The European Commission has seen a significant increase in spending on climate and energy consultants since 2014. Recent data shows total external adviser spending reached 1.45 billion euros in 2024. A notable portion of these funds, including 127 million euros, was directed toward the implementation of the 2019 Green Deal climate law. This spending trend coincides with ongoing debates regarding electricity prices and economic growth in the EU.
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The spend on consultants is high, but the real issue is usually the gap between the Green Deal's high level goals and the actual procurement rules used to execute them. If the incentives are wrong, no amount of external advice fixes the outcome.
Exactly. You can pay consultants millions to write a strategy, but that does not put a single transformer in the ground or solve interconnection delays. I want to see how much of this spend actually went to technical execution versus slide decks.
127 million for the Green Deal implementation is a lot of money. In the real world, that could fund thousands of industrial heat pump installs or building envelope upgrades. It is a classic case of top down planning ignoring field reality.
