EU energy policy is based on three key ambitions: meeting the EU’s climate change goals, ensuring competitiveness and the affordability of energy, and ensuring supply security, said Eric Mamer, Deputy Head of Cabinet of the European Commissioner for Energy.
At first, the balance in the EU tended to tip towards the goal of fighting climate change, so we now need to rebalance things between each of the three concepts, the Commission official argued.
Nevertheless, the climate change threat has not disappeared and is in fact more potent than ever, argued Mamer, adding that the Commission has a responsibility to pursue policies that address it.
He warned that policymakers would lose people’s support for fighting climate change unless they produce policies that address the three key ambitions in a coherent manner – tackling climate change, while at the same time giving households and businesses access to secure and affordable energy supplies. The Commission is currently reflecting on how to achieve this, he added.
Economic growth and energy demand growth are closely linked: there can be no one without the other, said Eirik Wærness, Chief Economist at Statoil. Presenting the company’s 2040 Energy Perspectives, he said that there is always a lot of uncertainty surrounding such exercises, but they are nevertheless important for energy companies (which must make long-term investments).
Sustainability is a multidimensional concept, but recent economic development in key European countries is not sustainable –this is why political priorities in the field of energy and climate are changing, Wærness argued. The good news for Europe, a region which depends on imports, is that it has enough energy. But the available supply is not very cheap, he added.
He argued that the key to sustainability lies in how much fossil fuel we extract vs. how much we leave in the ground. Global demand for energy will be driven by the rapid economic development of Asia, suggesting that the economic centre of gravity of the world is moving back to where the population centre of gravity is, he said.
Mark Johnston, Senior Adviser to the EPC on energy, climate change and the environment, stressed the importance in Brussels of distinguishing between action and talk: one way to do this is to distinguish between policy initiatives that are heading for publication in the Official Journal, and those which are merely being mooted.
In the climate and energy fields, “over the past five years, we’ve seen too much talk” (too many Commission discussion papers, European Parliament resolutions and Council conclusions), but not enough action that becomes law and actually changes things on the ground, Johnston argued.