Debate: Industrial Emissions Directive - Industrial Emissions Portal - Deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure - Sustainable maritime fuels  - Energy efficiency
Date: MONDAY, 10 JULY 2023
Speaker: Niels Fuglsang
Country: Italy
Language: EN

We proved them wrong. We did it. And, friends, now we need to do it again because the energy crisis is not over, the climate crisis is certainly not over and we are looking at hard times ahead, when we look at the climate but also if we just look a couple of years ahead when it comes to our energy system – the prices might rise again, hitting the most vulnerable people in our society.  That is why we need to make some structural changes. We need to make sure that our energy system is efficient. And that is what we set out to do in this directive. I think we have proven here in Europe that we have been able to react swiftly when it comes to our energy system, and we need to prove that one more time. This Energy Efficiency Directive that we have agreed on – the broad majority in the European Parliament, the main groups of the European Parliament – sets out for some significant changes in our energy system.  First of all, we agree that we need to reduce energy consumption by 11.7 % in 2030. That is a big challenge, but it can be done if we make sure to insulate our homes, make sure to roll out more district heating and make sure that we use the excess heat which is created from factories and data centres that use much electricity but also create a lot of heat, which is now often being wasted, we need to use that heat in our district heating systems to make sure that it will be benefiting consumers and not wasted.  In this directive, we set a yearly energy savings obligation standing at 0.8 %, going towards 1.9 % each year. That means the Member States will have to do an effort to save 1.9 % of their energy consumption each year. It’s a huge effort that this requires, but we can make it happen and we need to make it happen.  We set out in this directive to have a 3 % renovation rate of public buildings, so 3 % of the public buildings need to be renovated to become nearly zero-emission buildings every year. We make sure that we prioritise the people who suffer from energy poverty and we strengthen the energy-efficiency-first principle, which means that when you do make an energy project, you have to make the analysis to see can this actually be solved by increasing energy efficiency instead of increasing energy consumption and building more energy.  We also say that municipalities with more than 45 000 people living in them have to make heating and cooling plans to analyse where can we have district heating, where do we need heat pumps and how can we make that as efficient as possible?  We set a whole lot of targets and a whole lot of effort is being required by this directive. This will not come easily. It will not be achieved with business as usual. But we know that we can make it happen and we need to make it happen for the climate and for our energy security. This directive will be good for the climate and bad for Mr. Putin. I would like to thank the groups in the European Parliament, in particular. Ms Weiss, Mr Danti and Ms Paulus, who negotiated and secured a broad majority. Let’s make it happen, let’s vote for the Energy Efficiency Directive and let’s do this.