In view of the devastating consequences of the earthquake in Turkey, the EU mobilizes additional aid. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the delivery of more tents, blankets and heating equipment in a telephone call on Sunday.
There are signs of a diplomatic rapprochement with Greece after Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias flew to the disaster area yesterday. Even the new conservative president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulidis, signaled new negotiations with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus after his election yesterday, as you can read in the News.
The issue of hydrogen is about an economic reboot: The Commission has finally adopted the delegated acts on green hydrogen. I analyzed the leaks: The Commission has written in an improvement for the friends of nuclear power, France and Sweden.
There are delays in another Commission project: The deadline for the Euro 7 emissions standard is unlikely to be met, as Markus Grabitz researched.
There is also considerable pressure on the reform of debt rules. At their meeting tomorrow, EU finance ministers are expected to pave the way for the summit of heads of state and government at the end of March. Christof Roche explains why progress is slow.
The Commission adopted the two delegated acts defining green hydrogen last Friday, the official register shows. “As one of the key elements in the ramp-up, they have held back almost all renewable hydrogen projects to take FID,” tweeted the head of policy at Danish group Ørsted, Josche Muth.
The Commission has not yet published the adopted versions. The Parliament and Council also have two months to raise objections before the legislation enters into force. Nevertheless, leaks of the legal acts circulated on Friday – although there may well still be changes, two sources from the EU apparatus in Brussels told Table.Media over the weekend.
A – on closer inspection – rather small concession is made to France and Sweden, which have a high share of nuclear power or a combination of many renewables and nuclear plants. This is shown by a look at the more important of the two legal acts on liquid or gaseous renewable fuels of non-biogenic origin (RFNBOs).
The most important goal of the legislation is to prevent the energy required to produce hydrogen from boosting the generation of fossil-fuel power plants. In addition, the electricity is supposed to come from new renewable plants added specifically for electrolysis.
The latter criterion – known as additionality – is supposed to be waived under a newly added condition. If the electrolyzer and the renewable plant are located within the same bidding zone, the electricity will be considered green if its CO2 intensity is below 18 grams per megajoule. Converted, this corresponds to 65 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.
According to data from the European Environment Agency, in 2021, the year before the gas crisis and the restart of decommissioned coal-fired power plants, this affected only two member states: Sweden, with nine grams, and France, with 67 grams per kWh.
In concrete terms, this means that hydrogen as nuclear power does not count as green under these rules because the operators of the electrolyzers still have to conclude long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with renewable plants. However, in the “65-gram states”, these can also be old or already state-subsidized wind and solar parks because the principle of additionality is dispensable there.
During a transition period, additionality is to be waived for all states. Compared to an earlier leak, it has been slightly extended: All electrolyzers that come online by the end of 2027 can purchase electricity from green power plants that do not meet the additionality requirements by the end of 2037. An evaluation of the act by the Commission is now also scheduled for Jan. 1, 2028, the latest.
A mix of earlier drafts can be found in the rules for temporal correlation. This requirement is intended to ensure that electrolyzers run as much as possible when there is a lot of wind and solar energy in the grid. Until the end of 2029, operators will be allowed to prove correlation through monthly billing; only after that will they have to measure to the hour. What is new is that the member states will be given the option of requiring hourly billing as early as July 2027.
The rules should also explicitly apply to imported hydrogen, which according to a voice from the German energy industry, only means a clarification.
After more than a year of delay, the Commission now adopted the legal act three days after the Parliament dropped the trilogue on RED 3. In a letter to the Swedish Council Presidency and Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, the negotiators Markus Pieper (CDU) and Nils Torvalds (Renew) had made it clear that without the legal act, they would have no basis for seriously negotiating the targets for hydrogen as an energy carrier in transport and industry.
Correction: The first version of this article stated that the transition period for additionality referred to renewable plants that start operation by the end of 2027. In fact, it applies to electrolyzers that begin operation by then. We corrected the statement.
The start date of July 2025, which the Commission targets for the Euro 7 emissions standard, will unlikely be met. It is foreseeable that the legislative process will not be completed until summer 2024 at the earliest. Subsequently, delegated acts and implementing provisions will have to be adopted. This will take at least another six months. This would leave manufacturers less than six months for implementation, even in the best-case scenario.
In Parliament alone, the procedure will last at least until November. The rapporteur is Alexandr Vondra (ECR). His schedule calls for the report to be presented in May, for amendments from the parliamentary groups to be adopted by the end of June, for a vote to be taken in the lead Environment Committee at the end of October and in plenary at the beginning of November. Only then can the trilogue get underway. Observers assume that the Czech conservative plans far ahead with calculation. He plays for time in order to do the manufacturers a favor and to help push back the entry into force of the unpopular reform as far as possible.
