The Commission’s Executive Vice-President in charge of the ‘European Green Deal’, Frans Timmermans, and the Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, spoke about the development of renewable energies on a European scale and hailed the industry’s potential, on Tuesday 6 June in Brussels, at the third ‘European EnerGreenDeal’ conference, devoted to the development of a “more autonomous and resilient” energy sector.
“Three years ago, saying that renewable energy was competitive seemed like a dream to us. Today, it is much cheaper. When we talk about an industrial revolution, this is real”, said Frans Timmermans at a panel devoted to guaranteeing energy security, socio-economic stability and climate objectives.
Asked about the need for massive investment to develop renewable energies, storage and energy efficiency, he said that Europe had “the right attitude”, although he acknowledged that “we lack the money” to finance the industry’s transition.
He did, however, list the various economic opportunities that the energy transition would bring for European industry, such as the development of wind turbine technologies, the capacity of electrolysers, the electrification of sectors that were not previously electrified, the development of new means of storage, a hydrogen industry, or the use of ammonia, a nitrogen derivative of hydrogen, and the development of batteries.
“All this together makes me optimistic”, he said. “The challenge is time. We don’t have much time and we need to develop these technologies on a large scale and within an unprecedented timeframe”.
Kadri Simson, for her part, highlighted the advances in energy storage capacity and the extension of the voluntary measure to reduce gas consumption (see EUROPE 13151/2), during a panel devoted to short- and medium-term measures to decarbonise European energy consumption.
Having attended the first inter-institutional negotiations on the revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive that morning (see other news), she also wanted to highlight the texts recently adopted as part of the ‘Fit for 55’ package aimed at speeding up the energy transition.
“We have just reached agreement on very ambitious targets for renewable energies and energy efficiency and, at this very moment, all the national governments are updating their national energy-climate plans, which means that, in each Member State, we have projects underway that will enable the Member States to achieve these targets (...)”. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)