EU needs long-term climate investment plan aligned with just transition, French MEP tells Euronews

The EU will need a new energy security strategy, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin argued in interview with Euronews, including new legislation to boost domestic renewables and optimise the electricity grid. The bloc also needs investment to develop the European industrial competitiveness and cut dependencies from China and the US.

A member of the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), the new French lawmaker believes the EU’s future will be shaped by action to tackle climate change and insists on the importance of balancing such efforts with a fair and just transition.

Euronews: There was a lot of speculation that the European Green Deal (EGD) was going to be halted during the electoral campaign. How do you read this now that you’re inside the European Parliament (EP) and more aware of the internal politics?

Pellerin-Carlin: I have seen throughout my campaign in France what I already knew to be true through academic quantitative and qualitative studies: EU citizens expect the EU to act to ensure clean air, clean water, healthy soils, resilient biodiversity, and a planet’s temperature that remains cool enough for humankind to prosper.

Over the past five years, the EU has invested so much political capital on the EGD that it cannot afford it to fail. Millions of young Europeans had their very first political engagement on one topic: climate. This generation’s vision of the EU will be shaped by their vision of the EU’s capacity to tackle climate change. Not geopolitics, not the economy, but climate change.

As an MEP, I am here to ensure the EU does not betray the promise it made to its youth. Now is not the time to roll-back the EGD, but to complete it.

In some areas, such as energy security, electricity grids, or looking at the 2040 horizon, we will need new legislation. But most importantly, we now need a public and private investment framework that delivers certainty so we can unleash the EGD’s potential as Europe’s way into the 4th industrial revolution.

Euronews: There are a number of green files to be continued by the new EP (soil monitoring, green claims, waste framework directive, etc..) — what challenges do you foresee ahead for these negotiations?

Pellerin-Carlin: In the short term, the fact that the current EU Council’s presidency is being held by a government [Hungarian] that violates the very principles on which our Union is formed, is not helpful. Looking forward, I hope we can ensure that a pro-European majority becomes the central majority in the EP and in the Council. This will be essential on several files, including many that are critical to the EGD.

The current debate on the future of the EU automotive industry will be a litmus test of the political battle between the vanguard that wants to build a better future, and the rear-guard that is illusioned by a myth of a golden era -that never existed for EU citizens. 

Euronews: What new laws do you think should be proposed in order to address potential gaps in legislation?

Pellerin-Carlin: First, we should build a new energy security architecture for a Europe that no longer relies on Russian energy. This requires a new EU energy security strategy, as the current one dates from 2014 and is therefore largely outdated because of Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. This strategy may lead to new legislation to boost homegrown energy production, optimise our electricity grid, and reduce energy demand and better organise our cooperation with key players of the cleantech future, such as Chile or Australia.

Euronews: Are you or your political group (S&D) planning any specific proposal?

Pellerin-Carlin: We want to ensure that S&D’s priorities are well reflected in the composition and mandates of the entire college of commissioners. This obviously includes the Green Deal that should be deepened and not rolled back like some propose. Hence, the hearings of the Commissioners will be a crucial time for my political group.

One key area of focus for us will be the Just Transition. We want to build a green transition that works for all our territories, workers and citizens. More specifically, we want policies to lift millions of Europeans from the energy poverty situation where the fossil fuel system has been trapping them for decades.   

Euronews: There are clear challenges with some EU countries, based on their national energy and climate plans, which reveal they are not on track to comply with climate-neutrality targets. What happens if the targets aren’t reached, as enshrined by the European Climate Law?

Pellerin-Carlin: Where individual member states do not respect targets that are legally-binding at the national level, the European Commission should start an infringement procedure. That is for instance true of the country I know best, France, that is the only EU Member State not to have achieved its 2020 renewable energy target.

As past French governments purposefully did too little for renewables, especially for renewable heat (solar thermal, geothermal, heat pumps etc.), it is normal in the continent of the rule of law, that this State be subject to the sanctions that will be decided by the legitimate EU institutions.

Where member states as a collective fail to reach the EU-level target, the situation is different. A lack of action by member states together shows, according to the subsidiarity principle, that EU-level action is required. Depending on the topic, this would most likely require more legislation and/or EU-level funding.

Euronews: The new European Commission is betting on a Clean Industrial Plan. How do you think the EU will manage to combine competitiveness with the climate transition?

Pellerin-Carlin: For years, the EU mistakenly assumed it would lead the cleantech race because it was the only one running in it. China has demonstrated its capacity to act decisively. The US, with its IRA, but also Japan, Korea, Canada and India have also entered the race. Solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, batteries, those are not only the equipment that are vital to secure that humankind can still prosper on Planet Earth, they are also the sectors that are critical to ensure Europe’s prosperity in this century.

Moreover, our whole industry is struggling with higher energy prices than the US. The reason behind this is mostly geological: the US has massive oil and gas reserves. The US is the number one producer of oil and gas in the world, far ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. The US ensures that cheap oil and gas nurtures its industrial competitiveness.

In a fictional world where EU countries would be sitting on massive oil and gas reserves, we could discuss a potential trade-off between competitiveness and climate. But in the real world where we live in, the EU has near-zero oil and gas production. So we have a simple alternative: either we keep on relying on fossil fuels and our industry will always be at an energy price disadvantage because of geology, or we invest in the climate transition, and will finally increase our industrial competitiveness because solar radiations and wind have one major asset: Europe has plenty of it!

Euronews: Do you think the French government and allies are right to push nuclear as a central part of the green transition? Wouldn't the inevitable huge public subsidies be better spent on boosting renewable energy sources' capacity and storage solutions?

Nuclear is and will remain a significant contributor to the decarbonised electricity system of the countries that choose it. Nuclear is a deeply political issue, with a wide array of opinions from those that want to phase it out even before coal, to those that promise to scale it up even in proportions that the nuclear industry judges to be unrealistic.

I have been in politics for five months now, but a researcher for a decade. So I look at data. And even the pro-nuclear French company EDF says that, from now until 2050, the immense majority of new EU decarbonised capacities will be coming from renewables, not from nuclear.

So, at the EU level, let’s be united in our diversity. Unity in our priority given to all renewable energy sources, from wind power and solar PV, to solar thermal and heat pumps. And let us build an EU energy policy that accommodates and even builds synergies between our diversities, one of which is our different rapport to nuclear energy.