The European Court of Auditors published a report on Monday, September 18th, warning that the EU’s offshore renewable energy development program is falling short of the bloc’s climate targets while its economic and environmental sustainability remains questionable.
The auditors highlighted that the EU’s offshore renewable energy (ORE), or ‘blue energy’ development strategy—which focuses on building offshore wind turbines, tidal and wave energy plants, as well as floating solar technologies—has been granted €2.3 billion from the EU budget since 2007 and a further €14.4 billion in loans and investment equity by the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Despite the large amount of resources committed to blue energy infrastructure, the report states that the results are so far “ambiguous:”
The development of offshore renewable energy in Europe yields ambiguous results. … EU action and money have contributed to the development of ‘blue energy’ in pursuit of the bloc’s climate and energy objectives. But the EU may fall short of its ambitions, … while much more needs to be done to make offshore renewable energy socio-economically and environmentally sustainable.
The report also admits that there is a high chance ORE development “may damage the marine environment,” and that “the European Commission has not yet estimated its potential environmental effects,” which could include the displacement of entire species and disrupting key marine food chains. The auditors added:
Overall … the expansion of ORE in Europe could be detrimental to the marine environment, both below and above sea level.
Furthermore, blue energy projects’ socio-economic implications “have not been studied in sufficient depth” either. For instance, conflicts with fisheries “remain largely unresolved,” EU countries who share the same waters are usually reluctant to plan common projects which results in an even greater area being affected, and the necessary raw materials and the manufacture of key components make most ORE projects heavily dependent on China, which raises concerns “about the security and supply amid current geopolitical tensions.”
And if the environmental, economic, and geopolitical implications weren’t enough, the auditors finally point out that the EU’s perhaps too “ambitious” climate targets—reaching a level of 61 GW installed capacity by 2030 and 340 GW by 2050—“may be difficult to achieve,” warning that if Brussels were to push ahead with the plan anyway, it would need “a rapid and large-scale rollout” of blue energy installations (without time for further risk assessments) and at the cost of “considerable sea space and some €800 billion.”
What makes the situation even more embarrassing for Brussels is that the report came out just days after the European Parliament’s decision to significantly increase the bloc’s renewable targets, as well as to further subsidize renewable energy projects while deliberately leaving out nuclear power, the least harmful commercially available energy source to the environment and biodiversity.