In the Council of Ministers, Euro 7 will be discussed for the first time at EU ambassador level in March. Coreper 1 must prepare the general approach to be decided by the environment ministers. The general approach in the Council is likely to be much more complicated than reaching consensus in the Parliament. Above all, the countries of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, with high production numbers of internal combustion engines, will press for the standards to be relaxed.
The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Austria, will oppose this. It is already apparent that the differences in the German government between Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) and Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP ) are so significant that Germany is unable to speak in the Council working groups on points of the proposed regulation.
Wissing and Lemke are publicly arguing about the costs of Euro 7. Lemke claimed last week that Euro 7 would not cost any jobs, citing figures from the Commission’s impact assessment. Wissing now counters that Euro 7 would be more expensive: by €400 for gasoline vehicles in the middle and upper classes, and by €900 for vans with diesel engines. For trucks, additional costs of between €2,500 and €4,000 are expected.
It is foreseeable that the trilogue will not pick up speed until the Belgian EU Council Presidency in the first half of 2024. It is rather unlikely that the informal agreement in the trilogue will be reached before the European elections in May 2024. Unlike in the Bundestag, there is no law of discontinuity in the European Parliament.
This means that the Euro 7 dossier will not expire with the European elections. However, the reconstitution of the European Parliament and a possible change of the rapporteur would lead to delays in the trilogue.
The industry argues that the demanding Euro 7 targets will require extensive development work on both engines and exhaust gas after-treatment. In the case of diesel, the limits for nitrogen oxides are to be reduced by 43 percent, and delivery vans are to comply with the same limits as passenger cars. In addition, the vehicles are to deliver the limit values even in more extreme driving situations – even at full throttle in first gear.
Development of models with 48-volt power supply, two-stage catalytic converter and electric heating in the exhaust after-treatment system, and obtaining type approval for the models – all of which would normally take 36 months. In its position paper, the VDA calls for the effective date to be postponed for the reasons described: by one year to July 2026 for new models in the case of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and by two years to July 2027 for models already on the market.
Manufacturers have fundamental reservations about the proposed pollutant standards for commercial vehicles (Euro VII). They fear that the required limits for nitrogen oxides (reduction by a factor of ten) and fine particles (reduction by a factor of three) are not technically feasible.
The Commission’s proposal envisages Euro VII for trucks and buses coming into force in July 2027. Manufacturers call on lawmakers to consider Euro VII and the revision of CO2 fleet limits together. The Commission plans to present its proposal for stricter CO2 fleet limits on Tuesday.
The EU finance ministers will meet on Tuesday for the first political consultations on the realignment of the EU fiscal framework. In the run-up to the debate, diplomats were very cautious about the outcome of the meeting. There are still differing attitudes among the member states, even on central elements of the reform. This also emerges from a so-called issues note sent by the Swedish Council Presidency to the finance ministers and available to Table.Media.
Last November, the Commission published its ideas on the realignment of the Stability and Growth Pact. In essence, it recommends negotiating an individual medium-term debt reduction plan for each member state. Highly indebted countries should be given more time to reduce their debts and achieve the deficit target. In return, it is to be enshrined that misconduct will be sanctioned more strictly and sanctions will be enforced consistently. The key benchmarks of the Stability and Growth Pact – a maximum annual new debt of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and a maximum total debt of 60 percent – remain unchanged.
According to the diplomats, after the reform package was presented, the member states sent the Commission 60 pages of questions – for example, regarding credible sustainable debt reduction and effective coercive measures against those states that did not comply with agreed targets. So far, however, only half of the questions have been answered.
The Commission had also recently presented simulations for the expenditure paths, which had provoked a further 13 pages of clarification. The diplomats explained that the member states are still not in a position to carry out their own model calculations based on the Commission’s ideas, as the underlying assumptions are not clear.
In the letter to finance ministers, the Council presidency notes that while countries agree with the goal of achieving sustainable public finances through a combination of gradual fiscal adjustment and growth-enhancing reforms and investments. However, there were still key areas where “further discussions among member states are needed”. The presidency, therefore, formulated several questions for the finance ministers for the policy debate:
The presidency wants to use the ministers’ responses to be able to speed up work at the technical level. Time is pressing, as the EU heads of state and government are expected to give the Commission the necessary direction at their summit on March 23 and 24 to draw up the legislative proposals for reforming the Stability and Growth Pact. The realignment of European debt rules must be completed by the end of the year because the existing fiscal regime will then take effect again. This had been suspended in 2020 to give countries more leeway to cushion the impact of the Covid pandemic.
