In November, the 30th edition of the annual United Nations climate conference (COP30) is taking place in Belém, Brazil. Until recently, the European Union was the driving factor behind global climate policies, but the days of the EU as a self-described “climate leader” appear to be over, following a major drop in appetite among European voters and national politicians for the EU’s climate policies.
While this is partially due to Trump tariffs and budgetary constraints in response to the war in Ukraine and resulting increased defence expenditure, an additional key factor is what is happening in Germany. The country is going through a profound economic crisis. At the heart of this is not only the loss of cheap Russian gas, but also costly European climate policies. The EU's natural gas price is around five times as high as that of the United States. The cost of the EU's "Emission Trading System" cap and trade scheme, which effectively amounts to a climate tax, is now about twice as big as the total US natural gas price, which is only about one fifth of the EU's natural gas price. That makes Germany’s and Europe’s industry hopelessly uncompetitive. All of this has resulted in a major political change of heart, whereby the German government is also becoming more critical towards EU climate policy.
At the core of this is the EU’s approach to phasing out fossil fuels before renewable technology – wind and solar power – has come to maturity. Wind and solar hold great promise, but adapting the grid and sufficient energy storage are still in the process of being developed.
Despite the decreased popularity of its climate policies, the European Commission has nevertheless proposed yet another climate target, this time by 2040. The likes of French President Emmanuel Macron have already caught up with the change in public sentiment and have been anything but supportive of continuing with “business as usual”. For weeks, the governments of France, Poland and Italy had been demanding that EU leaders should first discuss the matter of the new 2040 climate target before it can be handled at the Council of the EU, the institution gathering European governments in the context of the EU legislative system.
Remarkably, Germany has now joined the more sceptical member states to form a blocking minority, effectively making sure the EU will not be able to decide on the matter before the COP30 Climate Summit in Brazil. Earlier, the European Parliament witnessed rightwing Patriots group securing the position of “rapporteur” to handle this legislative file, which is seen as typical for the old climate policy model of the EU.
More flexibility
Not only are EU politicians are forcing the EU’s climate policies to become more flexible, but so too are the courts. At the beginning of September, the European Court of Justice dismissed the Austrian government’s lawsuit against the classification of nuclear energy as a sustainable energy source, ruling that the European Commission was right to assume that under certain conditions, nuclear energy could contribute to climate protection and therefore receive public funding.
While nuclear energy is carbon-neutral, it has been treated with hostility for years by several European governments and even the European Commission, despite the fact that the Euratom Treaty legally requires the latter to promote nuclear energy. Infamously, Germany decided to continue with its planned nuclear exit even after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which signified the likely end of Germany’s ability to rely on cheap Russian gas and caused a major energy crisis.
Today, even Germany has backtracked on opposition to nuclear energy at the EU level. In Belgium, the new federal government that took power in early 2025 is also trying to save as many of the country’s functioning nuclear reactors, reversing a policy of nuclear phase-out. In recent years, the construction of new nuclear plants has also been decided in the Netherlands, Poland and France.
A changing debate
While the EU’s top-down climate policy model is losing support, alternative policy approaches are gaining steam, with much greater appreciation for innovation and flexibility. At ADIPEC, a major international energy conference that takes place in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of November, the concept of “energy addition” is being embraced, where hydrocarbons alongside nuclear, hydrogen, and other renewable energy types are all leveraged to meet growing energy demand. Integral to that idea is that before phasing out legacy systems, overall energy capacity needs to be increased. In other words: let’s first properly develop alternatives to fossil fuels before phasing them out. With the EU’s rigid approach being abandoned by European governments, this alternative kind of thinking may now gain steam at COP30. Notably, ADIPEC will also explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform our energy systems.
Fundamentally, embracing technological advances makes much more sense than trying to pick the future winners in the technological race. Solar energy is, for example, clearly presenting challenges to the grid, and it may have even led to Spain’s recent major blackout, but this does not mean that no solutions can be found for this. At the same time, hydrogen – as a storage solution for wind and solar power – and sustainable biomass may well become successful without the regulatory and financial privileges awarded to it by the EU.
As conferences like ADIPEC 2025 approach, major policy choices await the EU. A new global policy narrative of energy resilience and intelligent transformation is taking shape there. As also the ongoing debate in Spain on how to avoid another blackout rages, the question now is not whether change is coming, but how fast Europe can adapt its climate and energy policy.
Important throughout all of this is that EU policymakers respect the principle of “tech neutrality”. That means no subsidies for hydrogen, as promising as this solution may be. Perhaps nuclear power will turn out to be too expensive after all, even with deregulation, as its opponents have been maintaining, and adaptations to the grid will deliver the promises made by proponents of solar power. Perhaps the market will deliver yet another outcome. Throughout history, it has always proven to be very tricky to predict anything here, so humility should be the guiding principle for policymakers.
Pieter Cleppe is a research fellow at the Property Rights Alliance and the editor of BrusselsReport.eu
Source: Eureporter
