What the Future of the Renewable Energy Directive Should Look Like

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Transport remains Europe’s biggest climate challenge. In 2025, transport emissions in the EU flatlined, with emissions from cars plateauing and increased emissions from aviation undermining a drop in shipping emissions. It is central that the new renewable energy framework works towards reducing emissions and strengthening energy independence, notably by phasing out reliance on fossil fuels. And by prioritising the simplest and most energy efficient decarbonisation pathways when available.

The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) must remain the central pillar of the EU’s post-2030 Energy Union. The next phase of the framework should strengthen the role of renewables and renewable electrification in delivering climate neutrality, energy security and industrial resilience.

T&E’s main recommendations in the post-2030 Renewable Energy Framework

1. Keep the Renewable-only Energy Directive as the backbone of the post-2030 Energy Union, with a binding EU renewable-only 2040 target to rapidly reduce dependency on energy imports and meet climate commitments.
2. Preserve the RED’s sectoral architecture, including sectoral targets across transport, industry, heating and cooling, and buildings, to maintain clear decarbonisation pathways and strong demand signals.
3. Maximize the contribution from renewable electricity as a transport fuel for all transport modes and focus sustainable liquid fuels for aviation and shipping.
4. Retain and expand the current crediting mechanism, making it mandatory for Member States to include it to all transport modes.
5. Phase out first generation food and feed crops to prevent competition with food security and land use change impacts, and to ensure regulatory consistency with the aviation, shipping, and cars CO2 regulations.
6. Strengthen safeguards on problematic feedstocks in Annex IX to ensure only truly sustainable and low fraud risk feedstocks are incentivised.
7. Prioritise renewable hydrogen and e-fuels for aviation and shipping through a binding RFNBO target for those sectors, and exclude low-carbon hydrogen from counting toward renewable transport targets.

T&E’s response.

Article from T&E.