Energy transition needs to accelerate urgently, says EU’s Scientific Advice Mechanism
There are many possible pathways towards a carbon-neutral future — and achieving it by 2050 is possible but requires urgent action. This is the conclusion of a group of top scientists tasked by the European Commission with advising on how to facilitate the energy transition in Europe.
Photo: Adam Hles, Unsplash.
On 29 June 2021 the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism publishes two major documents on a systemic approach to the energy transition in Europe:
- An Evidence Review Report from SAPEA presents the latest scientific evidence and a series of evidence-based policy options.
- The Group of Chief Scientific Advisors’ Scientific Opinion, informed by this evidence, presents key policy recommendations.
In these documents, the experts underline that the energy transition is far from a purely technical challenge. To make the transition a reality, we need to solve a huge systemic problem, coordinating countless individual voluntary decisions on investment, consumption and behaviour across Europe.
This means transforming the entire European energy system — a change which will affect every part of our society and require huge investment during the transition. It must be done in a socially equitable way. And we already need to accelerate progress if we want to achieve the EU’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.
Professor Peter Lund, chair of the SAPEA working group that wrote the report, said: “The SAPEA report does not recommend an unequivocal policy package for Europe, but rather a set of policy options addressing various important facets of the overall challenge of the energy transition to reach carbon neutrality. However, as a central conclusion, any successful policy must involve a carbon pricing mechanism, in both the EU Emissions Trading System and Effort Sharing Regulation sectors, that delivers a sufficiently high carbon price while putting the pricing in a socially just frame.”
SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) brings together outstanding expertise from natural, applied, and social sciences and humanities, from over a hundred academies, young academies and learned societies in more than 40 countries across Europe. SAPEA is part of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism. The Polish Academy of Sciences is a member of the SAPEA. Professor Paweł Rowiński, Vice-President of the PAS, is the alternate member of the SAPEA Board.
SAPEA selected working group members across a range of disciplines to contribute to the Evidence Review Report. One of the experts of the group was Professor Lidia Gawlik from the Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A full list of working group members is available at www.sapea.info/energy.
Download the report here.