euobserver
Summary
In an upcoming session on Thursday (15 February), the European Parliament will see the EU commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra, defending the bloc's climate targets.
These recommend member states cut emissions by 90 percent by 2040.
Green groups have criticised the plan for lacking financial backing. And the far-right, represented by Sylvia Limmer, a German MEP and a member of the far-right nationalist party Alternative fur Deutschland, dubbed the targets "overly ambitious .... political climate madness."
But a more levelled critique came from the geothermal energy sector.
"Ignoring geothermal has resulted in an expensive and doubtful modelling exercise rather than the inclusive, rapid and cheapest pathway to climate neutrality," said Philippe Dumas, who is the secretary-general of the European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC), a non-profit founded in 1998 to promote the sector.
According to conservative estimates, geothermal energy can provide 75 percent of all of the heating and cooling consumed in Europe by 2040 and supply 15 percent of its power needs.
It is a technology that's been around for decades. Experts understand its potential well, and it is already being used for district heating and power generation. But what is plaguing the field is that, essentially, nobody else knows what it is.
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