Working towards more innovative and competitive national energy and climate plans

Member States are required, under the new regulation on the governance of the energy union and climate action (part of the Clean energy for all Europeans package), which entered into force on 24 December 2018, to establish a 10-year national energy and climate plan (NECP) for the period from 2021 to 2030. In July 2019, the Commission published its assessment of these plans.

Final versions must be submitted by Member States by the end of 2019, and in view of this, representatives of the NECPs technical working group, the SET Plan (Strategic Energy Technology Plan) steering group and the Innovation Fund expert group gathered for the first time on 16th September 2019. The aim was to see ways how to better integrate research, innovation and competitiveness in the NECPs, in order to identify the technologies to be further developed and financed as well as the cooperation and coordination mechanisms that can strengthen national efforts.

Member States have been cooperating through the SET Plan on the identification of common priorities and the development of 14 implementation plans on the different technologies with agreed targets to reach. The drafting of the NECP is an occasion to reflect these efforts and to translate them at the national level. Horizon 2020 has played a key role in enabling cooperation between Member States on common research and innovation priorities and the future Horizon Europe plan will continue supporting these efforts. In parallel, the EU has developed one of the world’s largest funding programmes for demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies, the Innovation Fund, which will focus on energy intensive industries, carbon capture and utilisation, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy generation.

The meeting concluded with Member States agreeing they would finalise their plans taking into account the feedback from the Commission and the discussion’s outcomes. They also welcomed the Commission’s proposal to have a further meeting to continue discussing how to achieve the 2030 targets and pave the way towards decarbonisation, taking into consideration the on-going work of the SET Plan and the future Horizon Europe programme.