NECPs – National Energy and Climate Plans

In 2018, the EU agreed on the ‘Clean Energy Package’, setting a new framework for climate and energy until 2030. Within this new set-up, Member States must develop by 2019 a national energy and climate plan (NECP). The process will serve as a planning tool for the next ten years during which Member States must name their own targets for 2030 within the framework of the EU’s Long Term Strategy for 2050. The NECP should explain what measures a Member State will take in order to contribute to the EU’s 2030 targets for energy efficiency, renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction and a phase out of fossil fuels, and at the same time quantify the investments needed to reach these objectives.

As such the NECPs should be the first step in planning the transformation to a low-carbon economy in every EU Member State. The next decade is the one where major efforts on climate protection are needed if we are to avoid the worst of a changing planet. The magnitude of change required due to our ever-shrinking carbon budget means that a transformation is needed immediately.

People must be involved in this process and understand what changes are expected in economies, behaviours and infrastructure. Yet the EU’s Governance Regulation which sets the framework for the formulation of the NECPs is ambiguous about when and how the public should be involved. These unclarities were multiplied by the late approval of the Regulation in December 2018. At the same time, because such plans are likely to have a significant impact on the environment, the NECPs should be subject to a strategic environmental assessment. Countries like Latvia, that is already advancing the SEA process, deserve recognition.

Key elements of the SEA are: full access to all draft plans and supporting documents, consultations with the public at the different stages of the plan’s development, and when all options are open, an independent assessment of various scenarios and their impacts.

Civil society organisations in several Member States were unable to comment constructively on the NECPs before these were sent to the Commission. In Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary, SEAs are planned at a later stage, meaning that not all options will be on the table when the final energy and climate measures are decided.

Against this backdrop, Bankwatch has assessed the level of public participation and climate protection ambition of every NECP, according to seven factors, four of which are on climate ambition: renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, plans for a fossil fuels phaseout and investment needs for reaching these objectives. The other three factors relate to public participation: level of transparency of the process, commitment to an independent review, and quality of the public consultation held.

Our analysis shows that most countries in central and eastern Europe are not committed to an ambitious energy transformation and instead stay as close as possible to business as usual scenarios. Moreover, the development of nuclear energy as a primary source of decarbonised electricity and the widespread use of biomass as a renewable energy solution highlight a pattern of minimal efforts and an avoidance of the necessary measures to really develop clean energy sources and energy efficiency measures. In many cases, measures to phase-out coal (if any) are supported by a switch to gas, and the NECPs generally do not contain a real assessment of the investment needs to achieve these 2030 objectives.

The development of the NECPs are a learning process, and the plans will not be finalised until the end of 2019. With all Member States now having submitted their draft plans to the Commission, it is crucial to focus on their improvement and implementation, as there are not many other opportunities to get right the EU’s framework on climate and energy for 2030 and therefore place Europe on a path in line with the Paris Agreement and the 2050 Long Term Strategy.

📊 Methodology for scoring

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