Barroso uses State of the Union speech to flesh out strategic energy plan

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso

In his speech - a new feature of the parliamentary calendar brought in under the Lisbon Treaty that came into effect at the end of last year - Barroso set the Commission’s main programme for the next 12 months before the European Parliament in Strasbourg. One of his messages to parliamentarians was that energy is, “a key driver for growth and a central priority for action.”

“We need to do for energy what we have done for mobile phones: real choice for consumers in one European marketplace,” Barroso said. “We need to make frontiers irrelevant for pipelines or power cables; to have the infrastructure for solar and wind energy and to ensure that across the whole of Europe, we have a common standard so that charging electric car batteries becomes as natural as filling up the tank.”

The Commission’s work programme for the upcoming year will include:

• Putting in place the right regulatory framework to pave the way for energy infrastructure, and prioritising smart grids in particular

• Charting a low-carbon economy to 2050, and setting out the scenarios within which the EU can revolutionise energy and transport in the decades ahead

• An energy efficiency strategy mapping out how to reach the target of cutting CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, for example in the building, utilities and transport sectors

• Making proposals to ensure dealing with climate change is reflected across EU policies

These objectives build on the Commission’s Strategic Energy Technologies (SET) Plan, a roadmap with targets and milestones for low-carbon technologies in six key sectors: solar, wind, smart electricity grids, bio-energy, carbon capture and storage and nuclear fission.

Despite Barosso’s promise to make headway in the next 12 months, much remains to be done before the SET objectives become reality, as was evident from the discussions at the EU energy ministers’ informal Council meeting in Brussels on September 6 and 7.

Speaking at a press conference at the conclusion of the ministerial meeting, Belgian Minister for Energy Paul Magnette, who led the talks on behalf of the Belgian EU Presidency, underlined the scale of the task ahead. “We have to innovate the network in Europe,” which is “quite old and needs to be restored.” There is also a need to improve interconnections between European markets, simplify procedures and decide where the public and private finances to carry out these tasks will come from.

The Commission plans to present an infrastructure package for energy in November, one element of which will be smart grids. But again, the conclusions to the ministerial meeting highlighted the enormity of the task. “There are many questions, there are some dangers, there is much to do,” Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger said at the press conference.

Numerous decisions have to be taken on many subjects relating to smart grids including regulation, who owns the infrastructure and how much money will come from public budget, Oettinger said.

The Commission officially launched its smart grids initiative to upgrade and reequip Europe’s electricity network by building intelligence into the existing passive delivery system in June.