Yolande Kyoni ended up in energy policy by chance. She originally studied conference interpreting and international development in Vienna and Porto. But her interest in Europe was great and so, after a first internship in Brussels in 2008, she took another internship at the EU Parliament in 2013, which she found so intriguing that she immediately stayed in Brussels and accompanied the Clean Energy Package at ITRE.
Today, she is the Europe officer at Wien Energie. The subsidiary of Wiener Stadtwerke is a municipal energy supplier and also the largest regional energy provider in Austria. Five years in Brussels were enough for her – she was drawn back to her hometown of Vienna. Besides, it was time for a change of perspective, she says: “Politics, as exciting as it is, is more exciting for me when I can observe it from the second row.”
As part of a team of eight, Yolande Kyoni now forms the link between politics, business and technology. She works on draft laws for the energy and waste management sectors and prepares them for the experts at Wien Energie. To this end, she is in constant contact with politicians and the associations in her sector.
That her profession as a lobbyist often has negative connotations upsets her. After all, she and her team adhere to the OePAV public affairs code of conduct. Their interests are transparent. The exchange with many different people is what fascinates her about her work: Be it the expert for renewable energy generation, the technician from a power plant or colleagues from the parliamentary offices in Brussels. She is in constant dialogue with all of them in order to get a full picture of the situation.
For example, she gathers data on a new draft law from colleagues in Brussels, then talks to representatives of industry associations and internal experts so that she can ultimately represent the company’s interests in the best possible way during the lobbying process. Always with the question in mind: What’s in store for us?
Kyoni, who has roots in the Democratic Republic of Congo, grew up bilingual. She first learned Swahili and then German. At school, she added English and French. Portuguese followed later, during an Erasmus scholarship, as well as Dutch through her time in Brussels. Learning languages is one of her passions, Kyoni says.
The Clean Energy Package in Brussels set the course for the 2021 climate law – the first climate action law at the European level – and, subsequently, for the Green Deal. At first, it seemed as if the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine massively set back the carbon-neutrality project and, in particular, the departure from fossil fuels. But this did not happen, Kyoni says. She is optimistic about realizing the Green Deal and the Fit-for-55 goals. “We know where we’re going, and now we need to specifically work toward that goal.” Noah Raffenberg
In view of the devastating consequences of the earthquake in Turkey, the EU mobilizes additional aid. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the delivery of more tents, blankets and heating equipment in a telephone call on Sunday.
There are signs of a diplomatic rapprochement with Greece after Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias flew to the disaster area yesterday. Even the new conservative president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulidis, signaled new negotiations with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus after his election yesterday, as you can read in the News.
The issue of hydrogen is about an economic reboot: The Commission has finally adopted the delegated acts on green hydrogen. I analyzed the leaks: The Commission has written in an improvement for the friends of nuclear power, France and Sweden.
There are delays in another Commission project: The deadline for the Euro 7 emissions standard is unlikely to be met, as Markus Grabitz researched.
There is also considerable pressure on the reform of debt rules. At their meeting tomorrow, EU finance ministers are expected to pave the way for the summit of heads of state and government at the end of March. Christof Roche explains why progress is slow.
The Commission adopted the two delegated acts defining green hydrogen last Friday, the official register shows. “As one of the key elements in the ramp-up, they have held back almost all renewable hydrogen projects to take FID,” tweeted the head of policy at Danish group Ørsted, Josche Muth.
The Commission has not yet published the adopted versions. The Parliament and Council also have two months to raise objections before the legislation enters into force. Nevertheless, leaks of the legal acts circulated on Friday – although there may well still be changes, two sources from the EU apparatus in Brussels told Table.Media over the weekend.
A – on closer inspection – rather small concession is made to France and Sweden, which have a high share of nuclear power or a combination of many renewables and nuclear plants. This is shown by a look at the more important of the two legal acts on liquid or gaseous renewable fuels of non-biogenic origin (RFNBOs).
The most important goal of the legislation is to prevent the energy required to produce hydrogen from boosting the generation of fossil-fuel power plants. In addition, the electricity is supposed to come from new renewable plants added specifically for electrolysis.
The latter criterion – known as additionality – is supposed to be waived under a newly added condition. If the electrolyzer and the renewable plant are located within the same bidding zone, the electricity will be considered green if its CO2 intensity is below 18 grams per megajoule. Converted, this corresponds to 65 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.
According to data from the European Environment Agency, in 2021, the year before the gas crisis and the restart of decommissioned coal-fired power plants, this affected only two member states: Sweden, with nine grams, and France, with 67 grams per kWh.
