what’s ailing Europe. She’s less forthcoming about the treatment. 

A scorching summer and the second fossil fuel crisis in four years have left no doubt about the energy and climate challenge facing Europe, giving the Commission president little choice but to go big on the two themes in her State of the Union speech. 

Her sweeping address to the European Parliament on Wednesday covered the horrors of this summer’s scorching heat, the decline of the continent’s major rivers and the imperative to end the continent’s expensive dependence on imported oil and gas. 

“This summer was the summer of truth. Almost no part of our continent was spared,” she said. But as much as she zeroed in on the problems and their urgency, von der Leyen avoided offering solutions to the underlying causes. 

A handful of technical fixes, a few loosely defined initiatives and frequent reminders of the work the Commission has already done defined the speech’s sections on energy and climate — cementing a sense that the EU executive feels it has done its homework in those areas. 

Von der Leyen has, of course, overseen the rollout of a vast policy framework to tackle planet-warming emissions, the deterioration of nature and the transition away from fossil fuels. But the first two years of her second term have also been marked by a rollback of environmental and climate rules in the name of boosting economic competitiveness. 

Her speech thus disappointed those that wanted to see gaps filled, details fleshed out or the backtracking halted. 

“President von der Leyen is right to call this Europe’s ‘summer of truth.’ Europeans have lived through another summer of heat, drought and devastating fires,” said Patrick ten Brink, secretary-general of the European Environmental Bureau, a network of green nonprofits. “The question now is what we do with that truth.” 

Von der Leyen’s main response was a pledge to step up the EU’s preparedness for climate disasters. 

Yet on emissions, she only vowed to stay the course. On energy, a key part of the beginning of her speech and a pressing concern for EU governments ahead of the winter, she promised nothing new. And on Europe’s deteriorating nature, she stayed schtum entirely.

Energy stasis

Von der Leyen was clear-eyed about three key energy problems: The EU’s dependence on expensive fossil fuel imports, a constrained power grid, and the resulting high bills hurting households and businesses. 

She was equally clear about the solution: Clean energy and a switch from technologies that rely on fossil fuel combustion to electric alternatives. 

“We need to electrify Europe. Our goal is to double the share of electricity by 2040. With this, Europe could cut its fossil fuel import bill by €260 billion a year,” she said. “But we also need to ensure that the electricity we generate is available. Last year, we installed more than 80 gigawatts renewable capacity. But six times more capacity is still waiting to be connected.” 

She insisted: “We must invest faster. Speed up grid connections. Develop storage. In short, let’s make Europe’s future electric.”

The general direction of her remarks was welcomed by industry and green groups alike. “We welcome the focus on tackling structurally high energy prices, accelerating electrification and reducing Europe’s exposure to imported fossil fuels,” said metals industry lobby European Aluminium, adding that they wanted to see “concrete measures” to address these issues.

Yet von der Leyen didn’t offer any new ideas for how to accelerate Europe’s long-stagnant electrification rate, though she teased an EU “corporation” to facilitate the stockpiling of critical minerals crucial to the energy transition. 

That’s perhaps because an Electrification Action Plan published before the summer and last December’s European Grids Package contain several measures to tackle these problems.

But von der Leyen also didn’t go into detail on how to boost clean energy, despite her Commission working on reforms of the bloc’s renewables and energy efficiency policies, or how Europe can slash its fossil fuel imports. Nor did she address the winter’s looming gas price crisis and low storage levels in EU countries.

On the flip side, von der Leyen also didn’t give in to any demands from the fossil fuel industry to announce a walkback on the bloc’s methane reduction efforts. 

Emissions sidelined 

Von der Leyen then went on to double down on the urgent climate challenge facing Europe. 

“These were the hottest summer months ever — but probably the coolest of the years to come,” she said after launching into a list of the climate impacts Europe experienced in the past few months, from 35,000 heat deaths to record-low river levels. 

The Commission, she noted, was working on a plan to improve the bloc’s resilience to global warming. On top of that, she announced a “Climate Insurance Alliance” to improve insurance coverage for climate disasters, and a vague “heat wave plan.” She also said she had “senior firefighters” working on a proposal for a European firefighting fleet. 

Regulatory efforts to minimize disaster risk — such as improving forest management to contain wildfires or labor rules to protect workers from heat — did not feature in her speech. 

The emphasis on stepping up preparedness marked a shift away from the Commission’s traditional focus on slashing emissions to avoid disasters from escalating in the first place, signaling that von der Leyen has no plans to strengthen those efforts. 

“Europe can, must and will stay the course on its climate targets,” she said, indicating that she intends neither to backtrack nor to step up the Commission’s climate ambitions. 

Nature absent 

For all her remarks on the destruction of nature through fires and drought, von der Leyen did not comment on the wider ecological crises facing Europe, from biodiversity loss to pollution. 

Environmental policy only made a brief appearance in the form of a new water initiative, a fresh bid to address water scarcity and tackle water risk management in the agricultural sector — but von der Leyen gave no details on what that would include.

Businesses, lawmakers and EU governments, meanwhile, have been asking for the bloc’s core water and habitat conservation rules to be relaxed to speed up industrial and energy projects. The Commission appears to be listening. 

“We will put forward proposals to further speed up permitting. Where projects are in Europe’s strategic interests, we need to massively accelerate,” von der Leyen said. That might be good news for the bloc’s energy transition, but creates tensions with its biodiversity goals. 

And while von der Leyen gave plenty of prominence to energy and climate issues, the issues weren’t threaded throughout her 90-minute speech, leaving questions about how her ambitions fit together. 

On technology, for example, she insisted that the EU needs to unleash the benefits of artificial intelligence, without addressing the climate, energy or water footprint of its infrastructure, which will complicate the bloc’s challenges in these areas. 

“While AI and the regulation of its development featured prominently in her speech, Ursula von der Leyen… did not say a word about the data centres that Europe is deploying on a massive scale,” complained Green MEP Saskia Bricmont. “Their water and energy consumption and their emissions raise fundamental questions, particularly against a backdrop of water shortages and heat waves that are not being properly managed.” 

Fonte: Sustainability – POLITICO