Debate: State of the Energy Union
Date: THURSDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2020
Speaker: Kadri Simson
Language: EN

As already mentioned during my introduction, the State of the Energy Union contains important additional reports, notably, let me highlight again, the first competitiveness report that is part of the State of the Energy Union. It shows that green energy is outperforming the conventional energy technologies; also the price of renewables has come down significantly, and the energy efficiency first principle in the renovation wave helps us to create jobs across all the EU. So lower heating bills for households, and it also helps us save energy, and energy poverty across EU has declined but this is still 34 million people too many who struggle to afford a comfortable temperature in their homes. So the Green Deal and the clean energy transition is an opportunity also for the economy to relaunch investment and jobs. Our programme for the next year is to strongly build on these conclusions and we have just adopted the renovation wave, the hydrogen strategy, and we will very soon present our offshore renewable strategy. But we also made a commitment to look at and assess all our basic instruments when it comes to the energy efficiency and renewables. All of these actions are now part of our work programme for 2021.  And this is what the Green Deal means – a cleaner, more competitive, fairer Europe. The EU’s current framework will not allow us to reach our 2050 goals and meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement. Simply continuing to implement the clean energy package would see the EU achieving a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is not enough to get to the Paris Agreement. The EU needs to raise its ambition for this decade now and the impact assessment we have conducted shows that a balanced realistic pathway to carbon neutrality by 2050 requires an emissions reduction target of 55% by 2030. This is why the Commission proposes to cut emissions faster by 2030.  Now let me briefly also touch upon the importance of nuclear safety because I received yesterday a letter from 40 Members of Parliament expressing their concerns regarding the safety of the Astravets nuclear power plant in Belarus. I would like to reiterate the Commission’s commitment to ensuring the highest levels of nuclear safety globally, and especially in the EU’s closest neighbourhood. In the case of Astravets power plant this means verifying that all key safety recommendations from the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) are implemented prior to the start of commercial operations of the power plant in early 2021.  The 7 November event is a one-off operation to test the generation of a small quantity of electricity. The peer review by ENSREG’s nuclear safety experts is well underway. It is important that the experts are able to complete their work, which would allow them to draw their own independent conclusions. The peer review is expected to be completed prior to the commercial operation of the plant.  The Commission is making great efforts to maintain engagements with Belarus in this regard. However, we will need to operate within the current political reality of the political developments in Belarus. Nonetheless, the Commission is prepared to apply increased political pressure to see that the key recommendations are not implemented before the start of the commercial operation of the plant. This is also about our energy union.