Europe has the potential to generate all of its electricity from renewable energy sources if it combines its diverse natural potentials. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has strongly promoted such a European approach in the past years. In our study on a European Community for Renewable Energy (ERENE), published in 2008, we presented a concept how 100 % renewables in the EU are possible by the year 2050 if the EU member states work together. Since then, a number of studies have confirmed the feasibility of our findings. The EU is already on its way to changing the production of its electricity, and to investing more into renewable energy. Business and politics have in the last years begun to initiate large scale European cooperation projects, most notably Desertec and the North Sea Grid Initiative.

While our overall objective remains that all member states of the European Union should combine their potential, these examples show that there will probably be regional approaches as a starting point. In this paper we therefore take a closer look at a region that could be a pioneer for regional cooperation in the EU: the Baltic Sea Region. As the first region with a European Union regional cooperation initiative – the EU Baltic Sea initiative – and with a long-lasting tradition of cooperation, this region could play an essential role in showing the EU the way forward by sharing their large potential of diverse renewable energy sources.

In his report, Mats Abrahamsson from the think-tank factwise in Stockholm examines the already existing cooperation mechanisms in the Baltic Sea region and analyzes how well they function and how they could be developed further to fully use the regional renewable energy potential. We hope that with this paper we can contribute to the discussions on how regional cooperation can help pave the way for a new European energy system based on 100 % renewables.

This publication was created within the scope of ERENE.

Click here to read Baltic Sea: Developing a Regional Cooperation for Renewables in the Electricity Sector (36 pages, pdf, 484KB)