This is the first time I am back in a big Plenary room since the hearing. Thank you for being nice to me! People ask me if I could sleep at night in the preparation phase, and I always answered, 'yes I sleep like a baby'. I sleep for a few hours, I wake up and cry a little bit, then I sleep for a few more hours and then I wake up and cry a little bit.
Thank you so much and thank you for the collaboration, both before and after the hearing.
Now of course, we have started the actual work and I really cherish, both the bilateral collaboration I have with many of you, but also with the groups and with the Committee.
I am looking forward for the exchange of views today. Obviously, it's also a possibility for me to highlight some of the things that are coming up and that we are presenting from the Commission's side in the weeks and months to come, just as it is an opportunity for you to ask me questions, but obviously also give me some input.
A lot has happened since December, there is an old, I think it's a Chinese curse, that goes 'may you live in interesting times'. I think it's pretty fair to say we are living in interesting times.
I think it's also fair to say that this is for me a very, very clear sign that we should all be happy that we have the European Union. No country, not even the biggest ones of us, have a chance of solving the challenges that we face right now alone.
We need to really stand by each other's shoulders and we need to work with each other closer, together. And therefore, I think it is also extremely important that we send a very clear signal to our own citizens, our own companies but also of course to the world, that in the European Union, the way that we face challenges like the ones we face right now, is not by polarising but standing together.
This certainly also goes for the energy part of our collaboration. We already working very closely together on this, compared to any other region of the planet, we are better interconnected and more rational and greener than any other region.
This is obviously not to say that we don't have many challenges, we have a lot. But I just think it's worth reminding each other, when standing in challenging times, it's also necessary to remember what are our strengths and to build on our strengths. And when facing challenges you have to be very careful, when you find the solutions, that you don't undermine the position of strength that you actually have, by choosing to go in completely different directions.
For me that means, looking at our Energy Union, we need to make that stronger.
It really is a little bit of a paradox, when walking around this building and looking at all the historic photos, the buildings and rooms named after great personalities that helped shape the European Union, that it all started as a Coal and Steel Community. So coal, basically energy.
Yet today, there is many other issues we are much more integrated than we are on the energy side.
So, we have a lot of potential. I will also say that we need to do better in that part of our integration.
Now, if we look at our electricity infrastructure and how it is connected in Europe. Again, I would find it difficult to point to any other places in the world that are doing as well as we are. But at the same time, we are not at all where we need to be and we are not even exploiting the possibilities that we have of doing better right now.
An analogy that you could use, if you thought about our more traditional physical transport infrastructure and, let's just take an arbitrary number, say that what we needed was 100 big highways to connect Europe and we would be perfectly connected, it's just an arbitrary number but let's say it's 100. Then say, that those highways are energy, electricity, then right now we are at a stage where we have 100 highways but we need 200. What makes it even more challenging, but also gives us possibilities, is that out of the 100 we are only using 50. So out of the infrastructure that we already have, the interconnectedness and maintenance that we already have, we are only utilising a part of it. And we have a lot of potential for utilising it better. And even if we did that 100 per cent, that still would not be enough.
So, what does that mean? It means we need to be better connected, both physically, so physical infrastructure, but also in a more regulatory sense.
Countries need to implement better legislation that we already have, this means exploiting the possibilities of having the benefits of having neighbours that produce energy at certain times and also being solidaire, providing them the energy to them, when they don't.
If all countries fulfilled our obligation of the 70% transmission target, then already there, we would be much better off that we are today.
If we were better at exploiting the grid we have, and we can be, via digitalization and AI, and better planning and better coordination of maintenance, small things they might seem like, but they can really make a difference. Then we could avoid a lot of curtailment. In Germany alone, the curtailment every year equals the lost revenue of 4 billion euros.
When we have the big crisis last Summer, in many of the Southern European countries because of the heat wave, one of the reasons why the crisis became so big was because there was a lot of maintenance going on and it wasn't being coordinated. This is not to blame anybody, because there were probably good reasons why it had to happen there, but had we coordinated better, we could have avoided these things.
