The EU began the conference wanting any electrification agreement to refer explicitly to “clean” power, generated from renewables or nuclear, a position enshrined in the negotiating mandate agreed by its 27 member governments last month.
But Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who will co-lead negotiations for the EU from Monday, suggested in an interview that the bloc could drop that condition.
“The world needs much more radical, much faster electrification. Ideally, that comes for the overwhelming part from solar, from wind, and from nuclear sources,” he told POLITICO and other media outlets Friday.
“But at the same time, let’s also acknowledge that a certain degree of pragmatism is probably warranted and needed, to also make sure that the group of countries signing up is as large as possible.”
He added that even electrification using polluting sources — known as gray electricity — was better than burning fossil fuels straight up, as the switch from combustion to more efficient power by itself reduces energy demand and thus emissions.
“Of course we need to have a high degree of solar, wind and nuclear — and at the same time, if we embark on more electrification and part of that is gray, it is still much better to have someone charging their car with gray electricity than to continue to drive on fossil fuels, right?” said Hoekstra. “It would be a tactical mistake to seek absolutes in this.”