How renewable cooling will affect RES target achievement in EU member states under different scenarios by 2030

The European Commission (EC) introduced a delegated act to include renewable cooling alongside renewable heating in the calculation of renewable energy source (RES) shares and renewable energy shares for heating and cooling (RES-HC), as outlined in the renewable energy directive (2023/2413). However, the impact of this definition on expected RES share reporting by Member States is still not fully explored. The research questions of this paper are: How does this definition of renewable cooling impact the shares of RES and RES-HC in various future scenarios? And how do different accounting methodologies for renewable cooling influence the RES and RES-HC shares reported by European Member States? We carry out following key steps: (1) presenting and discussing the implementation of the renewable cooling definition according to the delegated act; (2) calculating the impact of renewable cooling on RES and RES-HC shares; (3) elaborating on the impact of renewable cooling in different future scenarios, specifically in 2030, by analyzing parameter variation to address related uncertainties; and (4) discussing the impact of potential design variations in the renewable cooling definition. The results show that countries with high cooling requirements experience a substantial boost in RES share by adopting renewable cooling in the RES and RES-HC calculations. Adopting more ambitious design variants of the renewable cooling definition could increase the incentive to use renewable energy as an input or increase cooling device efficiency. This suggests that EU Member States have the potential to significantly incentivise renewable energy utilization in this field – surpassing mere accounting outcomes – provided that a more ambitious definition of renewable cooling is adopted.