The EU executive has sided with Germany in rejecting demands to reopen the EU market to electrical switchgear made with climate-wrecking F-gases.
On Tuesday, France, backed by Estonia and the Czechs, called for an “urgent” review of EU rules on high-voltage switchgear, key components in the power grid, opening up a spat with Germany over the multi-billion market.
Current rules appear to favour Germany’s Siemens Energy, which produces switchgear containing no harmful gases. Hitherto standard products containing SF6 – a greenhouse gas 23,500 times more potent than CO2 – must be off the market from 2028.
“The supply chain constraints arising from this limited availability of alternative technologies could seriously impact our ability to achieve our decarbonisation targets,” warned the Irish deputy ambassador to the EU, Cáit Moran, at an EU Council environment summit on Tuesday.
Eleven EU countries in total supported Paris in its demand to change the rules, including heavyweights Italy, Sweden and Romania.
Germany did not agree. The Commission was right not to open the market and Berlin “cannot support the French document,” the country’s ambassador Helene Winter said at the ministerial meeting in Luxembourg.
Far from boosting European companies, opening the market to Siemens’ competitors risked creating a new dependence on imports, she argued – because available alternatives to SF6 switchgear require a gas, fluoronitrile, that was “no longer produced in the EU.”
Speaking at the summit, Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra supported Berlin’s argument, confirming that no European chemicals companies are manufacturing fluoronitrile.
“Let us not increase our dependencies on other parts of the world,” Hoekstra said, ruling out any changes to the existing regulatory framework.
A sit-down with high-voltage grid operators may be needed to settle differences, the Dutch politician suggested.
(rh, om)