So this is just to say there are actually quite a few low hanging fruits, quite a few things that can work, even in the short term. But I will also be honest with you and say there are also some fruits at the top of the tree, that we need to pick. There is also a lot of things that we need to do that are more structural, long-term decisions.
Something that lies in between there, I would say, is our ability to move swiftly with the deployment of more renewables.
We need to, in my opinion, take a good and hard look at our rules for permitting. Now, during the crisis we had some change in the rules that we have and emergency measures, that were also implemented and that meant that in some countries things were actually speeding up.
But still, as a general rule, it is going way too slow and I think that is probably the message that I am getting most often from industry, from local communities, from green NGOs from people that are more concerned about prices. It's not going fast enough.
And this is even in a period of time when we are actually deploying more renewables faster than ever, so last year it was 78 new Gw of renewables, this is a huge number. Last year for the first time ever, we produced more electricity by solar than by coal. This is fantastic, it's going in the right direction, it's going fast. But not fast enough.
This will be at the core also of the Affordable Energy Action Plan that I will be presenting, the Commission will be presenting, next week as a part of the Clean Industrial Deal.
We will look at every issue separately, that is right now hindering us from becoming more independent of fossil fuels and thereby also Russian energy imports, decarbonising our economy and of course first and foremost, which the title also reflects, bringing down the prices.
Renewable energy is not something that is making our competitiveness worse as some will have you believe. I am sure probably not many in this room but sometimes outside of this room you will hear this.
It is the opposite. From 2021 to 2023, the International Energy Agency, [IEA Executive Director] doctor Fatih Birol, has calculated that we in Europe saved 100 billion euro because of the deployment of new renewable energy. 100 billion euro that we would have bad to pay more, had we not been on the transition path that we are in.
We are working hard to rectify where there is barriers, and the plan that I will be presenting will not be a plan with one big silver bullet that will solve all the problems. But it will be a lot of very targeted things, of course interconnected, but targeted things that we can do, that when you add them all up, will make a lot of difference both on the short term and on longer and more structural term.
I will also say that the question of Russian energy, in my opinion, has not become smaller, I think you will agree.
When the war escalated and Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022 we were at 45% of our gas coming from Russia. Last year we brought that down to 15%, but then the LNG imports went up, so we ended up at 19%. Now we are at approximately 13% because the transit via Ukraine ended the 1 January.
So on the one hand, I guess you can argue that this is a huge success of Europe. I would like you to point to any other region of the world that could that fast, fundamentally change such as important part of the energy system. It is actually a tremendous accomplishment on one hand. On the other hand, we are still importing 13% from our gas from Russia. This is billions of euros filling up Putin's war chest. So, we need to do more.
Some of the things that I have already talked about, that will be a part of the Action Plan on Affordable Energy will obviously also help us in that regard. But we will need to, in my opinion, take even further steps and, therefore, next month, the Commission will propose a Roadmap for independence on Russian fuel.
Obviously we have a lot of other things planned, but my time is already more than up, so I hope I'll get an opportunity to speak about them in connection with your questions. They are all interrelated obviously, so the Electrification Action Plan is also connected to the Affordable Energy Action Plan and so forth.
On housing, which I know is also important for many in this Committee, we will be presenting the Affordable Housing Action Plan next year. The reason why I decided and we decided in the Commission to not do it before, was also to make sure that we have a process that is parallel to yours, here in the Parliament, the Committee on Housing. I would not feel comfortable putting forward my plan without having also taken into account the result of your work and your recommendations.
But this does not mean that I will not act before that. We are already acting. So you could put it all together in one fine plan in a year, but since it's probably wiser to wait with that plan, I will start doing some of the things already now. That is probably not the way we normally or actually often work, but I think it's the smart way of doing it so.
On the State aid rules, we are working on them, [Executive Vice President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition] Teresa Ribera and myself, on making, creating a pan-European investment platform, I am working with the EiB on that. On making sure we spend more money from the cohesion funds on housing, going from 7.5 billion euros to 15 billion euro, I am working with Vice-President [for Cohesion and Reforms, Raffaele], Fitto on that and of course also on other issues.
But I would be interested to hear your comments and answer any questions also!
