The Euro-Mediterranean energy relationship: a fresh perspective

The author analyses the current renewable energy development in Southern Mediterranean countries (SMCs) and proposes a climate financing strategy that

Publishing date: 16 October 2018
Authors: Simone Tagliapietra

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This paper was produced with the financial support of Compagnia di san Paolo and presented in the framework of the Policy responses for an EU-MENA shared future event, jointly organised with the OCPPC.

The issue

Energy is a fundamental component of the economic relationship between the European Union and southern Mediterranean countries, largely driven, so far, by Europe’s quest for oil and gas supplies. However, given the booming energy demand in southern Mediterranean countries and their great solar and wind potential, regional energy cooperation should also strongly focus on fostering large-scale deployment of renewable energy. This would allow southern Mediterranean countries to meet their increasing energy demand in a more sustainable way, and would also have positive economic and political benefits for Europe.

Policy challenge

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, southern Mediterranean countries adopted post-2020 plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and set targets for deployment of renewables. However, these commitments are largely conditional on international climate finance support being provided. Europe could scale-up its climate financing in the southern Mediterranean, but this should be linked to the implementation of certain energy reforms in those countries. Reforms should not be aimed at transposing in southern Mediterranean countries the EU framework and rules, but rather at removing the main barriers to the private sector’s engagement in those countries’ renewable energy sectors. This could be done by promoting pragmatic solutions to specific legal, regulatory and financial bottlenecks. Greater climate financing should be provided only when southern Mediterranean countries implement such solutions in practice. Helping southern Mediterranean countries meet their energy needs in a sustainable way would also benefit Europe by opening up new business opportunities for European energy companies, promoting the export of European renewable energy technologies, guaranteeing the stability of future gas exports from the region to Europe, promoting economic development in southern Mediterranean countries and delivering on those countries’ pledges under the Paris Agreement.

About the authors

Simone Tagliapietra

Simone Tagliapietra is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of EU Energy and Climate Policy at The Johns Hopkins University - School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Europe.

His research focuses on the EU climate and energy policy and on the political economy of global decarbonisation. With a record of numerous policy and scientific publications, also in leading journals such as Nature and Science, he is the author of Global Energy Fundamentals (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and co-author of The Macroeconomics of Decarbonisation (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

His columns and policy work are widely published and cited in leading international media such as the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, El Pais, and several others.

Simone also is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). He holds a PhD in Institutions and Policies from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Born in the Dolomites in 1988, he speaks Italian, English and French.