EURELECTRIC promotes measures to Decarbonise Transport and Building Sectors through Electrification

EURELECTRIC has launched a campaign promoting the benefits of electricity in achieving the EU’s decarbonisation objectives for the transport and the heating and cooling sectors. The Toolkits on Decarbonising the Transport and the Heating and Cooling Sectors highlight the key role that electricity will play in driving the cost-effective decarbonisation of these sectors.

“In its ability and commitment to become carbon‐neutral by 2050, the electricity industry can lead the drive to decarbonise Europe. The time has come to recognise the many positive effects a fuel switch to electricity in the non-ETS sectors can imply when it is paralleled with the decarbonisation of the power sector,” said EURELECTRIC Secretary General Hans ten Berge. “As the power sector delivers increasingly decarbonised electricity to consumers, electricity becomes the obvious choice for driving low-emission transport as well as in the heating and cooling sector,” he added.

Transport is responsible for about a quarter of EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is almost exclusively dependent on oil for fuel. It is the only major sector in the EU in which GHG emissions are still rising. Meanwhile, the transition of the power sector is leading to a much cleaner, interactive and customer-friendly electricity system. Electro-mobility is therefore an essential part of the solution to Europe's transport and energy challenges of reducing GHG emissions, limiting air pollution and improving energy security. As an example, already today a standard Electric Vehicle consuming 15kWh per 100km, is only responsible for 50g CO2/km.

EURELECTRIC welcomed the Commission’s Communication on a European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility published in July as it identifies a number of actions that will be necessary to decarbonise the transport sector. The Toolkit on Decarbonising Transport puts forward a number of recommendations and policy actions required to realise the potential of electro-mobility in the upcoming legislative agenda. These include more stringent CO2 emissions performance standards for vehicles, improved public charging access and the further integration of electric vehicles via smart charging into an improved infrastructure market.  

With 75% of energy consumed for heating and cooling still causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2014, decarbonising this sector presents a significant challenge. To achieve the EU’s climate and energy goals, the heating & cooling sector must sharply reduce energy consumption as well as its use of fossil fuels.

As key energy efficiency legislation comes up for review in the coming months, EURELECTRIC believes that the EU should aim to decarbonise heating and cooling by tightly interlinking it with the decarbonising electricity system. The upcoming review of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), as well as legislation on a European electricity market design, gives EU policymakers an important opportunity to take the necessary steps to deliver on this objective. We believe that policymakers should improve financing tools, address policy costs in electricity bills to enhance demand response and fix the methodology of the primary energy factor (PEF) applied in energy efficiency legislation.

In the Toolkit on Decarbonising Heating and Cooling, EURELECTRIC stresses the need to use the opportunity presented by the current extensive legislative reviews to concrete and ambitious action, as an effective contribution to the EU’s climate and energy objectives.

These Toolkits will be further supplemented with further analysis and messages on the various legislative proposals, along with concrete proposals for the implementation of the European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility and the Strategy on Heating and Cooling.