In concrete terms, this means that hydrogen as nuclear power does not count as green under these rules because the operators of the electrolyzers still have to conclude long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with renewable plants. However, in the “65-gram states”, these can also be old or already state-subsidized wind and solar parks because the principle of additionality is dispensable there.
During a transition period, additionality is to be waived for all states. Compared to an earlier leak, it has been slightly extended: All electrolyzers that come online by the end of 2027 can purchase electricity from green power plants that do not meet the additionality requirements by the end of 2037. An evaluation of the act by the Commission is now also scheduled for Jan. 1, 2028, the latest.
A mix of earlier drafts can be found in the rules for temporal correlation. This requirement is intended to ensure that electrolyzers run as much as possible when there is a lot of wind and solar energy in the grid. Until the end of 2029, operators will be allowed to prove correlation through monthly billing; only after that will they have to measure to the hour. What is new is that the member states will be given the option of requiring hourly billing as early as July 2027.
The rules should also explicitly apply to imported hydrogen, which according to a voice from the German energy industry, only means a clarification.
After more than a year of delay, the Commission now adopted the legal act three days after the Parliament dropped the trilogue on RED 3. In a letter to the Swedish Council Presidency and Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, the negotiators Markus Pieper (CDU) and Nils Torvalds (Renew) had made it clear that without the legal act, they would have no basis for seriously negotiating the targets for hydrogen as an energy carrier in transport and industry.
Correction: The first version of this article stated that the transition period for additionality referred to renewable plants that start operation by the end of 2027. In fact, it applies to electrolyzers that begin operation by then. We corrected the statement.
The start date of July 2025, which the Commission targets for the Euro 7 emissions standard, will unlikely be met. It is foreseeable that the legislative process will not be completed until summer 2024 at the earliest. Subsequently, delegated acts and implementing provisions will have to be adopted. This will take at least another six months. This would leave manufacturers less than six months for implementation, even in the best-case scenario.
In Parliament alone, the procedure will last at least until November. The rapporteur is Alexandr Vondra (ECR). His schedule calls for the report to be presented in May, for amendments from the parliamentary groups to be adopted by the end of June, for a vote to be taken in the lead Environment Committee at the end of October and in plenary at the beginning of November. Only then can the trilogue get underway. Observers assume that the Czech conservative plans far ahead with calculation. He plays for time in order to do the manufacturers a favor and to help push back the entry into force of the unpopular reform as far as possible.
In the Council of Ministers, Euro 7 will be discussed for the first time at EU ambassador level in March. Coreper 1 must prepare the general approach to be decided by the environment ministers. The general approach in the Council is likely to be much more complicated than reaching consensus in the Parliament. Above all, the countries of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, with high production numbers of internal combustion engines, will press for the standards to be relaxed.
The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Austria, will oppose this. It is already apparent that the differences in the German government between Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) and Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP ) are so significant that Germany is unable to speak in the Council working groups on points of the proposed regulation.
Wissing and Lemke are publicly arguing about the costs of Euro 7. Lemke claimed last week that Euro 7 would not cost any jobs, citing figures from the Commission’s impact assessment. Wissing now counters that Euro 7 would be more expensive: by €400 for gasoline vehicles in the middle and upper classes, and by €900 for vans with diesel engines. For trucks, additional costs of between €2,500 and €4,000 are expected.
It is foreseeable that the trilogue will not pick up speed until the Belgian EU Council Presidency in the first half of 2024. It is rather unlikely that the informal agreement in the trilogue will be reached before the European elections in May 2024. Unlike in the Bundestag, there is no law of discontinuity in the European Parliament.
This means that the Euro 7 dossier will not expire with the European elections. However, the reconstitution of the European Parliament and a possible change of the rapporteur would lead to delays in the trilogue.
The industry argues that the demanding Euro 7 targets will require extensive development work on both engines and exhaust gas after-treatment. In the case of diesel, the limits for nitrogen oxides are to be reduced by 43 percent, and delivery vans are to comply with the same limits as passenger cars. In addition, the vehicles are to deliver the limit values even in more extreme driving situations – even at full throttle in first gear.
Development of models with 48-volt power supply, two-stage catalytic converter and electric heating in the exhaust after-treatment system, and obtaining type approval for the models – all of which would normally take 36 months. In its position paper, the VDA calls for the effective date to be postponed for the reasons described: by one year to July 2026 for new models in the case of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and by two years to July 2027 for models already on the market.
Manufacturers have fundamental reservations about the proposed pollutant standards for commercial vehicles (Euro VII). They fear that the required limits for nitrogen oxides (reduction by a factor of ten) and fine particles (reduction by a factor of three) are not technically feasible.
