During this Policy Briefing, Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Energy Union, European Commission, gave a presentation of the Commission’s Energy Union strategy framework which it recently unveiled. Among other things, he stressed the importance of solving energy security concerns relating to the ongoing dispute between Russia and Ukraine and how the EU is seeking to find solutions. Given the repeated concerns about energy security every year in connection with gas coming to the EU from Russia via Ukraine, he argued that the EU should develop “a system where energy supply is secure and reliable and we shouldn’t have these concerns every year”. From the EU perspective, he noted the importance of the issue of filling gas storage in Ukraine to ensure that critical volumes of gas are delivered to the EU.
On the issue of energy efficiency, Maroš Šefčovič said argued that energy efficiency should be a “first principle when developing a new energy project”. He referred to the ‘Smart financing of smart buildings’, an off-the-shelf instrument and advisory help to assist municipalities with energy efficient projects that is being developed by the Commission and the European Investment Bank. He also argued that the EU should strongly support research and innovation programmes such as on research into energy storage and electromobility to ensure that the EU has an energy system that is fit for a sustainable low carbon society.
The Commission also plans stress tests for the electricity sector to help EU member states with contingency planning in the event of power cuts and plans to use the information gathered during this exercise for a proposal on a new energy market design to be tabled in 2015 or 2016.
The Commission also plans to present a ‘state of the Energy Union’ in the autumn every year.