FT: EU must improve its aim on energy

Politicians need to learn from their policy mistakes

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools return to their folly”. The Biblical proverb holds an enduring lesson for European energy policy. Having locked the European Union into a framework of expensive and risky energy targets for 2020, European politicians are in danger of repeating the same mistakes with a new set of goals for 2030.

Wrong steps taken in drawing up the EU’s first climate strategy in 2008-09 were forgivable. To repeat the errors with the benefit of half a decade’s experience would be inexcusable. The objectives – securing Europe’s energy supplies and playing a leading role in the international fight against climate change – are still the right ones, but the EU must be smarter in the ways it sets about achieving them.  MORE