The Commission’s proposal envisages Euro VII for trucks and buses coming into force in July 2027. Manufacturers call on lawmakers to consider Euro VII and the revision of CO2 fleet limits together. The Commission plans to present its proposal for stricter CO2 fleet limits on Tuesday.
The EU finance ministers will meet on Tuesday for the first political consultations on the realignment of the EU fiscal framework. In the run-up to the debate, diplomats were very cautious about the outcome of the meeting. There are still differing attitudes among the member states, even on central elements of the reform. This also emerges from a so-called issues note sent by the Swedish Council Presidency to the finance ministers and available to Table.Media.
Last November, the Commission published its ideas on the realignment of the Stability and Growth Pact. In essence, it recommends negotiating an individual medium-term debt reduction plan for each member state. Highly indebted countries should be given more time to reduce their debts and achieve the deficit target. In return, it is to be enshrined that misconduct will be sanctioned more strictly and sanctions will be enforced consistently. The key benchmarks of the Stability and Growth Pact – a maximum annual new debt of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and a maximum total debt of 60 percent – remain unchanged.
According to the diplomats, after the reform package was presented, the member states sent the Commission 60 pages of questions – for example, regarding credible sustainable debt reduction and effective coercive measures against those states that did not comply with agreed targets. So far, however, only half of the questions have been answered.
The Commission had also recently presented simulations for the expenditure paths, which had provoked a further 13 pages of clarification. The diplomats explained that the member states are still not in a position to carry out their own model calculations based on the Commission’s ideas, as the underlying assumptions are not clear.
In the letter to finance ministers, the Council presidency notes that while countries agree with the goal of achieving sustainable public finances through a combination of gradual fiscal adjustment and growth-enhancing reforms and investments. However, there were still key areas where “further discussions among member states are needed”. The presidency, therefore, formulated several questions for the finance ministers for the policy debate:
The presidency wants to use the ministers’ responses to be able to speed up work at the technical level. Time is pressing, as the EU heads of state and government are expected to give the Commission the necessary direction at their summit on March 23 and 24 to draw up the legislative proposals for reforming the Stability and Growth Pact. The realignment of European debt rules must be completed by the end of the year because the existing fiscal regime will then take effect again. This had been suspended in 2020 to give countries more leeway to cushion the impact of the Covid pandemic.
Yolande Kyoni ended up in energy policy by chance. She originally studied conference interpreting and international development in Vienna and Porto. But her interest in Europe was great and so, after a first internship in Brussels in 2008, she took another internship at the EU Parliament in 2013, which she found so intriguing that she immediately stayed in Brussels and accompanied the Clean Energy Package at ITRE.
Today, she is the Europe officer at Wien Energie. The subsidiary of Wiener Stadtwerke is a municipal energy supplier and also the largest regional energy provider in Austria. Five years in Brussels were enough for her – she was drawn back to her hometown of Vienna. Besides, it was time for a change of perspective, she says: “Politics, as exciting as it is, is more exciting for me when I can observe it from the second row.”
As part of a team of eight, Yolande Kyoni now forms the link between politics, business and technology. She works on draft laws for the energy and waste management sectors and prepares them for the experts at Wien Energie. To this end, she is in constant contact with politicians and the associations in her sector.
That her profession as a lobbyist often has negative connotations upsets her. After all, she and her team adhere to the OePAV public affairs code of conduct. Their interests are transparent. The exchange with many different people is what fascinates her about her work: Be it the expert for renewable energy generation, the technician from a power plant or colleagues from the parliamentary offices in Brussels. She is in constant dialogue with all of them in order to get a full picture of the situation.
For example, she gathers data on a new draft law from colleagues in Brussels, then talks to representatives of industry associations and internal experts so that she can ultimately represent the company’s interests in the best possible way during the lobbying process. Always with the question in mind: What’s in store for us?
Kyoni, who has roots in the Democratic Republic of Congo, grew up bilingual. She first learned Swahili and then German. At school, she added English and French. Portuguese followed later, during an Erasmus scholarship, as well as Dutch through her time in Brussels. Learning languages is one of her passions, Kyoni says.
The Clean Energy Package in Brussels set the course for the 2021 climate law – the first climate action law at the European level – and, subsequently, for the Green Deal. At first, it seemed as if the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine massively set back the carbon-neutrality project and, in particular, the departure from fossil fuels. But this did not happen, Kyoni says. She is optimistic about realizing the Green Deal and the Fit-for-55 goals. “We know where we’re going, and now we need to specifically work toward that goal.” Noah Raffenberg
