The President of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE), Monica Frassoni, called on the European Commission on Tuesday 28 January to include the principle of energy efficiency first in its famous 'climate law', which is due to be presented by March.
Speaking at a conference on the implementation of the European Green Deal organised by the Commission (see other news), Ms Frassoni said that the European Union was not putting enough emphasis on energy efficiency, despite the fact that the primacy of energy efficiency is supposed to be one of the key principles of the Energy Union.
"I don't understand why we want to go for risky solutions like 'clean' gases instead of rushing for the safe ones: renovating our houses and adapting our industries and transport systems through energy efficiency", she said.
She therefore advocated that the future climate law should include not only the objective of climate neutrality by 2050, but also the principle of energy efficiency first.
While recommending the reopening of the 'Clean Energy for All Europeans' package, Frassoni called for Member States and EU institutions to lead by example, ensuring that 100% of public buildings have near-zero energy consumption by 2030.
Increasing the rate of renovation of buildings from less than 1% per year to 3% "will help us solve most of our problems by 2030 and 2050", she further stressed, thus urging the Commission to respect its commitment to triple the current rate (see EUROPE 12410/16).
The EU's current target is to improve energy efficiency by at least 32.5% by 2030. Nevertheless, the Commission's evaluation of the Member States' draft Energy/Climate Plans (PNECs), published in June 2019, revealed a gap of 6.2% between this target and the contributions planned by the Member States. The evaluation of the final PNECs is scheduled for mid-year. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)