EU On The Ropes -- June 14, 2018

First, this reminder:

Then there is Brexit, and then talk of an Italian exit. Turkey isn't helping things in Europe, and, of course, President Trump's focus is shifting to China, Korea, Japan.

And, then, of course, the whole immigration issue.

Now, on top of all this, EU's growth engine says "no" to EU's renewable energy proposals.

A huge "thank you" to a reader who spotted this. This story is not going to be reported by the mainstream media any time soon. You can find it at the Euractive website:  I have no idea how a reader would ever stumble upon this gem. The headline: Germany pours cold water on EU's clear energy ambitions.

Voters across Europe have lost faith in politics partly because of “unachievable targets” on renewable energy, said German Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, who rejected calls from a group of other EU countries to boost the share of renewables to 33-35% of the bloc’s energy mix by 2030. Altmaier made the comments during an on-the-record exchange between the 28 EU energy ministers, who are gathered in Luxembourg today (11 June) for a meeting of the Energy Council.

Energy ministers are expected to thrash out a joint position on three clean energy laws which are currently being negotiated in the EU institutions – the Renewable Energy Directive, the Energy Efficiency Directive and a regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union.

“Germany supports responsible but achievable targets,” Altmaier said from the outset, underlining Berlin’s efforts to raise the share of renewables to 15% of the country’s overall energy mix.

But he said those efforts also carried a cost for the German taxpayer, which he put at €25 billion per year. “And if we are setting targets that are definitely above 30%, that means that within a decade, our share has to be more than doubled – clearly more than doubled,” Altmaier pointed out.

“We’re not going to manage that,” Altmaier said referring to an objective of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020 in Germany. “Nowhere in Europe is going to manage that,” he claimed. “And even if we did manage to get enough electric cars, we wouldn’t have enough renewable electricity to keep them on the road,” he stressed.

So many story lines. I particularly liked that last line: even if we did manage to get enough electric cars, we wouldn’t have enough renewable electricity to keep them on the road.

By the way, the Germany announcement coincides with that of China's recent announcement to shut down solar growth.