- Energy transition brings new dependencies
- Can renewable energy from Africa solve Europe’s energy problem?
- Habeck expects sixth sanctions package including oil embargo today
- Crisis resilience of the energy transition: focus on renewables
- Hydrogen: mainly local projects till 2030
- ETS reform: Negotiations in the EU Parliament enter critical stage
- Scholz and Modi practice solidarity despite differences
- Finnish consortium cuts nuclear power plant project with Russia also because of war
- Ministry: further fine rules for violations of EU sanctions
- Pegasus spyware: Spanish prime minister and defense minister affected
- Commission takes action against Apple over payment service
- EU’s Vestager assessing if tech giants should share telecoms network costs
- Profile: Carsten Rolle (BDI) – ‘It will be painful’ for German industry
No time to waste: The EU wants to present the sixth sanctions package against Russia as early as today or on Wednesday at the latest. The measures will in all likelihood include a long-disputed oil embargo previously blocked by Germany, among others.
Europe should also reduce dependencies on other raw materials such as lithium, magnesium, or rare earths. Without sufficient access to these materials for wind turbines, photovoltaics, or batteries, the EU is unlikely to achieve its ambitious climate targets. However, for many of these critical raw materials, local companies rely on a few suppliers – often from China. We discussed how we can avoid simply replacing fossil dependencies with new ones with high-ranking experts at the Berlin Energy Days. Leonie Düngefeld has more infos for you.
To get clean electricity faster, some people are looking to Africa. Wind on the coast, sun in the Sahara, wide streams in the Congo – almost 40 percent of the potential for renewable energies lies there. However, not every tempting-sounding idea is a good and ethically justifiable one, reports Katja Scherer.
The showdown on ETS 2 could come this week. Peter Liese, rapporteur for the ETS reform, fears that the second emissions trading system, which has recently come under heavy criticism, will soon have to be buried. Read more about this in the News.
Let’s take another look at digital: The controversial Pegasus spy software was found on the cell phones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles. It is not yet clear who could be behind the attack with the software from the Israeli manufacturer NSO Group.
Lisa-Martina Klein
Feature
Energy transition brings new dependencies
Lithium, magnesium, rare earths: Europe is heavily dependent on imports of important raw materials for the energy transition. Chinese companies dominate many production stages of photovoltaic plants, for example, and the EU also obtains important components for wind turbines and electric cars almost entirely from China.
Politicians and industry agree: This has to change. Europe must be more resilient than before to withstand global shocks such as the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine. There is also broad agreement on the solutions, at least in principle. The import sources of raw materials must become more diverse, domestic production should be strengthened again, and reserves for critical raw materials should be built up.
“We have to enable the further processing of raw materials in Europe again, at least in part,” said Matthias Wachter, head of department for raw materials at the BDI, yesterday at a Europe.Table event at the Berlin Energy Days. These processes are energy-intensive and pollute the environment – with imports from other countries, Europe has increasingly circumvented these problems in recent years. If companies in Europe are to produce more raw materials again, these costs must be considered, and the framework conditions changed, Wachter said. “Areas are often overplanned in such a way that domestic extraction is no longer possible at all. And politically, it has not been wanted so far.”
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