Britain’s departure from the EU will force broad changes to the bloc’s energy and climate policies, and remove a crucial ally for Central Europeans — but it will also give London far more freedom to pursue nuclear projects.
The U.K. has often been an energy outlier in the EU, advocating nuclear power and shale gas sources shunned by others. Its alliances tend to shift, always with the aim of keeping interference from Brussels to a minimum and taking an ambitious yet financially minded approach to tackling climate change.
But there’s a lot to lose on both sides of the Channel after Thursday’s vote.
A post-Brexit U.K. will still be tied to the rest of Europe through gas and electricity links and an emissions trading market it is unlikely to ditch, but it will have less influence on the bloc’s decisions. The EU, instead, will lose a strong pro-free market voice, which has historically helped tone down some more statist schemes coming from Continental capitals.
Leaving the EU will relegate the U.K. to a sort of lobby group in Brussels, Swedish Liberal MEP Fredrick Federley told a POLITICO conference a few days before the referendum.
“It would be sad to see the old empire of the United Kingdom reduced to another Norway,” said Federley, who leads the Emissions Trading System (ETS) reform discussions in the European Parliament’s Industry and Energy Committee. Norwegians “are now lining up outside my office to meet because they want to affect the policies of the ETS — companies, ambassadors, ministers and members of the national parliament.”
Here are the five ways a Brexit will impact energy and climate:
1. Climate recalibrations
2. Security in numbers
3. Energy bills go up… or down?
4. Central and Eastern Europe loses a friend
5. Investors in the lurch
Source: politi.co/28UG7bO