Powering sovereignty

With the recurrent energy crisis affecting Europe's energy supply, Europe’s post-2030 Renewable Energy Framework must do more than just increase the share of renewables in transport. 

It must also rethink its dependency pathways on imported fuels. 

One way to do so is to cut the amount of energy the sector needs, which will inevitably reduce fuel imports and will make the transport system less exposed to oil and bio-feedstocks supply shocks.

Reflected in AccelerateEU and the Electrification Action Plan, this year we have seen a paradigm shift resulting from the energy crisis. Direct electrification is increasingly recognised as the clearest and more ambitious way to cut energy demand, while allowing higher competitiveness, security of supply, and lower energy prices. 

In transport, every electric car, van and truck reduces demand for imported fuels, making electrification primarily an economic and energy security policy with emissions reduction a co-benefit. By combining much greater energy efficiency with increasingly domestically produced renewable electricity, electrification offers the most direct route to European transport energy sovereignty.

Weakening the current car CO₂ standards would slow electrification and increase fuel demand, requiring greater use of fossil fuels, Annex IX advanced and waste biofuels, and e-fuels. Faster EV uptake, on the other hand - driven by corporate fleet standards and scrappage schemes, for example - would cut overall fuel demand and reduce reliance on imports.

A higher headline transport renewable energy target cannot, on its own, deliver greater energy sovereignty. Without ambitious electrification measures, the target could be met through greater reliance on scarce and imported fuels, while leaving Europe exposed to volatile global energy markets.

To ensure the future Renewable Energy Framework becomes an energy security and sovereignty tool, policymakers must look beyond the headline renewable energy transport target. What matters is not only how high the target is, but how it is met. A higher RES-T target must therefore be accompanied by ambitious electrification measures and a correspondingly higher contribution from renewable electricity. 

All in all, the 2040 RES-T must power sovereignty by accelerating the shift towards cleaner and more efficient transport, anchored in domestically produced energy.

Here's what the EU must prioritise in the upcoming Energy Union Framework for the decade ahead: