European Parliament Approves Higher Renewable Energy Targets 

The European Parliament voted on Tuesday to endorse much higher binding renewable energy targets by 2030, but the bill will need approval from all EU member states to become a law.

Earlier this year, the European Union member states and the European Parliament reached a political agreement to raise the targeted share of renewable energy in the EU’s energy consumption to 42.5% by 2030, up from a current target of 32%.

The target is binding, Markus Pieper, a Member of the European Parliament, said on Twitter in March, adding that the deal also envisages faster approval processes for wind and solar projects.

The provisional political agreement – part of the EU’s efforts to ditch Russian energy as soon as possible and become a net-zero bloc by 2050 – needs to be endorsed by both the EU Council and the European Parliament to become law.

The European Parliament passed the bill on Tuesday with 470 votes in favor, 120 against, and 40 abstained.

The vote on the renewable energy targets was held after France received assurances that hydrogen production from nuclear power would also be included in the so-called Renewable Energy Directive.

In the higher renewable energy targets, the EU allowed nuclear power to play a role in the production of green hydrogen at the insistence of France, which gets more than 60% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

The Renewable Energy Directive is a key part of the European Green Deal, the agreement paving the way for the EU to become a carbon-neutral bloc by 2050.

According to Eurostat, renewable energy represented 21.8% of the energy consumed in the EU in 2021, down from 22.1% in 2020.

The share of renewable energy varies a lot among EU member states. For example, Sweden is the leader with more than 60% of its energy coming from renewable sources, while Luxembourg, Malta, and the Netherlands have just over 10% renewable energy use, per Eurostat data.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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