Europe is still lacking sufficient alternatives to Russian energy supplies and needs an urgent political push for greater strategic power and gas links, said Maroš Šefčovič, Energy Union Commissioner in the EU’s first state of the energy union address.
National governments have made progress, but they still fell short of goals set by the Commission, Šefčovič said, unveiling a list of 195 priority interconnection projects, which are designed to reduce overall dependence on energy from Gazprom, Russia's state gas giant.
The list includes 108 electricity, 77 gas, seven oil and three smart grid projects, each selected because they will both enhance the security of energy supplies and reduce CO2 emissions.In exceptional cases, these projects can access grants from an EU infrastructure fund, the Connecting Europe Facility.
The energy union address is intended to become an annual event, reprising progress towards the creation of an integrated EU energy market, with resilience of supply and a greater share of renewables. Currently Europe imports 53 per cent of its energy needs at a cost of €400 billion per annum. European consumers and businesses pay a higher price for electricity than anywhere else in the world.
Along with increasing the security of supply, the energy union has targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emission, increasing levels of renewable energy, and monitoring research, development and innovation activity in the energy sphere.
Emissions progress
With the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris just around the corner, member states are on track to meet their 2020 target of reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent below the 1990 level, according to Šefčovič. The most recent estimates say that in 2014 total EU greenhouse gas emissions were 23 per cent below the 1990 level.
However, further measures are needed to meet the more-ambitious 2030 emissions reduction target of at least 40 per cent. Šefčovič said all member states had to come on board, and asked for draft plans on how they will comply with the goal to be ready in 2017.
EU national governments are also chasing a 20 per cent energy efficiency saving before 2020 but Commission figures put the collective effort at 17.6 per cent.
The Commission said it will launch a financing for smart buildings initiative sometime next year, to help make further energy efficiency gains.
Research funding
In addition, the Commission is supporting the creation of a modernisation and innovation fund as part of the revision of Europe's Emissions Trading System, the world’s largest issuer of carbon credits.
The new funds would build on the existing NER300 (New Entrants Reserve) programme, which is expected to direct almost €5 billion from public and private sources to carbon capture and storage demonstration projects and alternative renewable technologies.
The programme has been slow to get off the ground and Šefčovič said an EU-wide survey will be released soon to help define new research areas.
Over the past year, Šefčovič has been on a Europe-wide tour to promote the energy union strategy. The roadshow has revealed a lot of challenges, he said. For example, Poland is strongly wedded to its coal industry, Ireland has a problem with methane emissions from farming and Luxembourg with car pollution.
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