The European Commission recently published a European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan). It identifies the six most important technologies required to meet climate-change and energy-supply goals, providing detailed road maps with specific targets for the year 2020 and more general outlines for 2050. Importantly, it also links to their regulatory plan and positions at the upcoming major climate-change conference. A couple of quotes from Commission’s Communication, which accompanied the report, are insightful. ”Markets and energy companies acting on their own are unlikely to be able to deliver the needed technological breakthroughs within a sufficiently short time span to meet the EU’s energy and climate policy goals.” That is, you can’t depend on markets alone when time is important. Locked-in investments and vested interests lead to slow change. Also, “[the plan] sets our vision of a Europe with world leadership in a diverse portfolio of clean, efficient and low-carbon energy technologies.” The EU positions the investments as an opportunity, not a burden.

The seven key technologies

1. Wind energy: move more generation offshore and resolve associated grid-integration issues.
2. Solar energy: divided into photovoltaics (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP); PV stresses cost reduction through mass production; CSP calls for 10 first-of-a-kind pilot power plants.
3. Electricity networks: particularly in Europe, power must physically move between countries, and a unified business structure is required. The United States has similar needs.
4. Sustainable bio-energy: combined heat and power more than motor fuels.
5. Carbon Capture and Storage: acknowledges that coal will be used for the next 30 years; must deal with the CO2 in this period.
6. Sustainable nuclear fission: long favored by Europe, sets specific pathway to develop new “generation-IV reactors.”
7. Fuel cells and hydrogen: calls for portable, stationary, and transport applications; start now to build a hydrogen infrastructure across the EU.

Cost and funding

An important aspect of the plan is an estimation of cost and recommended allocation between the technologies. Solar would receive the largest share followed by carbon capture and storage, with a recognition that coal will be here for some time and the associated need to minimize CO2 to the atmosphere. Costs would be shared by private industry and public sector. A significant source of public funding would come from sales of carbon allowances from their cap-and-trade program. This, of course, is exactly opposite from U.S. plans, where it looks like they will be given away.

In my opinion, this plan is a significant challenge to the United States. Our Energy Department needs to step up and present its own comprehensive vision and use its legal powers, its purse, and the bully pulpit to push it forward. The United States is often philosophically wedded to the free market and absence of central control; however, these are not effective when time is of the essence. Time is of the essence for the problem of CO2. Think the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program—time mattered. The ability to make critical, timely decisions and a central coordinating function carried the day.

image from flickr user tristam sparks