Navigating risks and enhancing resilience: charting Europe’s energy and climate pathways

 Accelerating the development, adoption, and scaling-up of innovative clean energy technologies the net-zero transition is to be successful.

This set of parallel roundtable briefings will feature short and inspiring conversations on three breakthrough technologies led by three green tech entrepreneurs.

The EU needs to limit its exposure to energy shocks. Despite decreasing dependency on Russia, the EU still imports almost 60% of its energy and faces new supply risks. Strengthening energy security and accelerating decarbonisation will need to remain high political priorities in the next EU institutional cycle.

A resilient and well-integrated European energy system is essential for achieving the EU’s key priorities. Reliable and abundant clean power is crucial for advancing digital technologies and AI, enhancing industrial and economic competitiveness, and meeting the 2030 and 2050 climate targets.

This future clean energy mix will rely heavily on electricity. Although the share of renewables in the EU energy mix has doubled over the past twenty years, the renewables sector faces challenges. Solar and wind industries are affected by volatile prices of critical raw materials, long permitting processes, and a significant investment gap in grids and electricity storage, which constrain the potential of renewables in Europe.

• What is the role for nuclear energy and small modular reactors in the hard-to-decarbonise sectors of the economy?
• How can we improve the speed and scale of the clean energy transition?
• How can we improve the quantity and quality of our grids?
• How does the acceleration of the clean energy transition support the EU’s competitiveness aims?
• Does Europe need a vision for ‘energy sovereignty’?

As the climate crisis accelerates, it is exacerbating social, political, and environmental tensions. Despite progress in climate policy over the past five years, it appears as though support for Europe’s ‘man on the moon’ moment is slipping and, as climate policies are implemented across the EU, the Green Deal agenda is becoming increasingly politicised.

In the face of political headwinds, the EU will need to take further measures to bridge climate action with the just transition and social resilience, to ensure that public support for the clean energy transition is maintained.

The incoming Commission will have an opportunity to tackle these issues immediately. The outgoing Commission set a target of 90% net greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2040. However, it will be the responsibility of the new mandate to turn this target into a legislative proposal. This framework should integrate climate adaptation and just transition from the beginning as we cannot regulate our way to net-zero.

The role of the private and public sectors as well as citizens will be instrumental in delivering the EU’s climate objectives.

Current levels of public and private investments represent already half of total investments needed to occur every year to deliver on the EU 2030 targets for the energy, buildings, and transport sectors. Yet doubling those investments is essential to deliver the economic, geopolitical and climate benefits EU policymakers committed to. To ensure an equitable transition, member states will need to support the poorest as they retrofit housing and transition away from combustion engines.

In this challenging geopolitical and economic environment for the Green Deal, and climate policies more broadly, deliberative and ambitious leadership will be needed to realise the aims of a climate-safe future.

• How can public support for the European Green Deal be strengthened?
• What role does systemic climate adaptation play in safeguarding livelihoods and ecosystems in Europe?
• What is the role for the private sector in driving positive change for climate adaptation measures?
• How can we mobilise greater investment in climate resilience and adaptation?